The Hangover cleft in Val du Trient in Switzerland

The high alpine Swiss glacier valley Val du Trient became famous decades ago thanks to major finds by Roger May and other strahler (specialised rockhounds in high alpine regions). This glacial valley, also known for hiking, is located in the Mont Blanc massif and forms part of the border with France. In summer 2020, I succeeded in finding a significant pocket in this zone - a particularly great pleasure for me as a strahler and alpine collector.

A large part of the fascination with rockhounding in the Alps comes from the many stories and reports describing successful tours and famous clefts. Often one reads about the moment where a strahler can harvest quartz crystals from a pocket as if they were potatoes. But even after well over 200 collecting trips in the Alps, I hadn’t found such a big easy-to-harvest cleft yet. In summer 2020, this dream was fulfilled in a rather unusual way.

I had mainly gone for crystals in the Swiss province of Graubünden (Grisons) for most of my life, but after moving to the other side of Switzerland a few years ago, I now mainly search in the mountains of Wallis (Valais). Usually, the better you know a region, the better your finds. But in the picturesque Trient valley I got lucky already on my third trip, when someone joined me for the first collecting trip of his life!

A week before, my Australian friend Steve has asked me if he could join me on a crystal trip. I was happy to have a friend joining me in the mountains and planned a trip to Val Du Trient, the Swiss side of the Mt. Blanc mountain range. We spent the night before in close-by Chamonix, a town with nice restaurants and bars. Usually when going for crystals, you leave as early as possible to maximise the time with daylight in the good zones up on the mountain. However, to say we couldn’t get up early after a night out in Chamonix is an understatement. When we finally sat in the car, I realised that with his missing experience, Steve had only brought running shoes for our crystal trip into the higher Alps, nothing that can be used in the high-alpine terrain around glaciers! We had to stop in a mountain equipment store in Chamonix to buy him some good mountain boots before we could even start the trip.

So we were off to a rocky start to our trip, and didn't feel particularly fresh after the night before. When we finally hiked up the mountain, we checked and scratched in every old pocket in the hope of finding at least one souvenir crystal for Steve to take home. My hopes weren’t overly high to say the least.

Surprisingly, Steve was walking pretty safely in this challenging terrain, and with time we reached higher and higher parts of the valley. A good distance above the local glacier I discovered some cleft signs. When I reached the spot, it didn't look too promising and I was about to climb on, when in the prolongation of the same vein I saw a textbook-example of an open and untouched Alpine quartz pocket! A one-meter-wide ditch in the granite, filled with sand and small rocks, with some quartz crystals already glittered in the sun. At this point I knew it was going to be a big day. Steve was happy, but couldn’t fully understand my excitement, picked the two crystals he could see, and wanted to move on to the next spot. After I managed to calm down, I explained to him that this was similar to the tip of an iceberg, and there would be much more inside the mountain.

The roof plate had dropped onto the content, so this was the first piece we removed. When turned around, it was a group with a 20 cm double terminated smoky quartz on matrix. Below there was a first loose crystal, then there was a second one, and a third, and a fourth – and then it was like harvesting potatoes! Boooom – hangover gone!

Everyone who hasn’t had this luck yet, I hope that you will find something similar in your collecting career at some point! It was like in one of the articles: not only were the crystals very easy to harvest, their quality was also outstanding! Lean crystals up to 20 cm, clear as glass with a tiny hint of smoke. We pulled hundreds of crystals out of our hangover pocket which, once fully exploited, measured 4.0 x 2.5 x 0.4 metres.

After an hour or two (difficult to trust one’s sense of time in such a moment) I pulled out a specimen that couldn’t be an ordinary quartz crystal. Once I had removed the first layer of dirt, I realised we just found the first gwindel of the pocket, and a big one at that: 9 x 10 cm! After four or five hours, the low hanging fruits of loose crystals and groups were harvested, but in the far back I was able to reach a bigger loose plate. After making the entrance of the pocket a bit bigger and playing a bit of Tetris, I managed to pull out the best specimen of the find: A 12 x 10 x 5 cm perfectly clear gwindel, grown on a thin matrix plate, surrounded by smaller crystals like a bouquet! I couldn’t believe it, while Steve was thinking that this is a pretty fun hobby if you make such big finds every time. What a mesmerising day, there must be something to the term “beginner’s luck”! At home, when cleaning our finds, we even discovered small pink fluorite octahedrons on some of the pieces – the first time I had the honour of finding this rare and sought-after mineral.

Generally, the mineralisation of this cleft in Mt-Blanc granite was rather typical: smoky quartz, massive gwindel, pink fluorite and feldspar (adularia). There were only a few pieces with a Chlorite cover, but more than 80% was pristine and with perfect quality. We returned to the hangover pocket more than 10 times and always had to carry a heavier-than-intended (and opposite of healthy) rucksack down the mountain.

Later I was told that this specific corner of the Glacier du Trient was thought to not bear any crystal pockets and was therefore ignored by many strahlers. After checking out some 100 metres around our pockets I can confirm this: it seems like we discovered the only pocket in this corner of the valley. Steve accompanied me on more collecting trips afterwards, which of course weren’t as successful, but what a start to his strahler career that was!

What is left are some pretty additions to our collections, unique memories and a fun story to tell in bars. We can’t wait for the next cleft!