Life at the mining camp is basic, with a few wood and stone cabins. A clothesline stretches in the yard and chickens scratch in the dirt. Forty-Niners might have lived in a camp much like this in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Of course the Forty-Niners didn't have a satellite dish. The landscape around the camp looks much the same as it looked thousands of years ago, when the Silk Road caravans passed by here on the overland route to China.

Through slow determined labor, the miners have dug small caverns in the hillside

The gem deposits are located at the most inconvenient place in this remote valley: at the top of the very steep mountainsides. Every morning begins with the climb from the camp to the working face high above. It's a fairly dramatic morning commute.

Before the miners can begin work each season, they have to disassemble and then haul an air compressor, tanks, and rock hammer up a 60-degree slope with ropes. Then they have to put the equipment back together again. Once the equipment is in place, progress is slow and the deposits are inconsistent.