As a Texan and the daughter of a rancher, my family album is peppered with photos of men, and a couple of women, with their arms slung over the dusty saddle of a horse, deep in Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, the Amazon, or Mexico. . Those feats ceased to amaze me at the age of five, having my photo taken virtually every weekend with a 10-foot alligator or giant fish pulled from the Gulf. Within minutes of my conversation with Wyatt Yeager, I realized that he could be with any of these daredevils. However, nothing prepared me for the real Wyatt Yeager. Far from being a “geologist guy,” Yeager is a tweedy, fearless eclectic breed, aptly named for the storied cowboy Wyatt Earp.
Yeager will be the first to tell you that diamond mining exploration is nothing like Indiana Jones’s iconic depiction of the intrepid hero knight, jewel in hand and angry natives at his back, poised on the brink of extinction and destruction. extravagant wealth. However, a few minutes into our conversation, I found out that he escaped riots, was stabbed in Venezuela, bitten by piranhas, and met people who had never seen a white man before.
Nicknamed “The Wolf” by his peers, Yeager is an undisputed wunderkind. “In my late teens, I became obsessed with diamond exploration and mining after finding some small stones at our California alluvial mining operation,” he informed me when asked how he chose the profession. Arguably, “Diamond Mining 101” is not listed as a college credit course. However, Yeager refers to himself as an “explorationist,” someone who, by trade, explores for and mines diamonds in Africa and South America.
It turns out that the little stones he unearthed in California fueled a passion that hasn’t waned yet. Yeager reveals how his upbringing prepared him for the diamond trade: “I grew up working in the goldfields of Alaska, Central America and California with my grandfather and father, who were consulting engineers and mine owners.” With a family that originally came west to the California gold rush of 1849 and then to the diamond fields of South Africa, he seems to have mining in his blood.
On the subject of his work, Yeager states, “I consider myself part of the old-school colonial exploration crowd.” By this, Yeager means that he differs from future geology graduates, who would rather sit behind a computer screen and interpret geological maps and reports. At 36, Yeager is considered the youngest and one of the last to do true “old fashioned” scouting work with a pick and shovel. As she fiddles with his pen, he shares how lucky he was to grow up in the mining industry, trained by “cranky old geologists.” It is noted that he likes field work and would consider it a punishment to be tied to a computer.
Those interactions with the old-school South African geologists must have impressed you. Yeager’s quest for a diamond pipe has taken him far from technology and into some of the most inhospitable places on Earth, places even the bravest of men could avoid. Even following his travels as a trail of blue dots on a map is scary. When he was in his early twenties, Yeager found himself neck-deep in the piranha-infested waters of the Venezuelan jungle. However, this was more than a short-term recognition. Yeager, who is also an anthropologist with an academic background, had a knack for ingratiating himself with the natives, building a hospital and a school in the remote areas he inhabited while prospecting for diamonds. More convincingly, he seems to have earned the loyalty of even the most seasoned warriors and adventurers as he made his way from Venezuela to Africa and beyond, which says more about the man than he will say about himself.
Throughout our interview, Yeager is humble. I have seen this before in men like Yeager. They rarely open up because even the average feats of him are so mind-blowing that they sound far-fetched to the rest of us everyday folks. I know that with a little (or a lot) of cognac and some dressing, I will have the outline of a great adventure novel. When I ask him for facts and stories about his life, Yeager shrugs; he suggests other people, other interviews as a source of information. I stay looking for more information on diamonds because it is something that he will talk about.
As it turns out, Yeager has his eye on America for his next project. Although he still pursues diamond prospects in Africa and Brazil, gold in Mali and Sierra Leone and sapphires in Tanzania, it is here that he has begun his latest search for “exceptional” diamonds. Says Yeager, “I’m known as a ‘fixer’ in the field. For years I’ve been continually hired to fix, manage, and make other companies’ mining operations profitable. After all these years, I want to take the time to work on my own operations”. Rising demand for diamonds, coupled with slowing production rates, has raised the stakes for the discovery. And why not? We have seen oil wells flourish once again in the United States, more than even the Saudis have to offer. Why not diamonds then? There have been very few new diamond sites discovered globally in recent years. In fact, Yeager envisions deposits in the United States that may create a paradigm shift in global diamond production.
Having escaped civil wars, stabbings, ambushes, and angry natives, America appears docile even in its harshest and most remote regions. If diamonds can be unearthed here, Yeager is the man to do it. Like the Indiana Jones of legend, Yeager has an academic and mathematical acumen along with a risk-taking spirit that has fueled his success. As a valued advisor to programs in Africa and South America, Yeager set a new standard for diamond exploration and mining techniques. He is known for engineering and manufacturing mineral recovery equipment that is considered some of the best in the mining field.
Yeager’s extensive field experience, combined with his technical knowledge, may make him the first of his kind to open a diamond farm in the United States. Like the wildcat hunters of yore, Yeager may well be on his way to legend. One thing is for sure though, with enough brandy and a recording device, he could easily cash in as Clive Cussler’s newest contender.