Now that's the color of amazonite!

Amazonite comes in different colors of blue-green.  Some light blue, others very green.  The amazonite I found this past week although somewhat small is near the optimal color of blue/green. 

We went up to Lake George again, famous for its smoky quartz and amazonite.  After doing some initial prospecting I came across some amazonite on the surface kicked up by a fallen tree. As I searched for the originating pegmatite I kept running into amazonite float.  While the amazonite was dinged up some, the color is spectacular for amazonite.

The pictures that follow show me working the amazonite dig.  Eventually I did find the source of the amazonite and am probably going to work that area a few more days.  There were some smoky quartz crystals with the amazonite, but they were of very poor quality.

After finding quartz float I begin to aggressively prospect

I've excavated a trench following amazonite float and am working uphill.

First nice size amazonite on the edge of the pegmatite

Some sidewall amazonite.... no pocket yet.

Cleaning the float amazonite

Extraordinary Arrowhead

Once and awhile you find something that's really exciting.  This arrowhead was found near Florrisant Colorado on private property.  I had been given permission to prospect the area and found a little quartz, but no collectible crystals. I found no other artifacts and concluded that the arrowhead was lost during a hunting expedition.  I can find no evidence on-line of similar quartz arrowheads from Colorado.  Sometimes it's amazing what you can find when prospecting.

Rockhounding for Smokys at Lake George

Ray Berry, 81 years young, owns the mineral rights
to about 30 acres northeast of Lake George CO. 
Ray lets local clubs dig on his claims from time to time. Here you can see the Master crystal hunter at work.  Ray has been hunting crystals for over 50 years!

My digging friend and I arranged to permit the
Colorado Springs Mineral Society's crystal club to
dig on Ray's claim this past Saturday. Everyone found something to take home from the trip.  Some even found crystals.  Most just took home aches and pains, sunburn and the formation of new friendships.  We did find two pockets of crystals.  One pocket (5ft down) yielded about 30 crystals; however, none were more than 3 inches long.  Another pocket consisted of microcline and smokys.  None of my finds exceeded 2 inches in length. The pocket I found was mostly broken crystals with microcline, but at least we had something to show for our efforts.


While Ray retains the rights to any spectacular
(museum quality finds) he let us keep everything
we found.  Here we all are at days end sharing our stories of how the big crystal got away and examining our finds.