Lake George smoky quartz fluorite amazonite and more!

Pikes Peak: The morning started out a little foggy, but cleared up quickly

We arrived at Lake George CO in Park County around 9AM.  It was a chilly start, but warmed up quickly.

We went to a claim where we have permission to prospect and spent the better part of the day poking around for crystals.  By around 2pm Al, found a nice pocket and we helped him clean it out.  Al is new to crystal hunting, and we tried to give him some pointers, but he is mainly looking for quartz to cut for jewelry.  Seemed a shame to cut some of these up, but they are his to do with as he pleases.

Al and Bob posing for pictures with a 4 inch smoky

Here you can see one of the smokys pulled from the pocket.  We had found some pockets here before and figured it would be a good spot for Al to potentially find something.  The following pictures show a picture of the pocket and a pile of crystals.  I wouldn't recommend stacking crystals like this, but Al will be cutting most of them up anyway (pity).  I would say he found a few nice plates (up to 6 inches across)  a few small fluorites (purple) I believe which were less than an inch, and over 100 smoky crystals ranging in size from .5 to 5 inches.  We have dubbed this the "Good Friday" pocket.  Quite a nice find for a newbee rock hound!

Crystals popping up

Pocket just about cleaned out

The crystal Booty!  (Biggest crystal here is 4 inches)  About half the haul

Bob double checking pocket to ensure it is really clean out.

Smokys ready to pluck from the "Good Friday" pocket

"Good Friday" Smokys cleaned up a little

Rockhounding with my nephew Matt

Mathew was on spring break and his parents wanted him out of the house and away from video games so Mathew got to spend a day with his uncle.  We arrived at Lake George CO around 10am and first did some 4-wheeling.  Then we hiked to one of my old digs to make sure we found something for Matt to take home.  I did some digging in a mineral dump and opened up the pegmatite (rock bearing crystal) to see what I could find.  I tried to give Matt some nice specimens but he only wanted to take stuff home that he found.  I don't think he realized he was digging through one of my old digs, but he did find some things which he believed he discovered and was happy to take home.  After about an hour he was bored so we hiked out, did some more 4-wheel driving and headed home.

Pale Amazonite with smoky quartz

Matt is ready to go prospecting at Lake George

Fresh out of the ground crystal group

A view looking down into the pegmatite and diurite

Looks like boredom is setting in, time to go 4-wheeling