Well, I hope we have better weather this year than we have had so far. Having completed tax season where I work, I've been patiently waiting for a decent break in the weather to get back to prospecting. I finally ventured forth yesterday with my rock hounding buddy, but the weather chased us off the mountains. We knew it would be touch and go because of the weather forecast and I had hoped we could squeeze in 4 or 5 hours. It was 45F when we started, but periods of light snow and wind finally were enough to make us call it quits. While my digging buddy Bob prospected a nearby hill at Lake George, I decided to redig an area I left off late last fall. There was a seam of quartz and a little yellow mud to follow. Finally the quartz became more prevalent, a seam of clay turned from yellow to reddish brown. Changing colors of clay is always a good sign. Actually any time you find clay with quartz you must dig slowly and with care. After getting through some quartz shards a small pocket opened up with a few collectible crystals. I told Bob afterwards that I can't recall a smaller pocket with 3 inch crystals. I took home only about 5 crystals (1-3inch) crystals and left the rest. It was good to get out, a one mile hike with back pack at 8500 ft was a good first effort for the season. While neither of us found much and the snow and wind made us quit early, it was still good to get out for a few hours.
 |
| Mother Nature covered last years dig with water crystals of her own |
 |
| This is the same crystal below cleaned up some, nice and gemmy with a little character to it. It's always nice to have a little pegmatite with the crystal |
|
 |
Looks promising
|
 |
| Three 2-3 inches crystals ready for cleaning |
|
 |
| I look a little ornery this day.... too cold not enough crystals, had to take off 2.5ft of overburden before I got to the crystal containing pegmatite |
|
No comments:
Post a Comment