Sunday, December 1, 2013

The Legend of the Big Kahuna and Kahunasita See 9/28/13 Post

Every year a pair of eagles winters at Lake George... they have returned :-)

After finding the biggest amazonite crystal I have ever seen (See previous post "Large Amazonite at Lake George...", I decided to try and find out what is the biggest amazonite crystal ever found at Lake George. I could find no information on-line. I checked some of the on-line mineral dealers and nobody had anything close to what I found. I recalled seeing some large smoky and fluorite crystals at the museum in Florrisant, CO but no amazonites. I spoke with a few old time prospectors and they said they had heard tell of a crystal near the size of mine some time ago and referred to it as Gen Sherman, they didn't know what happened to that crystal, but they didn't believe it was quite as large as the one I found. Perhaps I should rename my crystal Gen Grant? One fellow said crystals of the type I found do not come to market, they are snatched up by the guys with deep pockets, and large wheelbarrows. I decided to expand my Internet search to largest amazonite crystals ever found worldwide, still nothing. So I tried biggest crystals ever found and then got directed to this paper from the American Mineralogist written by an Aussie:
http://www.minsocam.org/msa/collectors_corner/arc/large_crystals.htm.  While there was no mention of amazonite the article did talk about humongous microcline crystals measured in meters. So is my amazonite crystal the biggest amazonite ever found? Probably not, but it is the biggest I've ever seen and may be the largest ever found at Lake George CO, and that's the way I spent my Sunday afternoon as the legend of the Big Kahuna was born.
A few weeks ago I decided that I should show the crystal to folks at the Denver Museum of Science and let them analyze it and maybe help determine if it has any contenders for size weight and twinning. Who knew a museum would employ a dozen PhDs. I decided to find them something practical to do rather than their normal form of employment of giving esoteric talks that nobody but them understands (apologies to any PhDs reading this post). They seemed excited enough and after 3 emails I was forwarded to someone who is an expert in these matters. The expert never returned my email or responded after a second email, so he was either too busy to be bothered, or perhaps I got the wrong email address. I may try the Colorado School of Mines. After all they have even more PhDs than the Denver Museum.
The Kahunasita
So here is a picture of the little Kahuna. The little Kahuna or Kahunasita was found right next to the Big Kahuna. There are two contact areas on this crystal, I was hoping the Kahunasita might fit with the Big Kahuna, but no luck. You may notice this amazonite crystal also exhibits Baveno twinning. While this crystal is only 20% the weight of the Big Kahuna it's still the second biggest amazonite crystal I have ever found.

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