Following The Crystal Float at Lake George

Crystal Mass on Boulder

Today was set aside for prospecting as I had cleaned out my latest pocket. I revisited one spot where I had found hooded quartz, but after double-checking that site I decided it was time to move on. I walked for about 2 miles picking away at some of the white quartz I saw along the way. Nothing much interested me until I found a white quartz crystal. I looked up the hill and soon found a small broken smoky crystal, soon the quartz with faces started to multiply and I figured I would soon be digging out a pocket. I looked up the hill and saw no discernible digs, so figured I would keep prospecting up the hill until I hit pay-dirt. I was working along a large boulder to my left and soon came upon a small rock ledge in front of me as I bypassed the rock ledge I immediately ran out of quartz. So either the pocket was under the rock ledge or crystals had collected on the downhill side of the ledge. I looked again up the hill, no digs. Then the boulder to my left caught my eye. About 10 feet up the boulder someone had been chiseling quartz crystals out of the rock.

Small Vugs With Hidden Crystals

As a rookie I had tried this a few times but mostly came up with fractured crystals. I inspected the area hoping for topaz in the rock and after searching a couple voids decided to move on. I was glad not to have spent a lot of time digging at this spot and decided to leave the crystal-bearing rocks to someone else who may chance upon it to take a few pictures.

Goethite In A Vug

I pretty much got shut out this day, but I enjoyed the late cool summer day by getting in a rather strenuous hike.

Large Crystals at Lake George

Back to Lake George to dig crystals again today. We had planned to go to a certain spot, but I never got there. Only 5 minutes into the hike I found a spot good enough to spend the afternoon. I'm guessing I walked across this spot about 50 times and though I had poked my pick axe into the grey quartz a few times I had never given the spot much credit. Figured it was so close to the parking area and no other digs were around there probably wasn't anything there. I dug into the quartz and was soon pulling out large quartz chunks with faces. Hmm seems to me somebody should have found this by now! Digging along I quickly hit a large quartz crystal, one of the biggest I've ever found. Unfortunately it is heavily fractured and more of a grey than the more desirable smoky quartz.

Heavily fractured 10" crystal... it will make a nice yard rock!

I continued the dig finding several quartz points mixed in with quartz shards. I followed a smooth quartz face down and it ended up being a quartz crystal of nearly 6 inches with nice girth!

After shredding the finger tips of my gloves in the uncooperative grey quartz and pulling out a few crystals points the quartz disappeared in country rock so I went prospecting. I discovered several older digs up a hill with amazonite pieces scattered about the debris piles. Did the previous prospector get all the crystals? I may have to try my luck there another time

Best of the lot

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Super Moon Crystal Pocket at Lake George

So what's the big deal about a super moon anyway? The moon's orbit about the earth is not a perfect circle but elliptical. Super moon is media hype for the moon at perigee. So when the moon is closest to the earth it is somewhat larger and brighter. I know its not quite this simple but come on folks let's concentrate on something important like rock hounding. I figured super moon pocket probably sounds better than perigee pocket, so I too have succumbed to media hype and named the crystal pocket I found this day the super moon pocket, though as you'll see there wasn't anything really super about it. On to the super moon pocket!

Super Moon over Pikes Peak CO 

We arrived at Lake George to find hail everywhere. Evidently they had a hailstorm at Lake George on Sunday and piles of hail were laying everywhere. There was also fog and a heavy dew on the grass. As I set off, my shoes soon became soaked as did my pants up to my knees. I decided to look for the pocket of crystals I had opened up on 8 Aug and set out on about a mile hike uphill. After searching for about 45 minutes I couldn't find my pocket, but had scared up a number of deer. Just when I was about to write off the pocket and call it the lost dutchman mine, I found my markers which led me right to the dig.

At the dig pulling out crystals

I cleaned the hail out of the depression and started to carefully dig uphill. I hit some large quartz and much to my surprise they were in quartz crystal form up to 8 inches in length. Upon closer examination every crystal had imperfections with their terminations and were coated in milky white quartz. I continued to dig following the pegmatite and found more crystals all with milky quartz coatings. Some of the crystals had cathedral faces, so that kept me going.

Pulling out some large quartz chunks

Running out of crystals, but not quartz I continued to carefully dig up the hill. After 6 feet of digging up the hill I was now about 2 feet down. I began to hit crumbly quartz with shards of quartz falling out of the sidewall of the dig. Next milky quartz covered cathedral crystals began to pop up. I gave Bob a call and he made his way over to my dig. About the time Bob showed up I began to find some single collectible smoky quartz crystals covered in cathedral milky quartz. I also found some well formed fluorite and zinwaldite. I was running low on water and let Bob dig in the pocket for a bit while I wrapped up the crystals. Bob continued the dig until he hit a fairly large quartz structure. We called it a day a little early but need to return and dig around the quartz to see if the pegmatite continues up the hill. The oddist thing about this pocket was the lack of sign (quartz) on the surface and the shallowness of the pegmatite under the ground. In many spots quartz showed itself to be only a couple inches below the ground, yet there was very little quartz showing on the surface of the hillside.

4"+ Smoky With Hooding

While this wasn't a magnificent pocket it was somewhat unusual and I decided to give the pocket a name, succumbing as I said to media hype it will be called the super moon pocket of 2014

Smoky coated in two layers of quartz and fluorite!

Sides Of Above Coated Smoky (note purple fluorite)

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Ferruginous Quartz & Float Crystals at Lake George

My rockhounding partner and I decided to try a different area of Lake George, one we hadn't prospected much for a couple of years. The rains have been rather heavy lately so we thought we might have some luck finding crystals that Mother Nature had unearthed. One of the best ways to find crystal pockets is to prospect for quartz. Smoky quartz with faces is most desireable, but grey quartz with a face or two is worth following up as well. Amazonite is sometimes found with white quartz, so white quartz can be an indicator and should be carefully examined when field collecting as well. On this trip we planned to do considerable prospecting and thought our chances good for finding crystals due to the last few months of water erosion. Heavy rain can expose new pegmaites or loosen surface crystals and make them more visible. Surface crystals are called float. Float crystals originate in a pocket and are weathered out of the crystal pocket usually transported downhill from their source. When I find good float (quartz with faces) I generally poke around a little bit and try to figure where the quartz came from by tracing the float quartz uphill. Quite often I'm led to an old dig, but occasionally I make a new discovery. Today while prospecting I found some fairly nice float and followed it uphill. The float quartz looked very promising, so good that I found a few collectible float crystals.

Float double terminated with cathedraling scepter

 When following float you generally only have to dig a few inches down. Hopefully the float will become more concentrated and deeper as you dig along and lead to a crystal pocket. As I scanned for float I noted a small depression in the ground above me. I thought if it was a dig, it was very old... After digging and finding several float crystals I hit aluminum foil. At this point I was pretty sure the depression was an old dig and I was just rummaging through some missed float crystals from a previous prospector's crystal pocket. As an aside, pack out what you bring into the forest. I continued digging (less carefully) and arrived at some broken pegmatite around the now obvious old dig. Not an entire waste of the morning as I did find some collectible float crystals. I decided it was time to resume prospecting and continued my search. Meanwhile I got an excited call on our two-way radios from my digging partner. He had found some white quartz and digging down led him to some ferruginous quartz crystals. I had just settled down doing some digging of my own after following quartz, but the quartz I was finding was hooded with white quartz over grey on the crystals. Bob sounded excited about his find and a rumble of thunder overhead persuaded me to search him out on the way back to the truck. We know the area quite well, so when Bob gives directions he is usually pretty easy to find. A few pick axe knocks on surrounding rocks also helps locate his site. Bob was down nearly 4 feet and pulling out interesting plates of red coated quartz crystals. The red coating appears to be a thin layer of iron rich quartz covering white crystals.

Cathedraling plate of ferruginous crystals

Fist size clusters of ferruginous quartz clusters

I have only run into this once before and never in such large quantities as what Bob was finding. So Bob provided the entertainment this afternoon. We got a little wet, but there is still a pocket of crystals waiting for me on the other side of the hill.