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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