Small Crystal Pockets at Lake George in June

I’ve found a number of crystals and small pockets in the last few weeks, but nothing really memorable. We have saturated one area, but never would I say I’ve found it all. Hoping that recent rains had eroded a crystal or two away from underlying pegmatites I’ve been prospecting some fairly steep slopes. While following a few telltale signs of float quartz I haven’t been able to find a large pocket worthy of mention. Here is a picture of some of my finds from the month of June. There some microcline, amazonite, smoky quartz and even some goethite.

Typical small stuff

Still that is what rock hounding is, sometimes you find something really great, but most of your time is spent hiking and poking around rocks looking for signs of crystals.

My nephew was sure that a pocket was under this rock, but not even his youth and determination could budge this behemoth

Float crystal will often lead you to a previously discovered pocket further up the hill rather than a new find. The area around Lake George has been dug quite extensively. If I find shards of crystals within 15 feet of a previously dug pocket I usually move on guessing the quartz shards I’m finding came from that dig. Still I give the area a once over and sometimes I get lucky and find something the previous digger missed. My digging partner Bob had a pretty good score doing just that! After digging around the roots of a tree he determined to check out a dig about 15 feet up the slope from him. After cleaning out the old dig he hit the pegmatite. The previous digger dug up to the pegmatite and then quit and left the harder work to Bob. Bob tore into the pegmatite and noted the pegmatite had small anhedral crystals growing out of it. As he pulled down some of the pegmatite he hit a seam of quartz with mud. Just behind the pegmatite was a fairly large pocket! Bob pulled out microcline crystal after crystal, some of these were larger than his fist and well formed. He was hoping for amazonite, but no blue color was noted. Next he turned his attention to the quartz seam. He found a number of large quartz crystals and even a crystal plate, but unfortunately the smokys were covered in a secondary deposit of white quartz (not desirable).  Still Bob took home about 40lbs of crystals and hopefully got something for his efforts.

At the very least he got to enjoy finding crystals where someone else had given up the hunt! Sometimes these kinds of crystal are the sweetest :-)