Fluorite at Lake George

As summer turns to fall the wildlife gets more active and my urgency to find crystals increases. I guess you could say I'm kind of squirrely by trying to gather up some crystals before the winter sets in and freezes the ground hahaha. We saw a pair of ptarmigan on the way into our site and a deer was cooling itself on the road on the way out. Here is a short clip of the quaking aspen at Lake George CO. My digging partner and I returned to Lake George to dig out some pegmatites we had found earlier in the month. Pegmatites are the geologic formation where crystals are found and there are plenty of both at Lake George. My first digging area produced little, there were many small microcline plates and a few small smoky crystals, but nothing to blog about so I moved up the hill to another area where I had some success in years past. I visited the dig I nicknamed the “waste of time” pocket and then moved laterally to some smaller digs where I had some success in the past. I noticed a few scattered pieces of pegmatite between two of my older digs so I decided to give the spot a try. I found a couple small microcline crystals, but no underlying pegmatite and decided to dig a little deeper and expand the hole. Soon I found a pegmatite only about a foot below the ground which seemed to run in a way that connected to the two other digs I had found previously. The quartz looked pretty good and soon I ran into some smoky quartz crystals. The smokys were damaged but it was encouraging. I dug a little deeper into the pegmatite and I started to note the dirt was changing from brown to red with a layer of diorite below the pegmatite. Soon I was finding lots of microcline plates, but no smokys or much in the way of quartz. I decided to expand the hole uphill and was rewarded with some fluorites near the top with a couple more quartz crystals. The quartz crystals were small but gemmy but the prize was the fluorite. 

Fluorite cube on matrix (bicolor green/purple)

The fluorite was resting just above the pegmatite and probably only about 8 inches below the surface. Upon field-cleaning the fluorite I noted some green and purple zoning, so that is a plus as well. I kept digging the site but found little more in the way of fluorite or smokys. Below the pegmatite I found numerous microcline plates in red clay, but not really collectible. I gave the day 2 stars out of 4 as the weather was great and at least I found some collectible fluorite crystals

Not as gemmy as I had hoped, but a nice specimen nevertheless

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