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| Austin shows off 1st nice crystal of the day! |
Austin wanted me to take him rock hounding and after hearing of a few of his negative adventures with others we
picked a day and set off for Lake George. From Austin's stories it sounded like some of his "friends" are valuing rocks more than people. I had been prospecting a private
claim for the last few weeks but did not have permission to take guests there
so I decided to go to a reliable area where at least small crystals could be
found. As I’ve said before when I take a guest I always hope we find something. Austin’s enthusiasm for rock hounding surpasses mine and I have been
spoiled as of late with easy finds of amazonite so I was not sure how long I
would last. We checked out an area where I’ve rock hounded before and found some
small crystals and a few plates of microcline and quartz. We got started and
were soon finding small quartz points and an occasional piece of white quartz.
Things were going slowly and I was thinking about trying another area when I
noted just a few feet away from where I was digging there were some larger
pieces of pegmatite with embedded minor quartz faces. As I broke open the area with my
pick axe by removing the sod from the surface I noted a small microcline group (see below).
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| Key to the pocket--where there is one crystal there is often more |
Between the quartz faces on pegmatite and this microcline specimen I decided to
slow down, put down my pick axe and take out my scratcher. Good thing I did because I soon was
hitting large shards of smoky quartz and then a stout 4” smoky rolled out of
the scree. Austin liked the
material I was digging out and said he had never found any fluorite and sure
would like to find a fluorite sometime. He no sooner spoke those words than a 1.5”
fluorite rolled out of the dirt.
I pulled out a few more smokys and then turned
the pocket over to Austin. I told him he could have the rest unless something
unusual popped up. Within a couple of minutes he found his first fluorite ever and a number of microcline crystals. I
prospected around a bit while Austin stuck with the pegmatite hoping for another
pocket. Soon time was up for the day and we navigated the 4-wheel drive roads as a herd of deer looked on guessing we weren't interested in them and were just a couple of crystal hunters. Here is a picture of what I took home. I took the best of my pocket while Austin got the bulk of the quartz crystals, along with several smoky quartz and microcline plates.
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| Microcline plate, 10cm Smoky quartz and Penetration twin fluorite |
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