Iron Hill at Lake George CO

Iron iron everywhere, pseudomorphs, goethite, onegite and amorphous blobs of iron on crystals.  We’ve prospected a hill from time to time with little in the way of quality crystals.  I have a fondness for the odd stuff so I went back to the iron hill and Bob worked a separate spine on the same hill.  I would say Bob had a better find than mine, but I certainly had some fun as well!  I set down to dig and Bob did likewise within 100 yards of each other.  I looked at some of our previous digs on the hill which seemed to follow a pegmatite. We had given up a little on this area because the only thing we’ve found has been primarily goethite, microcline and poorly formed smoky quartz crystals.  I decided to dig up the hill between two of our previous digs, along what I perceived to be a pegmatite running under the ground and try my luck.  I looked for crystals shards or smoky quartz pieces on the surface and was rewarded with a float onegite (quartz infused with goethite).  Finding onegite was not surprising considering the amount of iron and quartz on the hill, but to find a large example with good terminations floating on the surface was an unexpected bonus.  

Smoky with onegite sidecars

I decided that was as good a spot as any to dig and soon hit gray quartz bubbling out of the pegmatite. I dug out the quartz and only found a couple small smokies, but as I went below the quartz I ran into some pseudomorphs.  We’ll call these pseudomorphs goethite after carbonates (possibly calcite or siderite or something else entirely). I usually pitch these down the hill, but I saved them this time as they were fairly well-formed and some geologist somewhere might want themJ.

 4" pseudomorph... lot of brown here

I also found teensy little amazonite crystals with good color, but hardly collectible. This small pocket ended abruptly but I decided to continue on up the hill hoping for something better.  I heard something up the hill and wondered now what?  Bob usually calls me on the radio when he finds something but I guess this time he wanted to surprise me.  Bob had found a fairly large amazonite pocket with a few nice amazonite groupings.  The intact groupings were very nice and the color seemed good.  Bob invited me over to take a look at his dig and help a bit.  I was bored with my small, meager pocket and followed him over to his dig.  I spent perhaps half an hour with Bob pulling out amazonite crystals. Some of the crystals were better than others both form and color-wise.  The intact amazonite in the plates seemed the best.  As Bob was digging he also pulled out some fairly delicate goethite sprays.  We both have a lot of these sprays but not many that are as fragile as what he was finding.  Bob generously gave me a nice one.  After helping Bob clean out the pocket, I decided I better get back to work as I had a tree to move if I were going to continue my diggings up the hill.  I decided to first scrape out the scree under the fallen tree as I was finding a few smoky shards, before moving the tree.  Out popped a rather tremendous smoky quartz plate floater.  The plate has 4 different crystals with the largest being about 5 inches. 

 I also noted some amorphous iron blobs coating areas on the plate. One entire crystal is entirely coated by iron.  I guess that’s one way to protect float crystals as they journey down the hill. After digging under the tree I moved it and found more float crystals along some rock to my right.  I believe the tree and rocks acted as a catch basin for these crystals.  If the pocket still exists up the hill it could be quite interesting. I went back to where Bob was digging and showed off my smoky plate and he decided he would check out my site.  We dug together for about an hour and found a few more float crystals but nothing as nice as the plate under the fallen tree, there was another iron coated smoky, some double terminated crystals as well as a few multi-terminated small crystals.  I’m sure there are more goodies on that hill and hopefully a pocket still in front of me.  It was nearing 3PM and we had a bit of a walk back to the truck so Bob went back to his amazonite dig and loaded up, while I packed my crystals and leveled off my dig. I shall return!

Day 2: I did return and found some nice specimens, but not anything like the large iron globbed on quartz crystals of the day before.  I had found my specimens on day 1 near the end of the day and had dug rather rapidly across the pegmatite, getting what I could before the end of the day. Day 2 I retraced my digging a bit and dug down into the peg.  There were a few soft spots in the quartzy peg and I was rewarded with crystals of smokys and some amazonite. The smokys were on the small side most being less than 2" and the amazonite were also small and of only average color.  Still when found together the amazonite/smoky combos can make for a nice display. I've picture a few of these day 2 finds below, hand washed for your viewing pleasure.

Some of Day 2 finds... hand washed a bit and ready for more aggressive cleaning

Cleaned up a bit, this pocket has numerous smoky phantoms with some amazonite combos!

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Prospecting the Pikes Peak Batholith

My digging partner Bob and I returned to an area we had not dug in 4 or 5 years.  I was a bit surprised at how quickly nature had reclaimed our old digs.  We normally don’t dig more than 2-3 feet down and then collapse the walls around the dig when finished, it was much more difficult to find the old spots than I would have guessed. Many old burned out trees had also fallen down since we had last been there also better disguising the terrain. I searched for an old favorite area for a while but finally gave up and decided I better just go ahead and do some prospecting.  I figured I was close to the area and put my nose to the ground looking for quartz.  I found a few pieces of white quartz on the surface of the ground which heightened my prospecting senses and I started looking real closely at the ground.  Within a few minutes I was rewarded with a very gemmy double terminated 3” smoky quartz crystal. I began digging up the hill with my pick axe hoping for more and I was rewarded with chunks of pegmatite that suggested something better up the hill.

3" Exceptionally gemmy crystal

I reached the source of the pegmatite and began digging down through the soil along the peg.  I was about 1 foot down in soil along the pegmatite when I began hitting scree mixed with quartz shards. An area of greyish white clay got my attention as the quartz shards appeared to be concentrated in this area.  Soon the quartz shards got bigger and I pulled out a few small quartz crystals.  The quartz crystals were all small and had broken off their host matrix. I found one fairly etched microcline and assumed their must also be fluorite in the area as well.  Volatile liquids in a miarolitic cavity will often etch microcline if they contain fluorine prior to the liquids cooling and fluorites forming. Sure enough a few minutes later I found a larger chunky fluorite.  I probably would have tossed it as junk if I hadn’t noticed the etched microcline and kept my eye out for possible fluorites. The fluorites I found were not well formed, etched and near the top of the pegmatite (junk). Pocket #1.  The pegmatite was running across the hill in an east to west orientation. I worked the pegmatite to the east as there was more quartz associated with the peg in that direction. About 2 feet down along the pegmatite the scree began to turn a more yellowish color and once again I hit a small pocket of crystals.  After working about half an hour and not finding much I decided to use my pick axe to take out some of the pegmatite. I pulled down just one chunk of pegmatite and smoky quartz crystals tumbled out from above the 2nd pocket of the day.

Pockets #1 and #2 with #1 rinsed off a bit

Another fluorite came out near the surface and the pegmatite continued to run. I reasoned there was obviously another pocket in the pegmatite so I carefully picked the peg apart with a bent screwdriver. Soon crystals were tumbling out of the topsoil and above the peg as the clay within the peg took on a dark reddish color. Pocket #3!  This pegmatite seemed to be winding down and I could hear Bob’s pick axe clinking in the distance but I couldn’t see him. We usually rockhound til 3PM or so, but this day the thunderstorms had popped up early and the sky was beginning to darken with a lot of lightning crackling to our southwest.  I called my digging partner on our radios and mentioned I would be packing up and heading back to the truck due to the threatening weather. I had also used up a lot of my drinking water cleaning up the fluorites I had

Pocket #3 (Biggest crystal at top is broken of course)

found only to learn they were pretty crappy. We met back at the truck about 20 minutes later just as the skies began to open up. Bob showed me a 12” smoky he had found which put my meager finds to shame but we both had a good time digging crystals before Mother Nature shut us down.

Day 2 we went back to the aforementioned area and worked Bob’s pocket. The pocket was very elongated and was about 3 feet down.  The overlaying pegmatite was quite strong but once through the quartz layer we hit shards of quartz crystals with an occasional euhedral keeper and very intermittent amazonite.  The quartz crystals had size but may not be very gemmy. 

Note amazonite cleaned a bit in lower right

The amazonite crystals were of good color and it sure would have been nice to dig out a few more of those or some combos but Bob and I always have a good time when we dig a pocket together. We kept carefully digging out what appeared to be large smokies in the pocket only to be fooled by 3 or 4 sided shards or blunted terminations. Bob did get a couple 5” crystals so that alone made the dig worth it. The amazonite seemed odd in that it was not in a pocket, but just seemed to have been occasionally formed from the ceiling of the pocket.  There were a few well-formed amazonites, but no groupings.  We finished up this pocket and suspect there may be more pockets in the area but only time and some prospecting will tell  

Looks done to me..... NEXT!

A couple more pics of the crystals.

Looks like the butt of a big one!

Well formed 5" Smoky Quartz

This is an ugly fellow, I'd say close to a 13" smoky. I think much of the secondary quartz will flake off with some abrasive cleaning. Not a museum piece though :-(

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Falling under the Smoky Hawk Spell?

Smoky Hawk and adjoining claims

I have a long relationship with Joe Dorris the owner of the Smoky Hawk claim near Lake George, CO of Prospectors show fame.  Occasionally I will do some small favors for him in order for us to prospect his claims a bit. Joe has a rule to be aware of when digging on his claims that any pocket with combinations of amazonite and smokies you find you must let him see the material. Sometimes he takes the pieces and sometimes he doesn’t depending on the quality of the specimens. From Joe’s business website Pinnacle5: “if you find a combination amazonite and smoky quartz pocket, Joe will retain the pocket (Otherwise, most other pockets you will be allowed to collect and keep.) Joe will attempt to clean the pocket as quickly as possible and give the finder(s) a piece or pieces. Generally, he will return the lesser pieces to the finder(s) as well. If exceptional, and the finder wants, he or she will have first right of refusal on pieces when they become offered for sale” So why do we do it??? For the thrill of the discovery and Joe is very generous with the way he distributes our finds. So I think you know how this story will unfold. hahaha  

I had talked to Joe recently and he was concerned about some high-graders (claim jumpers) hitting his Smoky Hawk and adjacent High Point claims and digging large pits without permission. Another friend of Joe had spotted this problem and reported it. Joe wanted these pits examined and harvested of any remaining crystals before the claim jumpers returned. This is where David and I came into the picture. David was the one who had noticed the large scale diggings and found some topaz (1^st ever on the Smoky Hawk) with good amazonite crystals flung out of a large pit. I arrived at the Smoky Hawk to discuss a couple of issues with Joe but when he asked me if I could help dig out the claim jumped pits with David it sounded like fun to me so I followed David to the pit which he had already mucked out and was starting to look for crystals. I started looking in the claim jumpers tailings and found some keeper specimens while David hunted in the pit for topaz. David found more topaz associated with lots of mica (zinnwaldite) and suggested I join in the fun. Soon I had pulled out a few small topaz and began checking out the rest of the dig.  

A large boulder loomed over the left side of the dig but the right side looked fairly safe to work and had some interesting pegmatite structure.

Large boulder overhead is pretty solid

I pulled away at some of the rock and found the claim jumpers missed quite a bit. Amazonites and smoky quartz were lining the inside of a pocket and a ceiling plate was exposed while the pocket floor was littered with crystal shards. While David gave me credit for finding this new pocket I’m sure given a little more time he would have broken into it as well. With the pocket opening up to the right we quit looking for the small topaz and concentrated on the trophy crystals in front of us. Soon we were pulling out 3 inch amazonites and well terminated smokies--the fun was just beginning. Due to the size of the opening we tag teamed and worked a half hour on and then took a break to wrap or muck out some of the tailing or just take a water break. By noon it became obvious to me that Joe would want to see this stuff so David grabbed a few of the largest amazonite crystals and off we went in search of Joe who was hosting a field trip. Tim, Joe’s son, decided the pieces were good enough to spend some time fitting together. Tim is well known for his ability to fit gem pieces together and find sheared off pieces which can complete a world-class specimen. Yup Joe wanted everything—figured he would after seeing the size and color of the gems. Knowing we wouldn’t take much home from this pocket we still pressed on excited by the hunt. After taking out a few 250lb boulders looming over our heads we resumed digging. Since Tim was going to try and fit things together we spent a little more time wrapping specimens found near each other. Soon after I found a couple whopper amazonites with cleavelandite at their bases I tagged in David who went to work carving out a ceiling plate from the hole. 

David took his time and with care and perseverance pulled out a world-class combination ceiling plate with a central smoky (3 inches) and a base surrounded by cleavelandite and amazonite. We also scooped up many of the shards and small crystals lying beneath the plate so that Tim could do his fitting as necessary. At the end of the day we showed and gave Joe this plate and I suggested it was probably worth upwards of $15K and he didn’t say no. Thunder was rumbling nearby and it was nearly 4PM so we called it a day and both of us decided to return the next day to finish up the dig. I would say we took out well over 200 crystals the first day with many more in sight. I suggested to Tim there could be just as much still in the pocket as what we had already recovered. Impressive!  

Day 2: I arrived the second day just beating a 20 car caravan of field trippers headed in to visit the Smoky Hawk claim. Evidently the Littleton Rock Club had made arrangements to visit the Smoky Hawk. Joe is very generous with groups and gives everyone an explanation of the claim, its geology, a safety talk and opportunities to hunt for crystals.  David and I beat the hoard of crystal hunters in and I believe Joe asked his visitors to stay away from our area as we saw nobody until we were done for the day. Day 2 was very similar to the first day, we expanded the dig and ran into very similar material to what we found the first day. I think some of the single amazonite crystals were even bigger the second day than the first. We didn’t find any killer plates this day, but the quality and size of the crystals were comparable to day 1.  On day 2 we found larger smokies and amazonites than day 1 as we slowly advanced the dig westward down into the hill.  I was somewhat exhausted from the day before and finally called it quits around 2PM. David was still finding a few collectible crystals but the overburden needed to be removed in order to carefully collect anything remaining. Another chamber may still be there but at least two cubic yards of overburden will have to be removed first. We brought another 200 crystals down the hill and met some Littleton field trip participants. Some of the folks were interested to see what we were finding but nobody seemed interesting enough in helping lug the crystals to Joe's truck J.  One gentlemen from the field trip showed me a very fine penetrating twin purple fluorite he dug up, he recognized me from this blog and complimented me on my posts. Thanks for your interest sir!  I gave Joe a couple more topaz I had found in the pocket along with another 200 

crystals or so from our days work. Quite a find. Joe invited David and I to watch while Tim ran his track hoe on the claim where he had a few field trippers looking for gems. After wrapping a few crystals for Joe I decided I had enough and left for home. Two days at near 9000ft digging out scree and moving 250+lb boulders is more work than I’m used to. This was probably one of the best digs I’ve ever participated in. Thanks to Joe and a big thanks to David for his initial discovery and graciously partnering with me in working this world-class pocket! 

Here are some field cleaned crystals ready for Joe and Tim to do their thing, not sure when or if I'll ever see them again, but I got to pull them out of the ground and made first discovery!

It appears many of the amazonites are etched due to the volatile fluids in the pocket that created the topaz                    

Here's the way Joe and Tim do it... beats the heck out of a pick axe and shovel .

Phytosaur's Tooth in WY

Phytosaur (ancient crocodile)  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

While in Wyoming (see previous post) we took up our host’s (Al) generous offer to hunt over his 160 acers for dinosaur bones. There was a recent university find on his neighbor’s property of a phytosaur skull along with some teeth. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/phytosaurs-mostly-gharial-snouted-reptiles-of-the-triassic-part-i/  Also some other bones were found on our host’s property. Al, knowing we wanted to find something interesting, contacted his neighbor and got us permission to look in the area where the phytosaur skull was found.  We no sooner got to the area when Al found a piece of a tooth and I found an entire phytosaur tooth that had weathered out of the cliff-side. I was sure I had a dinosaur tooth. Well no sooner did I mention this to a geologist friend of mine than he informed me what I had was an ancient crocodile tooth and not a dinosaur fossilized tooth.  Hmmm time to do some research.

 "Nowhere was the line dividing "dinosaurs" and "non-dinosaurs" more tenuous than during the middle to late Triassic period, when various populations of archosaurs had just started to branch off into dinosaurs, pterosaurs and crocodiles.” See: https://www.thoughtco.com/definition-of-a-dinosaur-1091930   So of course Mike the geologist was right but I can cover everything by saying broadly that it is an archosaur tooth…. Sounds much better than ancient crocodile don’t you think or maybe just leave it as a phytosaur tooth? Okay then, the old croc tooth was found in almost the exact spot where the university dug out the skull. Al told us to continue looking in the purple dirt/clay which we did until Austin found a couple tooth pieces. A hamburger and brat cookout was promised and Al was sending up smoke signals so I headed back.  After dinner Austin and I climbed another cliff where small dinosaur tracks (yes dino tracks) were found by the university folks and some bones. Austin found some small bones which when licked stuck to his tongue. If my memory serves me right the bones of dinosaurs are/were very porous and tend to stick like Velcro to wet surfaces. We were looking near a greenish brown layer of clayish dirt in a different cliff which may have been an extinction boundary theorized to have been the geological signature of a large extinction event https://www.britannica.com/science/K-T-extinction, so I’m thinking we were in the right spot especially since Austin found some possible dino fossilized bones. Austin also found a number of small dog tooth calcite specimens near the top of the cliff. An overhanging crumbling rock cliff worried me some and since the sun was going down and I had turned down Al’s offer to take his handgun along to shoot rattlers I decided it was time for us to leave while we could still sidestep any rattlesnakes, scorpions or phytosaurs lurking about.