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| Platte River north of Lake George Colorado |
I keep finding small pockets but not enough material to warrant writing
a post into my blog until now. I thought
my digging season for 2017 was over after the Lake George area got 4 inches of
snow last week but the weather warmed up and off I went. I actually found some of the pocket I'm blogging about before Thanksgiving Day, having found the pegmatite and a nice small
pocket with the pegmatite a week earlier.
I had named that small pocket “windy pocket” as the winds were blowing
near 45mph. That was the first time I’ve
been driven off the side of a hill digging smokys due to high winds. I think it
took me 2 days to get all the dirt out of my ears and sinuses. Some folks think
you can drive out to Lake George, dig a hole and gather up a bushel basket of
crystals in a few hours but it doesn’t normally work that way. This particular pocket was in an area I had
prospected and dug all summer. The mineral signs suggesting I dig in this particular spot were quite weak. We had dug a number of test holes in this
area but hadn’t found much. As the frost
had killed off the seasonal vegetation I noticed a couple pieces of fairly large grained
granite which I hoped suggested a nearby pegmatite and not just roll down from
up the hill. I decided to dig in and that’s how I found the “windy pocket” a week earlier. A friend of mine (Austin) was back from college and
wanted to dig crystals so I invited him out to the spot I had found the
previous week and mentioned I wanted to pick up where I left off with the windy pocket pegmatite. He was fine with that and I mentioned if I
found another pocket on the pegmatite he could have a few crystals. He asked if it was okay to dig a few feet to
my right and I mentioned it was as good a place as any. There was little frost in the ground and it
was nearly 50F when we got to my spot and the sun was warming up the area
quickly. The snow from the prior week had melted as I dug into my old
pocket and began to expand the dig up the hill.
Austin plunked down and broke through some ground and immediately
scored a plate of smokys. I told him
that might be the best thing we find that day not realizing how wrong I would
be. Austin found a few more float
crystals while I was finding quartz with faces but no gemmy crystals. I
continued to use my pick and shovel as I was moving up the hill. The rock and scree looked good with sizeable
quartz shards interspersed in the material but still only a couple small smoky
quartz fragments were observed. There
was a small bush in front of me and I decided that needed to go so I took a
pretty good whack at the base of the plant and bingo, quartz pieces
everywhere. I put my pick axe right
through the center of a small crystal plate… L Oh well I was pretty sure there was more
where that came from and hoisted out the small bush and found numerous small
crystals with a quartz vein heading down into the rock. My mentor Ray told me you’re not digging hard
enough if you don’t break a crystal or two from time to time.
My digging partner and I agree it’s okay to break the first crystal especially when prospecting for a crystal pocket but
after that care is needed to keep the crystals intact. I followed the quartz until it led me to a
sizeable root. The root had many more
crystals around it along with a few crystal plates. Austin started getting interested in my finds
and figured the pegmatite continued in a southeast direction right across the
line he was digging. While Austin dug up
the hill, I pulled out crystal after crystal after crystal. There was a bit of damage to many of the crystals as
they were so near the surface and many of them appeared to have odd
terminations suggesting a pocket rupture with some re-healing of crystal
terminations. The crystal pocket was
anywhere from inches to about 2 feet below the ground and nearly a foot wide
with a length of approximately 3 feet. The problem with near surface crystal
pockets is that all the protecting pocket mud has eroded away long ago so that annual frost
heaves can cause damage to the crystals. While I found this near-surface
lenticular pocket near Thanksgiving Day it was no turkey. I asked Austin to take a short video of how
work was progressing which he did. This
video is not staged in any way. (Sorry for the watermark and ad but this blog can only host videos of 100MB so I had to edit the video and shorten it to show it)
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| I picked this one out at the end of the video |
I was a
bit disappointed that there weren’t any secondary minerals on the plates like
fluorite, microcline or goethite with the quartz but many of the quartz
crystals are terminated at both ends so that is an attractive attribute. Some
of the crystals also have some limonite with them but for the most part I don’t
find that an enhancing feature. Some have suggested my digging technique is a
bit rough in the video but if there were amazonite in that pocket I’d still be digging it
;-) After digging up a number of
crystals Austin thought he should be given a turn in the pocket so I acquiesced
and let him have a go while I packed some material. Austin forgot to take any
packing material but fortunately he mentioned this at my house so we had some
extra newspaper to go around. I had no idea I would use nearly all of my
newspaper wrapping crystals! Austin
picked up where I left off and pulled out a few plates and some singles. I told him he could keep what he found unless
it was extraordinary.
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| Earlier in the video--this cluster displays rehealed terminations |
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| Austin checking out some crystals |
I had to make two trips back to the vehicle due to the
weight of the specimens and decided I certainly had a successful day. I pulled down the sides of the dig and was still
seeing some good crystal fragments up the slope so I may return if the weather
holds. Good weather, company, crystals--life is good! Two videos below show some of the crystals. I’ve posted a couple videos and will accompany them will some stills of the cleaned crystals. The first video of about 150 crystals shows the crystals taken through step 2 of the cleaning process (see below) the rest of the crystals are being sorted and going through their initial cleaning as depicted in the second video.
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| Box full of Thanksgiving Day Pocket Smokies Cleaned Up |
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| Smoky Hors D'ouvres |
The steps I take to clean crystals are as
follows (procedures vary based on cleaning required):
1 Carefully unpack crystals and soak for at least
24 hours in warm water with calgon or liquid soap
2 Scrub crystals with a toothbrush to
check for accessory minerals and possible fits
3 After any fitting is accomplished I soak in Iron
Out for 48-72 hours and re-scrub.
4 After Iron Out treatment (depending on minerals)
I heat in acid to remove additional/difficult iron staining.
5 Iron staining is usually removed after 48-72 hours in a warm 20% strength phosphoric acid bath
6 I usually then rinse and neutralize the
specimens for 48 hours changing the base solution 3-4 times, usually once after 15 minutes, 2 hours then again after 12 hours at a minimum
7 Some white residue often accumulates on the
specimens but this can often be cleaned by either using a needle gun(fabric cleaning gun) or pressure scrub with baking soda
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