Rock Hounding Roadtrip to Silverton CO #quartz #crystals #colorado

My friend Austin and I decided to go on a road trip and check out some new spots for crystals.

Road Trip!

Austin spent the previous year in college in Durango and made a few rock hounding contacts in the area and keeps in contact with some folks via social media. One of these contacts is a geologist who does a lot of prospecting. Austin and I were told of a site or two to dig some quartz crystals if we would meet Austin's geologist friend in Silverton. On our way to Silverton we stopped for the night in Creede. Austin is collecting silver from a number of different locales and wanted to make sure he got a few samples from the Bulldog and Commodore mines. Checking with a few locals we found both these mine's tailing piles were closed to prospecting so we went to an amethyst mine in Creede that I've talked about in an earlier post (Oct 4, 2014).  The miner and staff are fairly congenial but the opportunity to go through tailings at that site has been significantly curtailed by OSHA rules now that the area has been transformed into a tourist site. We were told we could only look for things along a trail through the tailings.

Sowbelly agate along the trail

If you left the trail you'd get yelled at (haha). You could take all the pieces you wanted for $2 a pound as long as they were within reaching distance of the trail (we brought our pick axes along for a longer reach). The material along the trail has been picked over quite a bit but we still found some nice pieces of "sowbelly" agate and some with specks of silver in the host agate. I looked primarily for smaller pieces I could cut with my 10" saw. Jack the owner of the mine has a couple miner's cabins to stay in and one of the cabins was available. The rain was starting up, and the price for the night was a customer determined donation for the preservation of the mining site, so we decided to give the cabin a try.

Miner's cabin

No running water, one light bulb and two beds. Austin drew the short straw as he always does when he's with me :-), so he got the bunk bed. After Austin checked the inside of the cabin with a blacklight (not so clean) and after seeing a few chipmunk leavings in a corner of the cabin we decided to lay out our sleeping bags on our beds anyway.  Still we had a dry roof over our heads, matresses under our bottoms and we were off the ground. We also had access to 3, yes 3 outhouses and a shower. One bit of confusion between us and the owner's daughter (Annie Oakly) was that we were told to be back on the property from town by 6PM. When another group arrived at 10PM I pondered the requirement for us to be onsite at 6PM. The site has a gate across the access road to the mine property but I don't believe the owners are allowed to lock the gate with visitors on site. We played a few card games like the miners did of old to pass the time as the sun went down and watched one of the workers toke the evening away. We donated $20 per person which the lady in charge seemed happy to receive, especially after the foursome who spent the night in a larger cabin donated $6.25 per person. We said goodbye to Jack thinking we'll probably not be back to rockhound there.  Jack does have a small museum, gift shop and mining tour so if you don't mind spending $15 for a half hour mining tour this might be up your alley but no serious rock hounding is permitted. I enjoyed exploring a very historical part of the mining history in Creede, CO  and Jack is an interesting guy. As we left Creede I noticed an antique store with a few rocks out front.

Silver ore sample complete with saw marks

We turned around and pulled off the road, ending up finding just what Austin wanted, inexpensive samples of local mine ore with silver. Most of the samples were a combinations of argentite deteriorating to acanthite. Some of the samples had silver in them and others even had a bit of wire silver most likely from the Bull Dog mine. Of course the samples with real silver in them were not cheap. Austin was happy to load up on specimens while I made small talk with the proprietor who told many fanciful tales of days gone by. Next stop was Silverton. We met up with a local geologist, a friend of Austin's, who showed us a site where we were told we would probably find some nice

Austin purchased this beauty
from the geologist

quartz crystals.  The geologist showed us a really nice sceptered quartz crystal that came from the site. This beautiful specimen helped sway both Austin and me to give this quartz site a try. We both worked on a quartz seam running just under the surface. Austin was first to hit a pocket and was soon pulling out small well defined quartz crystals. He finished up a small pocket and then started on another void just a foot away.  I had been working about 5 feet away on the front of a boulder and decided to try the back of this boulder.  Finally I found a fairly large void with many intact crystals.  The problem with this crystal pocket was that it was fairly difficult to extract the crystals from the pocket without damaging them.  Most of the crystals were in plates still attached to the granite. A pry bar and a 10 lb sledge hammer would have come in handy to break up the surrounding rock but we had forgotten to bring these tools.  I got a number of loose crystals out but the real prize were some crystal plates attached to very large rocks.  I had no way to easily get the plates off the host rock but after an hour I managed to get a fairly well-sized crystal plate off the sidewall but was giving up hope of getting more of the plates and some large crystals I spied about 2 feet down. Austin gave me a hand with the crack hammer I brought along and we worked together as best we could but the lack of heavier tools continued to hinder our work. While I held the chisel Austin pounded away with the crack hammer. After he managed to hit a couple of my fingers I decided he could hold the chisel for awhile while I tried to break through the granite or his fingers. I will say without Austin’s persistence and drive we probably wouldn’t have gotten as much out as we did.  We were trying to decide on whether to stay another day when the rains started again and began turning the site into a mud hole. We decided to call it quits knowing there were more crystals in the pocket we abandoned and probably more crystal pockets along the quartz formation. We thanked the geologist friend for the tip on this spot and mentioned that we both thought there were more crystals at this site.  After cleaning a few of the crystals when we got home Austin said he regretted leaving as did I but hopefully we can get back to this spot another time and try our luck again. The geologist offered to let us stay at his place next time and we may well take him up on his offer. The 6 hour trip home didn't seem too long as we were both anxious to clean our crystals and see what we found. Here are a couple of my better finds NFS.  See follow up trip on this blog for even better finds (10/28/2018).

Summer Solstice Crystal Pocket at Lake George CO

Work site shows rock walls with slight void between contrasting pegmatite walls

It’s been rather hot and dry lately and motivation to go out and dig crystals has ebbed some since the cooler spring weather has passed.  June is usually our warmest month with light winds, few clouds and scorching temperatures.  Colorado is very dry due to less than normal winter snows and higher than normal temperatures.  Snowpack on Pikes Peak which normally last into August was gone by mid June. Forest fires will be a big problem again this year until the summer monsoons raise humidity and moisture. Anytime it hits 80F in our digging areas up at Lake George, CO it seems very warm to me.  Maybe I’m just getting older and the heat is getting to me more quickly. I usually seek out shady spots to dig this time of year.
My digging partner Bob decided it was time for us to hit an area we had worked some before and found lots of pegmatites but very few well-formed crystals.  Bob mentioned we needed to find a pocket and call it the Summer Solstice pocket so that is what we did.  I returned to a spot I had dug before and Bob dug up the hill from me.  I had been finding pale colored amazonite but most were not euhedral crystals but partially encased in the pegmatite.  Every once in a while I could take a chunk of quartz with an embedded microcline in it and tap the quartz freeing the microcline. As I continued to dig along the pegmatite I noticed some nicer crystals in the dirt above the pegmatite and guessed there was another pegmatite shedding better formed amazonite crystals up the hill.  I began digging up the hill following the float amazonite crystals. As the crystals became more numerous I eventually dug into the pegmatite shedding the amazonite.  While I found a pocket with this pegmatite there were more amazonite crystals in the dirt below the pocket (float) than actually in the pocket.  I would say there were about 50 or 60 crystals but only a handful were undamaged and collectible.  I also found a few amazonite associated with goethite.

Goethite crystals were the real prize of this dig. 3" specimen

While these amazonite crystals were a bit better formed they were quite pale.  I continued digging along this new pegmatite and found a softer area between a quartz portion of the pegmatite and a predominately feldspar wall.  I continued to break up the quartz seam and dig out the softer feldspar.  As my hammer banged and pick axe clanged through the rock the site of sparks along with the smell of burned rock leads me to believe I will soon need a new rock hammer and pick axe tips. As I moved along the pegmatite I finally discovered another small pocket.  As I probed the pocket with a long handled screwdriver I began to unearth goethite along with amazonite.  This pocket, about 3 feet down, contained a little stronger colored amazonite (though still pale in my mind) along with numerous goethite sprays. There was more goethite than amazonite.  I also found one clear fluorite and one smoky quartz crystal.  I pulled out 25 pieces of goethite ranging from 1-3” across many with bow-tie like sprays of goethite needles.  I called my digging partner over and he got a kick out of watching me pull out goethite sprays.  I had nicknamed Bob the "Goethite King" last year and while I was nowhere near to assuming his title I did find enough goethite to fill a flat.  As I continued along the pegmatite a general void appeared between the vertical pegmatite on my left and a more quartzy pegmatite on my right.  It was at the intersection of these two formations that the goethite had settled/formed in along with some amazonite.  I would call most of this a seam of crystals as opposed to a pocket but whatever you want to call it, it was challenging to remove hundreds of pounds of rock and rewarding to get a few crystals out. Now if there is anyone out there who wants goethite at $200 a piece as seen on the internet--let me know. :-) It was fun and Mother Nature kept me employed pulling out crystals on her special day!  Happy Summer Solstice and looking forward to the Autumnal Equinox and some cooler weather!  Some results...

Cleaning some of the amazonite I found. Fairly pale
but collectible.  I clean the amazonite with Iron Out
   Goethite with detergent and agitator (aquarium bubbler)

Assembling a flat of goethite crystals/sprays

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