Three Rock Hounding Trips to Lake George, CO in October #Onegite #Goethite #Amazonite #Rockhounding #Rocky Mountains

Snow beginning to pile up on Pikes Peak

As another rock hounding season in the Colorado Rockies comes to a close, I wonder if I will be able to get out there again, or is this it for the season?  Mother Nature has been telling me no as of late, but you never can tell.   Bob, my digging partner, and I have gone out a couple times during the month of October and neither of us can recall stopping this early in the season due to cold and snow.  Last month we decided to go back to one of our more productive sites but we’ve dug it so much it’s hard to figure out where to go next.  I decided to work a gully which I usually avoid, thinking it is just a collecting area for broken float crystals.  When I saw a couple of nearly complete well-formed microcline crystals I decided to give it a go.  Visually sorting the wheat (crystals from a nearby undisturbed pegmatite) from the chaff (broken float crystals from a nearby dig) is a learned skill. To my surprise there was a pegmatite only inches below the surface.  The peg was shedding microcline.  While a pegmatite with microcline is not too exciting I was hoping for a concealed crystal pocket with something better.  

One of the larger crystals from this small pocket

As I dug a little deeper into the pegmatite the microcline turned bluish green (amazonite), but was still not producing well-formed crystals.  On I went following the blue sign and sure enough I did manage to hit a small pocket.  The size of these amazonite crystals wasn’t very big but at least the color was above average.  I continued in the old water run following the pegmatite and blue sign.  Soon quartz started becoming more prevalent and I started getting a little excited.  I shoved a fairly large rock aside and underneath were a number of quartz crystals--even a combination of amazonite and quartz.  Unfortunately the quartz was layered with iron/goethite and not very appealing. The size of the combos was also underwhelming, but at least it was something.  As I continued to dig 

Quartz with goethite overgrowth

up the hill I hit a very large amazonite crystal, nearly the size of my fist.  I got excited enough to call Bob over, but the curse of calling my digging partner Bob over to see what I had found manifested itself once again.  The peg ended and the crystals dried up.  We joke about this phenomenon, so much so that I rarely call Bob over unless I’m really into something good.  Oh well.  I took about 75 crystals home from this spot but I'll be surprised if 10% of them are worth keeping.  Too much damage and too much iron coating.  Quite often shallow digs, suffer more damage than the deeper larger pockets infused with protective clays.  The iron coating seems to be happening more often than not on this part of the hill we've been digging.

Next visit. I prospected an adjoining hill to our successes of last year and found some old digs, but not much sign on the surface.  Even the old digging piles seemed nearly devoid of quartz.  I decided to prospect a slight spine running up the hill where others had dug, and tried to stay out of the run-down material from previous diggers.  After digging a bit I found a fairly nice phantom crystal ( a smoky crystal hooded in clear quartz), but determined it had eroded out of a pocket already dug up the hill from me. I decided to hop over the previous digs

Phantom quartz with prospector's thumb

and continue along the spine guiding me up the hill. Without much quartz sign I decided to dig anyways.  It reminded me of my late mentor Ray B.  Ray said that in some places at Lake George, all you have to do is throw your pick up in the air and start digging where it lands.  Might as well give that method a try I guess nothing else was working.  It was near the end of the day and I had invested some time and energy into the dig I was working on so I continued despite it's lean offerings.  Bob stopped by, bemoaning his lack of success and checked what I was up to.  I felt a little embarrassed showing him what I was digging in but at least there were some small quartz crystals. Bob decided to dig up the hill from me.  Soon we were both finding some small quartz crystals.  At the end of the day we decided this area merited further prospecting.

Third attempt for the month.  The next outing, was over a week later due to poor weather and other complications.  We headed straight for our new area up at Lake George to do some prospecting.  I found the pegmatite I was working on the last trip, but it continued to only yield small float quartz crystals, similar to our last visit.  Bob found a pegmatite nearby, and started finding some more impressive specimens.  Unfortunately nearly 80% of what Bob was finding was badly damaged.  Still, he did find some very impressive goethite, onegite, and a couple double terminated quartz crystals. I think he even scored some small fluorites.  I continued to slog my way along my pegmatite finding only small iron/goethite coated crystals.  After a bit the small quartz crystals I was finding seemed more frequent on the right than on my left.  I followed the crystals on my right and was soon pulling out more productive looking pegmatite (larger grained rock).  I decided I needed to stretch my legs and walked over to where Bob was digging.  Bob had an impressive pile of broken quartz crystals and microcline.  He did show me a very nice 3" double terminated smoky and remarked that he was also finding some goethite and fluorite.  I guess there was some hydrothermal activity on this hill at some point in time, that helped bring about the goethite and fluorite specimens. I remarked that Bob was doing better than me this day and he certainly had some keepers.  

A keeper for sure!

A good day is when we both find something to take home.  A really good day is when we find something good enough to put in our display cabinets at home.  Bob was having a really good day.  I returned to my pegmatite which was about a foot below the surface.  As I dug I noted an occasional weathered chunk of goethite.  All the nice goethite needles and sprays were worn down but I figured at least it was something to follow up the hill.  As I proceeded along the pegmatite, a softer area began to develop in the middle of the pegmatite.  I no sooner noted the change than I was pulling out goethite sprays.  These sprays were well defined.  I determined that this must have been where the floater goethite chunks I had found earlier originated.  I pulled out about 8 fist sized or smaller chunks of goethite and noted some had quartz crystals embedded in the goethite as well as a few very small fluorites.  I wasn’t competing with Bob’s finds but at least I would not go home empty handed.  Bob checked out my progress and decided I should have one of his onegites with goethite sprays.  Onegite as a mineral has been discredited but we use the term locally to define quartz with goethite inclusions.  Onegite was first discovered and named in Onega, Russia only to be later discredited as a separate mineral. Thanks Bob!  Sympathy onegite.  I’ll take it!  :-)   

A nice grouping of goethite on quartz peppered with onegite crystals

It’s been a slow year for both of us though not without some fun.   I hope we can get back to this area a time or two before winter shuts us out completely.  Who knows what we will find next on this crazy hill.