Rock Hounding Lake Geoge CO #Baveno #Amazonite #Goethite #Quartz #Pseudomorphs

I use the winter months to clean minerals and get ready to attend a few mineral shows. As I cleaned a number of crystals, I found some microscopic topaz on some pegmatite plates. I guess these plates may be collectible to a mineralogist, but are not really of interest to me as you almost need a microscope to see the topaz. 

Small topaz at base of fluorite

Still an oddity I suppose for Lake George.  I also met a geologist from another local rock club over the winter who has interest in odd things and so I showed him some small blue gemmy crystals on a plate of pegmatite. I found this specimen several years ago. The geologist got quite excited about these crystals.  He is going to write an article on this find after the specimen’s identity is determined using XRF technology. Most likely a phosphate mineral new to this locale is in the process of being discovered (see post 7/27/13: Fluorite and Pocket Minerals)

It’s been a slow start to the rock hounding season. First the late season cold and then some heavy wet snows.  Words like snow bombs, snowmageddon and Canada's revenge were bandied about to describe the spring storms. The biggest snow of the season came in mid May with 10 inches of very wet snow and a lot of damage to budding tree limbs.  One month later it still looks like a tornado went through some parts of my neighborhood. Some seasons we

10" of heavy snow in May damaged many trees

start rock hounding where we left off the previous year.  We closed last season with nothing much to go back to. So far this year we’ve been prospecting for a crystal “hot spot”.  Some days we come away with just float crystals from a long ago exploited mineral cavity, other days we manage to find a small pocket of crystals.  We’ve gotten out a few times and have had a couple minor scores but not much to blog about.  I’ve combined a few June rock hounding outings into this blog post.

Back to prospecting… so we revisited some old and new areas so far this year.  We hit one area that we had found a lot of goethite in the past and decided to give our luck another go in that area.  This spot is fairly remote and we were surprised that somebody redug out a number of the holes we had previously dug and filled.  We noted in each dig the high-graders never dug down far enough to hit the bottom of the old pocket, but just made a mess digging large holes that we had previously filled with junk tailings.  The claim is clearly marked and gated.  Folks who mineral trespass have been and are prosecuted. We dutifully filled their holes and remediated the sites once again.  I selected an area downhill of where my digging partner Bob had found some nice goethite. There was a large tree stump in the process of decay on the claim and I thought this might provide a backstop for goethite eroding down the hill.  I found a couple of amazonite crystals right at the base of the stump so I dug down and uphill from the stump.  

The goethite we had found before at this site was in strips of sand between feldspar and quartz.  I soon started hitting some goethite specimens near the bottom of a sandy area above some scree.  I found about 10 specimens near the stump before the dig played out. The goethite needles were somewhat worn (too be expected as they traveled down the hill), but large and intricate enough to get my attention.  I took home the specimens and cleaned them up.  I noted one goethite specimen had a lot of quartz on it which turned out to be onegite (quartz with goethite inclusions). A fairly nice find.
   The next trip out Austin and I went digging together.  It was cold and windy with a little ice mixed in along with a biting rain.  We outlasted the weather but wondered when summer would arrive.  I dug in another’s previously dug hole. I dug down all the way to the bottom of the pocket and found a few straggler smoky quartz crystals.  Another area seemed to be a rather new dig and it was quite shallow. The excavation looked like a two person dig with pits on both sides of some untouched ground in between. There was a bit of grass growing in the dig debris so I’m guessing someone dug there a year ago or so. I dropped my pick axe into the undisturbed area in between the digs and crystals rolled out of the side of the dig.  I think whoever dug there got to within an inch or two of this pocket.  A sure sign of a pocket is usually red clay/dirt and there was plenty of red dirt leaching out of the island between the two holes.  I got a few collectible crystals out of this pocket.  Most of the smoky quartz crystals had milky white overgrowth on the terminations which makes them somewhat different and more desirable to me.  I prospected another area where someone else had stopped digging bull quartz running up the hill.  I found a lot of quartz fragments and one crystal.  Austin found a couple microcline crystals in the same area. The icy rain began to fall in earnest and the wind kicked up, we decided we’d had enough for that day. I’ll have to return to this spot another time and continue prospecting it.

Trip 3&4.  I visited a site I hadn’t dug for nearly 2 years. The dig site was grown over with weeds.  I recalled I wanted to revisit this site as I had found some nice small amazonite crystals there a couple years ago.  I previously quit the dig as I had run out of pegmatite, but float crystals above my dig brought me back to this area.  I continued digging up the hill and went about 6 feet up the hill digging down about 2 feet as I went.  Suddenly the scree started to firm up into a weak pegmatite and I noted the color of the dirt was changing to a reddish color (good sign).  As I dug I hit a sheet of thin quartz nearly vertical in the ground. I pulled out the quartz and there were amazonite crystals imbedded in the back of the quartz.  I found a few single amazonite crystals here.  Unfortunately almost all the amazonite was frozen/encased in the quartz so that no plates were found.  As I dug out the quartz, it

ended about 4 feet below the surface.  At the bottom there were a couple tabular smoky quartz crystals but nothing really collectible.  This spot kept me busy for the day and I did get a few crystals out of it, but overall it was disappointing.  One particular crystal I felt compelled to show the claim owner.  When digging on somebody else’s claim (with permission) it’s generally agreed that if you find something good the claim owner has first right of refusal.  Well, I’m happy to say the claim owner told me I could keep the amazonite baveno pictured below, so I got a nice addition to add to my collection.

Amazonite Baveno Twin, found, cleaned, displayed

Trip 5. Mostly prospecting this day and it wasn’t til 2PM that I found something worth digging into. I decided to poke around a big burned out tree.  Almost immediately I found a 3 inch smoky quartz crystal near the base of the tree and decided to dig in up the hill from the find.  Within a couple minutes I was popping out well defined microcline crystals. As I dug down a bit I was rewarded with quartz crystals below the microcline.  As I dug I hit a fairly large root from the old burned out tree.  My digging partner Bob came a long and wondered how so many crystals could come out of such a small pocket.  It was a bit perplexing but it quickly dawned on me that the large root from the dead tree was taking up much of the space of the old pocket. 

Pocket material from trip 5

As I chopped out the root I found a few more crystals underneath with pseudomorphs of goethite or limonite after a carbonate.  You can read more about pseudomorphs in some of my other posts.  See Blog post: “Pseudomorph Sunday or a Return to Iron Hill”, dated 9/1/2017. 

Trip 6.  It was a fairly windy day, which stirred up quite a bit of dirt.  I went with Austin this day and once again did a lot of prospecting.  I found some nice specimens but no pockets.  Austin kept busy most of the day chasing a quartz seam with an occasional crystal tease.  It looked good but produced little. Of most interest to me were a couple large smoky quartz crystals, some ugly microcline crystals tending towards amazonite color and a few fluorite crystals.  The most promising area was where I found the fluorites at the end of the day. 

Some 1.5 inch fluorites (nice for L George)

I had dug in this area before and found goethite and some small smoky quartz crystals.  I often find fluorite and goethite together as they are both hydrothermally produced minerals.  I found 3 fluorites and one pretty intact goethite group. Thunder started rumbling and it was getting close to quitting time so I buried my dig intending to go back soon to see what’s up the hill from this promising spot.  I guess that will be trip 7 for June.

Looks like trip 7 will qualify for it's own post.  Went back and found so much goethite I can probably start an iron mine.  The smoky quartz crystals were fairly plentiful as well.