July 2020 proved to be a very warm month. We were digging at Lake George near an 8500ft elevation with afternoon temperatures reaching 85F. This is uncommonly warm for July. Normally the summer monsoon kicks in with clouds forming by midday and temperature rarely exceeding the upper 70s. I've had one area I want to dig but its on the south side of a hill with no shade. I was able to remove some cap rock with the use of a crow bar and decided to just follow the underlying pegmatite til it hopefully led me to a crystal pocket or two. I managed to hit three small pockets. The first pocket was just some microcline. The second pocket was a little larger, maybe up to a foot in circumference but was loaded with primarily broken quartz and pale amazonite. The third pocket I found was due to prospecting amazonite float running down the hill directly above the pegmatite I was working. The float led me
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Partially cleaned clump of amazonite, fairly typical pale color
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up the hill to another 6 inch sized pocket and was composed of pale crystal amazonite. I found the float amazonite to be larger than the amazonite left in the pocket. None of the 3 pockets had any clay in them. Bob also found a pocket of quartz crystals near the end of the pegmatite I was working. The pocket had a lot of promise but Bob only got a few smokys due to the excessive damage to the near surface pocket. There was also a considerable amount of mica in Bob's pocket which we haven't seen so much in this particular area. I decided to leave that pegmatite alone until things cool off. Between very pale amazonite and digging in the sun all day I determined it wasn't worth the effort.
Meanwhile, my digging partner Bob found a rather large pegmatite on the west side of the same hill with some shade. Bob found two pockets on this pegmatite so I decided it was time to join his efforts on that side of the hill.
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Bob busy with his "Old Road" pocket
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There are a few old digs on the hill, but the pegmatite Bob found seems untouched. An old jeep road curls around the claim and we assume our predecessors used this road to help them get around while prospecting this part of the forest. I doubt this road has been used in over 20 years as its pretty much overgrown and was really at most a 2-track to begin with. Bob's crystal pockets were both on the north side of this road and the pocket I found was under the road. Guess what? Nearly all the crystals I found under the old road were fractured or broken... no surprise there. The pocket lay about 2 feet under the surface and was probably driven over for a few years. Still I got a few amazonite crystals and a couple smokys. Once again pocket clay was nearly nonexistent.
Bob's crystal pockets were in better shape and he actually had a few handfuls of mud/clay in his pocket. He noticed some claim jumper had recently scratched the surface in the area but had gone no deeper than 6-8 inches or so. Down a little over a foot he found a pegmatite rich with amazonite. Bob got a number of well-formed amazonite with a bit better color, maybe a 5 on a scale of 1-10.
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Bob's amazonite-- 5 out of 10 on color scale
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We decided to check out a few of the
older digs up the hill and were rewarded with a few missed crystals by the old-timers. The color of the amazonite up the hill was better than what we were finding. I don't mind putting in a little extra time on an old dig if I know some quality crystals were found. Next time out I noticed some fine colored amazonite chips on the side of a hill. It appeared there were some digs nearby, but not uphill from the chips in the dirt. I dug above the area and uphill finding nothing. I decided to try below the amazonite chips and hit a pegmatite. The pegmatite looked okay but no crystal faces. This particular pegmatite was almost running due east/west. Normally they run more northeast/southwest. Bob came along, found a spot that interested him and dug into the side of the hill. Instant crystals. Many of the crystals were attached to the granitic pegmatite. As he dug down he hit some quartz along with loose amazonite crystals. He hit loose shards of quartz and we were both sure he was about to hit a smoky quartz pocket. Nope. One well-formed smoky was all there was. Definitely a head scratcher. The amazonite crystals were of a paler color than what I was seeing up the hill. Still I continued my dig and followed the pegmatite. There was a slight void in the pegmatite between the feldspar containing amazonite and a layer of quartz below. Soon I too was pulling out less than eye catching amazonite crystals. Any time you pull crystals for a couple hours its always fun. You never know what's going to come out behind the next rock you pull out. Not much to take home but still a good time.
I gave up on the Old Road pocket area and the next time out I checked a spot that had better color chips of amazonite than the area we had been digging. Bob continued to dig in his Old Road pegmatite and continued to find sub-optimal amazonite crystals. My next dig never turned into anything more than a seam of partially formed amazonite. The example below was the best of the lot.
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Better color amazonite but very few crystals in my peg seam,
maybe 6 out of 10 on the amazonite color scale
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I gave up on the Old Road pegmatite area after we had worked it for nearly 8 days. I would say this crystal scored a 6 out of 10 on the blue/green amazonite scale 😁 I did some prospecting on our claim west of where Bob was working. A couple hundred yards away I found a promising area where a very fine small smoky quartz crystal floater promises more finds for my August post. The new area has been dug some, but Bob and I have learned through digging out old finds that there is a lot of truth in the statement that nobody finds everything. Stuff is always missed even by the old-timers. Bob says it's my turn to find something good, so stay tuned, much more fun to follow!
