2020 Rock Hounding Review for Lake George Colorado

   2020 was a very odd year for many of us, rock hounds included.  As the snow melted and ground began to thaw in March, we were given a COVID stay at home order from the governor.  We were not to leave the house for anything except essential activities like jobs and up to 10 miles for exercise.  I live about 50 miles from L George so the season got off to a very late start.  Sometime late April we got a change to safer at home mandate.  We decided we could set off for L George, but then a late season snow robbed us of another week of rock hounding.  Finally by mid May, with restrictions relaxed, the weather cooperated and off we went.  This post will include highlights of some of my better digs for 2020.  I think I found about a dozen pockets this year, with two being exceptional.  My digging partner Bob also had a good year and found many nice specimens.  We both ran into the mid summer doldrums as far as rocking hounding season went.  Weather was hot, dusty and dry and nice specimens became few and far between.  You can read more detail about my finds in other posts on this blog if you wish. 

In the fall of 2019 I found a very nice seam of amazonite which i hoped would pocket out. An early fall snow in 2019 prevented me from exploring this promising spot.  This would be my first target for 2020.  I spent 6 months waiting to get out there again.  Finally, on my first day out I returned to my previous spot and found a pocket of amazonite.  There was some smoky quartz and fluorite in this pocket as well.  The pocket was probably a little larger than a basketball and only about 2 feet deep into the ground.                                 

Measures 4x4cm  combo of fluorite and quartz
on amazonite with a few small specks of
 columbite

Fairly large amazonite measures 8x8cm

The amazonite depicted here was the prize of the pocket as far as I was concerned.  I didn't know it had fluorite on it until i got it home and washed it.  While the color is only average for amazonite, the added fluorite and small crystals of columbite really make this a unique piece.  The other amazonite was a little bit better color and the largest of the pocket measuring about 8x8 cm.  The other amazonite also has a number of small quartz crystals clinging to the faces of the amazonite crystal. The third fine specimen of this pocket is a light purple fluorite specimen with an attached amazonite crystal.  This fluorite was near the top of the pocket.  I had just started to take extra care extracting overburden from the pocket when this beauty popped up.  It is a close contender for best specimen of the pocket after the aforementioned combo.  I rarely see fluorites this large, with fine, crisp, sharp edges.  All 3 of these specimens are now in my collection.  Bob always says there is at least one good keeper in every pocket, well this pocket had a few nice ones.  There were also several twinned manebach crystals here too, but most were broken along the common plane. Pictured below is the purple fluorite, about 9 cm across.  The back of the piece has contact.

Maybe the best fluorite I've ever found at L George 9x6 cm

Once the specimens were extracted from the pocket the pegmatite quickly disappeared into common granite.  I spent a few more hours prospecting the area, but that appeared to be it.

The next major find was more of an area with several small pockets.  No pocket was bigger than a softball.  The smoky quartz crystals were exceptionally clear and gemmy.  There was also some amazonite present which while of better color than the previous find, was all very small.  Bob got the real prize from this area with a few exceptional smoky quartz/amazonite combos.  Below is pictured one of the larger quartz crystals I pulled from this decayed pegmatite area.  

  As you can see the dig is fairly shallow, maybe a foot in depth.  There were lots of crumbly pegmatite seams with small pockets scattered about.  Anytime you find crystals is a good time.  While these smokys were small, there were very gemmy and clean. Great for give-aways to kids, trade, or sell at rock shows. 

While digging the small decayed seams every once in a while I would find a float quartz chunk that just didn't belong with what I was finding.  Bob was watching me dig and I told him there might be something good up the hill.  I gave him a turn and he pulled out one of the nicest quartzes I have in my collection.  Eight inches long and fairly well terminated for being a float (see below). I continued digging up the hill and only found a few quartz shards before it all petered out.  I moved up the hill and found the mother pocket.  Unfortunately there was a lot of damage to the crystals. This pocket must have really popped under pressure which helps explain the float I found 40 feet down the hill.

20 cm 

 As Bob has told me several times, "in a fair sized pocket there is always one good crystal".  First were some nice amazonite crystals, very well formed.  I cleaned out the amazonite knowing I had to come back because of the quartzy nature of the side wall to the pocket. 

 

I guess this was a single pocket, but all the amazonite was on one side and the quartz appeared to be on the other side, or was it?  I dug further down and there were prizes.  Smoky quartz with amazonite.  To be honest there was only one complete combination.  The largest one pictured below has 3 repairs.  I have learned to be careful when extracting specimens to try and keep them all together through the initial cleaning process and try to fit some pieces.  

             

So you see me pictured above with a nice smoky following masked protocol :-)   I actually found the mask helped quite a bit with the dusty conditions. The image to the right is a combo, but it has a lot of scuffing.  The image below was the nicest but has a few repairs.

12 cm across with largest smoky at 7cm

This combo measures about 15cm across.  Unfortunately it has many nicks/dings.  After cleaning out this pocket we hit a dry spell for a while.  It is hard to give up on an area you've had so many successes.  Bob was the first to leave and tried another hilltop.  I made my way over to where he was digging and found a small pocket in a rather dug up area.  A tree had recently fallen over and on the root ball I noticed some amazonite.  Not a big pocket, but the nicest color amazonite I had seen so far this year.  Amazonite is pictured below to the right.

Fairly pristine example of amazonite

I eventually got to the hilltop Bob was digging, and there seemed to be amazonite everywhere.  Only problem is was pale, pale, pale.  I would give it a 3 on a scale of 10 for color.  Still it was fun to dig and Bob did find a seam with some better color pieces, maybe a 5 or 6 as I recall.  We spent a solid month digging there and called the area the old road pegmatite as a jeep track went right through the center of the best digging area.  I tired of this area first and decided to prospect the side of a hill where I had noticed some old digs.  I found some float quartz first and then noticed some amazonite.  It was obvious to me that it came from a dig about 20 feet up the hill, but I thought an old dead tree might have some specimens collected around its roots.  I dug around the roots and sure enough, it was a collecting point for crystals that had eroded out of the pocket... score!  I usually don't get too excited about digging float crystals but these were exceptionally gemmy, and many of them were spared of the trauma that you normally find on float crystals.

Some of the best gemmy float smokys I've ever found, most had some nice size over 12cm

A little scuffing on some of these, but a really nice haul that the previous digger missed.  It was mid July and this was my last significant find for 2020.  We hit a wall and just couldn't seem to come up with much.  We did have a fairly good goethite find in late fall, but our honey hole area seems to have dried up.  

Well defined goethite crystals with some size (10 cm)

We shall see what 2021 provides us.  Until then have a great winter and hope for sunnier days ahead!

August Rock Hounding at Lake George, Colorado

Found these smoky quartz float crystals about 10-20 ft down hill from an old dig

After last months digging on the "Old Road" pegmatite, I decided to do some prospecting.  I found an old dig that had some nice looking debris (amazonite chips and smoky quartz bits).  The dig looked old and I noticed a dead tree about 6 feet down hill from the dig.  I figured the tree was probably alive when the old dig occurred and there might be something salvageable mixed up in the dead tree roots.  Sure enough quartz was gathered around the tree and I got a couple crystals.  I decided to prospect about 10 feet further down the hill and found float quartz with faces there too. I then moved another 5 feet or so down the hill and started removing the top 8 inches or so of organic matter to find float quartz.  As I went up the hill I found a lot of float quartz pieces with a few complete smokys mixed in.  There were also a few float amazonite crystals in the soil from the dig up the hill. After checking the ground a few times at depth below the float. Seeing no pegmatite, I surmised that the float indeed had come from the dig up the hill. Below are some of the floater quartz crystals cleaned up.

I spent a few hours digging the float til I got near the dig and noted about 3 feet down hill from the dig the soil and chunks of pegmatite had been dug so I quit at that point. I thought about digging out the old dig, but it looked fairly large and it was another hot day. 

Next time I went out I found a few amazonite along the side of the dig, but no quartz. I decided to do

            A very fine golf ball size amazonite floater crystal               

more prospecting on the hill.  I found another very strong quartz pegmatite and dug out numerous chunks of quartz with faces, but there was almost no collectible crystals. It didn't help that Lake George was blanketed in smoke from the Pine Gulch and Grizzly Creek fires. I left 2 hours earlier than I normally would with a 1PM temperature of 87F... almost unheard of heat for Lake George. I tried this spot one more time but never found more than a couple small amazonite crystals wedged in the massive quartz. 

Went back to Lake George, CO to prospect another site. My digging partner Bob thought he was on to something as someone had dug into a fairly large pegmatite but there were only shallow digs. That was me... lol. I had been to the spot 4 or 5 years earlier and was concerned that I might be encroaching on somebody else's claim so I steered clear. Subsequent to that time we found the correct boundary lines and it was apparent we were safely on our claim. I had forgotten about that pegmatite and Bob rediscovered it. We soon both determined the pegmatite was primarily feldspar with little in the way of quartz. The amazonite was also very pale so we decided not to spend time on it. Maybe I can rediscover the peg in 5 more years. I left a little early that day despite finding a promising hillside. The heat combined with wildfire smoke made it intolerable. I have decided to take the last 2 weeks of August off until things improve. I usually rock hound 9 times a month or so but only 5 times this August. Too much heat and smoke! This last picture shows some of the pale amazonite crystals found near the large pegmatite we keep rediscovering. Haha.

Fairly large pieces but lack of color makes this a yard rock if I take it home... maybe leaverite.

I got no leads for September and there is snow in the forecast for 8 Sep... Incredible.  Hope i have something better to report on next month.

Rock Hounding at Lake George continues in July

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 

   Partially cleaned clump of amazonite, fairly typical pale color   

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. 

Bob busy with his "Old Road" pocket

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.

Bob's amazonite-- 5 out of 10 on color scale

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. 

    Better color amazonite but very few crystals in my peg seam,   
maybe 6 out of 10 on the amazonite color scale    

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!

June Diggings and the Potentilla Pocket in the Lake George Ring System of the Pikes Peak Batholith, Colorado #Crystals

                               Potentilla Bush near my new dig                  

I'm calling this the Potentilla Pocket because there was a potentilla bush nearby. Always go for alliteration when you can use it.😏  The previous year in June I discovered a pocket about 100ft down the hill, that I called the "Indian Paintbrush Pocket"  I'm hoping to name several more pockets on this hill after plants.

I discovered a pegmatite last year and found a couple of small pockets which contained both amazonite and smoky quartz crystals.  The pockets were small but the color of the amazonite and luster of the smoky quartz pushed me to spend more time there.  I had stopped digging this pegmatite as the quartz had pretty much disappeared and a large potentilla/cinquefoil bush stood in my way.  I didn't realize the cinquefoil was an invasive species or I would have torn it out and kept digging.  Well, I decided to start digging just up the hill and left of the bush and immediately hit the pegmatite I had been previously digging.  Hmmm, lots of quartz in the rock!  I immediately started lifting out pieces of pegmatite and was rewarded with a few shards of quartz, then a small crystal.  I decided to call Bob, my digging partner over.  Usually I wait til I find something before I call Bob, but I was pretty sure I had something. Soon tabby quartz crystals started to appear as I dug in a bit further. Then shards of sharp quartz.  Thin quartz shards are the best indicator I know of that you are coming into a pocket, that and clay or a change in the dirt's color.  I found a few tabbies and then noted a spot of blue/green color.  The light blue color indicating amazonite wasn't great, but I never turn up my nose at amazonite.  Time to down shift and put away the pick axe. Careful probing with my rock hammer and scratcher are needed as I slow down my excavating and take more care as I proceed. Continuing to dig down I noted a few more quartz crystals and a mound like structure of feldspar.

     Nice little cluster of amazonite with clay           

The mound of feldspar was shedding amazonite crystals all along it's right side. Bingo! While the crystals were not super blue/green nor very big, they were very sharp and somewhat elongated. The sharpness of the crystals and perpendicular growth from the matrix makes them desirable to me.  Bob was duly impressed as well. I loaded up my backpack at the end of the day and let Bob inspect the pocket while I packed up. 

Another cluster of amazonite after a soapy rinse

                Bob didn't find any more crystals but did mention I better check the wall of the pocket because there was a lot more of those shards of quartz spilling out on the uphill side of the dig.

There were a lot of "crumbly/shards" of quartz on the edge of the pocket I had dug out so that is where I would put my efforts next. We have been having trouble with claim jumpers on weekends so I determined to hit that pocket again before the weekend. 

             A lot of damaged smoky quartz :-(            

I arrived at the claim before Bob and within 10 minutes of digging the sidewall of my former pocket I opened up another crystal bearing cavity. I hit two more mounds at the bottom of this pocket and a seam running along the upper edge of the pocket.  The seam was an area of discontinuity between the country rock / granite above and the more mineralized quartz pegmatite below. This pocket seemed to be composed of nearly all quartz crystals.  Many of the quartz crystals were broken, but not all of them.  I found a few handfuls of smokies and some beat up
amazonite smoky combinations. I thought of what could have been here.  I spent 2 days on this second pocket or more likely an extension of the first pocket.  I carefully worked the pocket down and all around the perimeter. When you hit country rock less mineralized/more fine grained granite) you know you're done.  I always pull down a little of the sidewall (country rock) just to make sure there isn't anything hiding behind it. I had told my friend Austin that I would be at the claim and he should come on out. Austin found me at nearly days end.  He had found a few floater pieces, one large amazonite that really caught my eye, but he hadn't found the source. I decided after 6 hours of digging in the sun that I was ready to finish up. Austin volunteered to work the dig while I wrapped my prizes. Austin found a few small crystals for himself as I got ready to go. He also hit a number of pseudomorphs near the bottom of this pocket. Behind the pseudomorphs was a layer of sandy like material with a few more crystals that I found the next time out. This was a fairly good pocket but falls short of being called one of my top 10 pockets. Two things held this pocket back from being more notable. The extreme amount of damage gave me almost no chance for collectible combinations of smoky quartz and amazonite.  Many of the smokies were also rehealed, so fitting pieces together was impractical. If the pocket had less damage to it, it would have been superb.😁 The color of the amazonite was also more of a greyish green than blue/green.  I believe a void I discovered at the bottom of the pocket may be why there was no clay in the pocket.  The clay material for the most part just leached out of the bottom.  A lack of a cushion of clay within the pocket resulted in the extraordinary damage to the encased crystals. Still worth a hurrah! Anytime you find a pocket with a diameter over 2 feet I feel it is significant.

Day 3 at the pocket was spent double checking for any extension of the pegmatite to see if I could follow it any further up the hill.  I went another 5 feet up the hill, but no quartz and little in the way of any larger grained granite pieces. Time to remediate the hole. Where did Austin go?

First you put in the big rocks, then the medium rocks and then the dirt.  Mother Nature does the rest.

    Next couple trips out I did a lot of prospecting.  Anytime I see some old digs and amazonite chips scattered around I take a closer look.  This one day I saw just that. It looked like somebody knew what they were doing so I didn't give the spot much hope but thought I might scrape through the dig tailings to see what my predecessors had found.  As I searched around I noticed a fairly new fall of a burned out tree on the edge of an old pocket. Hmmm.  These digs looked really old and I'll bet that tree was green and standing when these holes were dug.  The area we are digging in was burned by the Hayman fire several years ago. 

           Large overturned tree with roots         
 

I checked out the overturned root of the tree and found some amazonite still clinging to the dried out root.  I guess I'll poke around here for a bit. Within inches of the topsoil I found well-formed amazonite. The amazonite was small but had a nice blue color to it.  I continued to dig out the quartz with amazonite and soon I happened upon a yellowish clay and found a small pocket.  The small pocket went down into the ground about 6 inches.  I found a few amazonite crystals along the periphery of the pocket. At the bottom of the pocket were a few smoky quartz shards. This dig wasn't very big but the quality was much better than the previous pocket I mentioned above. No quartz crystals were in the pocket, just mainly single amazonites. 

Picture courtesy Bob Germano

Pictured is the best of the lot.  

I continued to prospect this old dig area but found nothing else worth mentioning.  I may return here on a cooler day and check some more old digs another time.  That is pretty much it for June.  One large dig that took me 3 days to finish and one smaller dig I cleaned out in an afternoon.  The rest of the time was spent prospecting. Towards the end of June I found a well developed pegmatite hiding under some "rice rock" which will give me something to do in July.  I've pulled some of the rice rock / cap rock off the pegmatite and am finding some microcline crystals associated with a fairly strong quartz layer.

Hail on the west side of Pikes Peak from Lake George, Colorado

Rock Hounding the Rockies in May 2020

One of the big tents at the Tucson show.  Worked a couple deals and moved on to Mineral City

I managed to go to the Tucson Mineral Show again this year just prior to the known COVID-19 outbreak.  While at the Show a few folks including my wife told me to stay away from the Chinese dealers which I thought was a bit over-the-top at the time.  Many were worried about getting sick at the Show.  I managed to pick up something, I'll probably never know for sure what it was.  Several folks were sick at the Show and called it the Tucson crud. Anyway, I purchased a couple fluorites, some tourmaline and filled a couple orders for folks back in Colorado Springs while shopping in Tucson. 

By the time the snow melted in the mountains for me to get out rock hounding, we were under a "stay at home" order from our Governor.  Finally a new "safer at home" order by our Governor was declared near the end of April and rock hounding was on! I was eager to get started as I had a promising spot scoped out just as the 2019 season ended with a snowstorm.  I got to think about the potential for that 

Digging partner Bob trying to get out in April, but 

there was just too much snow to do much

spot most of the winter. Prior to departing for my first foray of the 2020 I spoke with my friend Austin who said he had been out a couple days earlier and found the roads passable.  He mentioned he had found a spot that somebody had been digging and it looked good, but was just mainly amazonite frozen in quartz. Yikes! After a couple questions I quickly surmised he had hit my spot. Good thing he was only able to spend an hour at my dig and didn't have enough time to find anything. I visited my dig up at Lake George, CO a couple days later and within just a few minutes I was finding amazonite. I decided to following the pegmatite in a southeasterly direction. I figured I would work this pegmatite a bit and see if the peg got any better.  Sure enough it did.  There was a lot of broken amazonite and a few smoky quartz crystals

Pale amazonite along with  fluorite

but no combinations.  Near the center of the pocket I did find a couple sizable amazonite crystals.  Many of the stones were also sprinkled with small clear quartz crystals.  While this pocket was not large I did get a couple specimens to add to my collection.  Two fluorite, and one large amazonite were even good enough to add to my display case. Got the monkey off my back early in 2020 by hitting a pocket and bringing home some fine specimens.

The following week I found 2 pockets of crystals. Both of these small pockets were found up hill from my previous find and equally rewarding.  Actually anytime I find a pocket of crystals, good or bad, it's a rewarding day.  Neither one of these two pockets had any crystal float leading to the pockets.  I had found crystals by digging along a well-mineralized  pegmatite and checking for discontinuities within and along the structure. I dug along the peg for about an hour or so and then found some pseudomorphs of limonite after a carbonate. We normally consider these to be goethite after siderite, but I lean towards calcite as the carbonate.  After removing the pseudomorphs I noted some looser material around that spot and decided to probe the looser material in the pegmatite.  The soft spot along the pegmatite looked worth persuing as there was a bit of yellow dirt behind the pseudomorphs. I decided to take the overhang of dirt off the top of the peg with my pick axe. One smack with my pick axe and little quartz shards rolled down into the base of the trench I was digging.  Well, time to put the pick axe away.  I carefully began to remove the over burden with my hands and sure enough a pocket

                 Got a nice keeper                

 of crystals began to show itself. I called Bob, my digging partner over--he always likes a little entertainment. There was little to no clay within this pocket and while the pocket was only about 6 inches from the surface there were no typical float crystals. There were several well formed smoky quartz crystals from this pocket and a few small amazonite crystals as well.  The amazonite crystals from this pocket were small but of better color than the previous pocket. My second pocket of the year also had a couple of small combination specimens of smoky quartz and amazonite.  My favorite find of this pocket was a manebach twinned amazonite crystal.  It was cleaved along the twinning plane,

Manebach twin

but nothing a little glue couldn't fix. The smokys were dark, gemmy and well-formed though a bit on the small side.  The smoky quartz crystals varied in habit from chisel point, drill bit and multiple terminated crystals.  A couple of doubly terminated (DT) crystals were also collected. Some of the  smoky quartz crystals also had prominent additional faces above the m-face indicating they are right turning crystals  http://quartzpage.de/crs_intro.html

Fresh out of the ground, Bob's Pocket! Mud in this pocket was extremely sticky

The next pocket of crystals I found #3 was only 5 feet up the hill from the previous pocket. This was another shallow pocket and probably would more aptly be called a seam.  Nearly all the crystals I found were damaged. Most likely due to the fact that it was shallow.  While none of the crystals I found here were exceptional, there were a few unique pieces that will make it into storage at home.

Next time out I searched an area surrounded by digs. The area didn't have any surface rocks that suggested underlying pegmatites. Since there were many digs in the area I decided to pull a few tufts of grass out and see what lay underneath.  Peeled back some sod and sure enough scatter quartz shards underneath.  The Pegmatites run in a near north/south direction on this hill, so I decided to dig a small trench east/west along the hill and see if I could intercept a pegmatite. No pegmatite, but the quartz shards kept getting bigger and better defined. I knew this was probably coming from somewhere up the hill, but where?  I expanded the width of my shallow trench and tried to follow the most dense area of quartz float.  After a couple hours Bob came by and offered some advice.  I decided it was time to take a

Large etched float quartz crystal

water break and stretch my legs and let Bob dig in the shallow trench.  One minute later Bob pulled out a complete 8" smoky.  He kept saying your not going to believe what I just found.  I said oh fudge frickity frack and told him to find some more. Well, no more could be found.  The quartz float immediately dried up. I dug up down and all around and that was it... ridiculous! I theorize the quartz may have been from a long ago eroded pocket up the hill. Well, I returned to my previous plan and continued to dig up the hill. Finally I hit a pegmatite.  The rock wasn't great but about 2 feet down I did start to find some quartz. I veered right or south along the peg and began digging it out. Quartz kept getting better but no crystals! Finally some small amazonite were observed along with some quartz shards... oh well, gotta keep on this.  After another hour of carefully removing the pegmatite I found a loose spot, some mud, and a few small crystals. I returned to the spot of the big quartz crystal a couple of times but never found the source of the smoky beast.  I did get a doubly terminated smoky quartz and some crystal points from this area but no big pocket.

Doubly Terminated Smoky ready for a cleanup

In the meantime I guess Bob got tired of me finding crystals and decided it was time for him to find a pocket too. He found the best pocket of the season scoring a number of microcline smoky combos.  Can't wait to see how these clean up. See pic above (Bob's Pocket)

Next time out I went with my young friend Austin. His schooling got delayed due to the virus and so he has some time to dig crystals. He is learning the digging ropes quickly and is coming into his own as a prospector.  He was into a small pocket of crystals before I even got to the dig site. Austin found fluorite and some smokys.  There was sign of amazonite, but no complete collectible crystals. I spent the day prospecting and was only able to come up with one float smoky crystal, the rest of my finds were too small to take home.  We tried a different area later in the day but this area appears to have been fairly worked over in the past.

This finished off the month of May 2020. A fairly busy month with many small, but nice finds.  June looks to be a promising month as well with a large pocket ready for harvest... stay tuned!

2019 Collecting Ends On A High Note At Lake George

Big Horn Sheep off the mountains in Colorado Springs looking to bulk up before winter

I wrote most of this up some months ago and delayed posting it hoping for some new information to share, but my patience has eroded away and this is what I got for the end of 2019.  I made it in and out to our claim at Lake George but not without a couple white knuckle driving moments on this trip due to mud and ice. The following week temperatures are forecast to drop to zero Fahrenheit with several inches of snow forecast.  This would be one of the earliest endings to my field collecting season ever (early Oct!)  We shall see. I would say overall this season has been a little slow collecting-wise. I went to a few places I had never been before and had some great experiences. I went to my first Tucson show ever; found fluorite at the famous Bingham mine; got some calcite epimorphs from the Crystal Cavern near Ouray; purchased my first Sweet Home Mine rhodochrosite; and got a couple nice pockets of crystals from L George, Colorado.  See previous posts.

My last visit to my favorite collecting area this year was successful. The Lake George intrusive area of the Pikes Peak Batholith is my favorite place to collect. I had found some float below a large area that had been remediated some time ago on our claim. I figured most of the float I was finding was just pieces pushed down the hill by erosion and a bulldozer from someone’s remediation effort long ago. Bob and I loaded up the truck and hit our area one more time before the onset of winter.

Nice float a few inches under the topsoil kept me going

Normally I wouldn’t dig an area like this, but some nearly intact showy specimens just below the surface kept me going. I also noted a few smoky quartz shards in the ground and hoped for the best. As I dug, I finally found an intact pegmatite, so I knew this spot had not been dug.  I guess the area was just covered by roll down from years ago I supposed. Pulling out chunks of pegmatite I found some crystal faces with fairly good amazonite color as well as some quartz. I was not finding any really good pieces but a couple larger chunks of rock with numerous crystal faces on them got my attention. I pulled the pieces and wrapped them for further inspection and cleaning at home.  I dug up down and all around as my mentor taught me to.  You never know when something might have gotten separated from the main pegmatite. To my dismay, despite the nice formation there just wasn't much in the way of collectible crystals. I continued scratching around the area but didn't even find any more float up the hill, and was satisfied that I found the original occurrence.

Overall color is good and I may be able to fit a few pieces, but it was disappointing due to all the damage

My digging partner Bob also seemed to be onto something as well.  He had been digging quartz shards for most of the day with only an occasional crystal face but the spot he was digging looked good. Persistence once again paid off for Bob. He mentioned he checked down, up the hill, and to the right and found only quartz.  Finally he dug to the right a bit more and found a pocket of crystals. Bob hit some fairly large goethite chunks and then some smokys. 

Note fingers to right for size, I think it was about 18 inches.  The fish
and game warden said this was big enough to keep, so Bob took it home.

The smoky crystal with goethite wrapped around is fairly impressive. Near the bottom of the pocket were some pale amazonite crystals.  Though small and pale in color, I believe Bob got a couple combination pieces of amazonite/microcline with secondary minerals. Bob invited me over to his dig and said I could have any of the microcline plates I wanted.  I took a few after noting that some of the plates had mannebach twins and small fluorite.  Bob always shares.

Xenotime Y(PO₄)

After I got these specimens home I cleaned them up and found a fairly odd secondary mineral with the microcline plates.  Very small yellow dipyramidal crystals lay on top of some of the microcline.  After consultation with a few other seasoned collectors it was determined that these small yellow crystals are Xenotime ( with rare earth Yttrium). I mentioned this to Bob and I think he went back to the site to pick up the rest of the pale amazonite plates to check for Xenotime. It was a very nice way to end the season with both of us finding some collectible crystals. Winter is coming with a forecast deep freeze in a couple of days.  Next stop the Tucson Show!