A Royal Scepter at Peterson Mtn

 

On Peterson Mountain, NV, near Hallelujah Junction (all good pics courtesy of Austin)

I've been wanting to do some digging on Peterson Mountain for 10 years.  Despite the fee, I got an offer I couldn't refuse.  Austin Cockell invited me to come with him and do some digging at one of the pay-to-dig claims.  We visited the Royal Scepter mine and both thoroughly enjoyed the trip. Austin had been to the site the previous year and so we had no trouble finding our way up the mountain.  We camped near the top and enjoyed some panoramic views. The mountain is notorious for its well known winds and Mt Peterson didn't disappoint. Fortunately the winds died down the first night and we were able to get some shut-eye. Since all of our digging was in a pit, the winds were only moderately inconvenient as they blew over the top of us. You may see some pebbles flying across your field of view in some of the videos. The main collecting mineral for this site is quartz.  The number of separate molten silica infusions into the mountain cracks provides a multitude of various types/habits of quartz. The main draw to Peterson Mountain are the fabulous sceptered quartz crystals. 

The stewards of the mine supplied us with the essentials to find crystals.  The whole process was made exceptionally easy with track hoes scrapping the pit and front-end loaders hauling away the debris.  An electric vibrating chisel was also very handy for breaking down the edges of pockets.  Wrapping paper boxes and other tools were also provided to carefully secure/protect our finds and transport them to our vehicles at the end of the day.  The miners used the heavy equipment to break down rock in the claim area into three different steps or benches.  Both sides and bottoms of the dig area were well scrapped so we could see quartz outcrops and follow the seams to crystal pockets. I explored 4 pockets with minor successes and then I hit a nicer pocket in the wall of the lowest level of the claim

Paul checking out my pocket

Even Paul Geffner, one of the mine owners, was interested.  I pulled out a few pencil quartz crystals out of this pocket as well as some candlestick crystals. While I didn't really want anyone's help, I understood Paul didn't know of my experiences. I gratefully gave way, allowing him access to my dig.  Paul used his electrically powered chisel to open up the sides of my pocket for easier access.  I was then able to more rapidly clean out the pocket. As soon as the boss became interested, a whole crowd of folks came over to watch what would come out of the pocket next.  Below you see one of the needle crystals I had just pulled out.

 

 

I probably harvested at least 100 crystals from this beach ball sized pocket. Many of the crystals were broken, but fortunately there was a secondary infusion of silica into the pocket. This secondary infusion of quartz formed some candlesticks and scepters on the terminations of some of the broken smoky quartz crystals and provided spectacular rehealed crystals.  I noticed that much of the broken material was very gemmy, but I had to pick and choose a bit what specimens were going to travel back with me on the plane.

Next was Austin's turn to make a crystal score, and he came through in a rather big way (pun intended). for those of you who don't know Austin, he is about 6ft 10.  Soon a crowd gathered around his  digging spot as he pulled out one 6 inch crystal after the next.  After a couple hours I wandered over to see what Austin was up to.  Once again, he was pulling out wonderful quartz crystals.  I decided he was getting better crystals than me because of his height advantage.  haha.

Austin working a crystal pocket

To the left is Austin pulling out another crystal.  To the right we see him with Rick Kennedy, an onsite miner.  Notice even though Austin has a leg up on most of us, he still uses a block of rock to his advantage.

After about 6 hours of digging solo, we decided to dig together a bit.  I barely sat down next to Austin when he pulled out the best scepter of the day.  Definitely a most royal scepter.  Shortly after his find I also found a nice scepter, though Austins scepter has a much longer stem.  See pictures below.

Best scepter of the day

I consider these to be magnificent scepters.  The one to the right is truly exceptional!

I did a quick turnaround cleaning and was able to put a case together for our Colorado Springs Mineralogical Society show less than 1 week after my visit.  Many of the quartz crystals I found at the Royal Scepter claim on Peterson Mountain are memorable. 

An excellent bi-monthly magazine put out by the Mineralogical Record just came out.  If you wish to do more in depth reading on mining at Peterson Mountain, I suggest you buy the 2022 Mar/Apr edition.

The May-Day Pocket #crystals #Colorado minerals #rockhounds

Bob at play... a very nice find

My mining partner-Bob found one of the biggest pockets I've ever seen. Since I had not dug much the prior year (2021), I kidded Bob that he needed to show me how to find a pocket again.  We went our separate ways once we got to the claim to prospect.  I found very little and near the end of the day I decided to see wat Bob was up to.  As I neared his spot, I noticed some microcline but little else.  We do not value microcline much, but Bob had invested a lot of time on this pegmatite and wasn't ready to give it up quite yet. Bob found a couple flat/tjin smoky quartz crystals (tabbies) and so I decided to watch his progress until quitting time.  I asked Bob, what was worse, digging microcline or watching somebody else dig microcline heh-heh.  Bob gathered up about a dozen well- formed microcline crystals and called it a day.  We both thought he might have more luck reversing course and digging where he was sitting.  

We returned a couple days later to Bobs dig and noticed claim jumpers had once again been out making holes and losing their tools on the claim.  I found a couple nice tools to add to my collection, maybe we scared them off when we arrived. Bob did as he suggested and reversed course by digging down the hill along the pegmatite. I left Bob to his dig and went up the hill to follow a newly discovered--albeit skinny pegmatite. My pegmatite was showing a little blue amazonite frozen in a seam.  After a couple hours of digging, I returned to see how Bob was doing. Bob showed me some fairly large chunks of quartz at the bottom of his dig. 

View of graphic granite above the pocket

The quartz exhibited crystal faces, so there was hope for euhedral crystals. Above the quartz vein, Bob was beginning to pull out some microcline plates. Everything was well-coated in red mud.  Soon the plates of microcline were coming out fairly quickly and the plates were large.  Some of plates were as big as dinner plates, well formed, and crystals with very crisp edges.  No quartz crystals were protruding from the microcline plates. I hung around and helped sort the pieces and wrap possible fits together.  By 3PM Bob decided he better quit as a few trips would be needed to carry all the crystals back to his truck.

In the pocket filled with microcline

 

While Bob wrapped and filled his backpack with crystals I became the relief digger and started pulling out microcline plates as well.  We stayed a bit longer than we had planned to, but we wouldn't be able to get back out again for a few days.  Bob left the hole wide open (prob not best practice, but after all it was just microcline). We talked about how to continue the dig on the way home. Bob decided the best course of action was to dig a bit deeper and take out the quartz below the microcline plates, hoping for some smoky quartz crystals.

I stuck with Bob for most this third day on the pocket and helped remove/sort  pieces as the dig proceeded.  Bobs intuition on the quartz was correct. While the quartz never pocketed out, there were a number of quartz crystals that appeared to have grown out of the quartz at the bottom of the pocket.  As 3PM approached, Bob sent me back in to remove crystals.  Bob once again wrapped and transported crystals while I dug. I noted the pocket was beginning to pinch off and it appeared the dig was nearly done.  Still I removed even more plates of microcline.  Some of the single microcline crystals reached almost the size of softballs.  We drove home and we both thought the pocket was nearly finished.  The bottom of the pocket and sides needed to be further probed to make sure we got everything. The final dimensions of Bobs microcline pocket were close to 8 feet long, 2 feet wide and 5 feet down. The lens shaped pocket provided 4 days of entertainment over a period of 2 weeks.  

A couple of smokies in the pocket. Pic to the right
shows a large chunk of quartz unearthed with
 crystals attached.

The fourth visit to Bobs pocket was primarily a recheck of everything and then finally remediation.  I went back to my amazonite seam in my skinny pegmatite from a couple days earlier.  I hoped it would form a pocket, but all I got were a few single small crystals. The seam never opened up. I got a lot of teasers from this seam. I followed the pegmatite up the hill, I was down 6 feet. The effort was just becoming too much work for the minimal returns. 

Congrats to Bob on an exceptional pocket! 

One of the nicer plates of microcline

Lots of potential fits from this significant portion of Bobs find

A microcline Betty for sure!

2021 Year of Rockhounding in Colorado

 I have not posted to my blog in 2021 because I did not go rock hounding much.  Normally I might go 40 times a year, but this year only about 6 times. Many trips I had planned were canceled.  A number of factors contributed to my inability to rock-hound. The worst thing that happened was a severe accident for my wife which caused me to be her caregiver for nearly 3 months.  She is back to 90% and healing well.

I did not take any notes during my trips, but will rely on a few pictures I took to refresh my memories for this post.  Despite Covid, I did attend 3 rock shows.  All shows were downscaled considerably from the normal events.  I attended the Tucson Show (Apr), Denver Show (Sep) and Colorado Springs (Oct).  I would say I had the most fun at the Tucson Show, plenty of interesting material and smaller crowds.  I always purchase a few items for resale at this show and picked up some nice amethyst clusters from Veracruz, Mexico.  Purchased a garnet from Brazil.  Got an aquamarine on matrix from Pakistan along with some other fluorite specimens pictured below.

Both of these fluorite specimens are from Mexico and were purchased at the Tucson Show.  The fluorite pictured to the right has a layer of hematite encasing the cubes along with some associated barite sprinkled along the edges. 

 Austin Cockell cornered much of the market on some interesting fluorescing fluorite and so I purchased one fluorite from him seen below.  Under longwave light the fluorite produces a brilliant red color.

Veracruz amethyst I purchased... many double terminations to ogle

I rock hounded a bit in the month of June and then in October.  Most of the summer I kept busy running to the hospital and then driving my wife to various appointments.  I recall finding two pockets of crystals which isn't bad for only going out 6 times.  One of my favorite finds of the year was a float crystal in the middle of a remediated area

This area had probably been remediated more than 10 years ago as there were small trees growing in the area.  It was an older claim we had permission to be on and after not finding anything I was walking back to my truck and saw this smoky in the dirt.  A nice 3 inch smoky with rehealing and some onegites attached to the sides.  A keeper in my book.

Next few times out in June, I went with my friend Bob to various places in the Lake George area and found one pocket of smoky quartz crystals.  Years ago I  found a pegmatite that yielded some twinned microcline and quartz crystals so I walked down the hill along this pegmatite looking for sign of a crystal pocket.  I noticed some shards of smoky quartz and dug in.  It didn't take me long to find some larger smoky shards up to 5" in length, but no complete crystals.  I continued digging up the hill at about a depth of 1 foot. I noticed a slight change in soil color off to the side and dug into that.  I was rewarded with about 10 crystals.  Many of these crystals have issues like overgrowth, fracturing and damage, but the fun is in the finding.  I continued digging and found a few malformed microcline, but the quartz had really dwindled. My next find was more substantial and included some amazonite.

Not the most desirable smokys  :-)

 I went to an area that had been dug before, but my eye caught some really nice color of amazonite.  I often dig around old digs to see if the previous rock hound missed anything.  This time I was rewarded. I dug next to the dig on a line I thought the pegmatite should run and overturned a fairly large rock.  Under the rock were microcline crystals, not amazonite but just plain microcline.  As I dug out the microcline I found one smoky quartz crystal, all by itself.  I noticed the microcline went down so I followed it about 2 feet into the ground.  Then I started finding some quartz crystal shards so I continued on.  The ground got softer, changed color and opened up into a nice pocket of smoky quartz crystals with microcline about 4 feet into the ground.  But wait, after scrubbing the microcline I did notice a faint blue color on the x-faces (tops) of the crystals.  I guess I can call it amazonite.  Digging further down I found some destroyed plates which once held many crystals. As I neared the bottom of the softer dirt/clay I began to run into one of my old friends, well formed pseudomorphs of goethite/limonite after calcite or other carbonate.  Cleaning out the bottom I found a large pseudo with many crystals embedded in it (see pic). 

                                  My hog turd--big hog

I carefully removed this piece and noted it was directly below the damaged crystal plate I found earlier in the dig.  I guess many of those sheared off crystals in the pseudo were from the damaged plate I found above the pseudo.  Little more than an oddity/curiosity.  I think in the Prospectors Show they would have called it a hog turd.  lol.  Finishing up the pocket I dug all around it to make sure I didn't miss anything.  There was a small crevice in the pegmatite which held a few more smaller crystals, but nothing greater than 2 inches.  When I got home that evening I found my wife had been hospitalized due to an accident and I didn't return to the digging area for 3 months.  I got out once or twice in October before the ground froze and can't say as I found anything memorable.  This year was somewhat forgettable but 2022 is just around the corner 😊 

Coming soon, 2 new 2022 posts on a large find in the Pikes Peak Batholith and a very productive trip to Hallelujah Junction, CA.