Trick or Treat Pocket 29 Oct -- 6 Nov 2022. Rockhounding the Lake George intrusive area of the Pikes Peak Batholith

No wildfires near Lake George, CO this fall.  Controlled burns like this one can produce a lot of irritating smoke

While we were in the midst of fall, winter was rapidly approaching. I hoped to score a pocket before the onset of winter. I had been prospecting an area that was dug up a lot in the past, but I figured nobody gets it all.  I started checking out some old digs and found a bit of mineralization (sign) between two digs.  There was a dig up the hill from me, but it was at least 20 feet above me. I decided to give the spot a try.  I soon hit some grey quartz and then a microcline crystal. 

Nice size smoky popped out

I took the microcline crystal in hand and decided to see if I could find my digging partner Bob.  Bob was about 100 yards away from me, but I needed to stretch my legs. I found Bob digging in a well mineralized pegmatite, but with little to no crystals forthcoming. After showing Bob the pieces I was finding, I wished him luck and walked back to my dig. We often check on each other while we dig. It was about 1PM and I figured I better get cracking if I was going to find and harvest a pocket.

I got back to my dig and continued following the quartz up the hill.  I was digging fairly shallow, but the sign was good and I continued to follow quartz up and into the hill.  The quartz was slowly getting better with white quartz turning to grey and some crystal faces now appearing. I just pulled out my first quartz crystal and Bob appeared over the hill. I was now about 5 feet into the hill and 3 feet down.  Bob sat down to watch the developing "show".  Below shows the extraction of a microcline crystal.

Soon I was digging out smoky quartz crystals with size.  After 2.5 hours of digging I decided to take a break and handed over my tools to Bob.  I began to wrap what I had found. Suddenly Bob interrupted my wrapping saying, "you're going to have to take this piece out yourself". It appeared to be a plate of crystals. The only thing showing was the butt of the plate and a microcline hanging down into the bottom of the pocket. Despite daylight beginning to wane I decided it would be better to spend some time taking out the right side of the pocket before I went after the plate in the back. Fortunately, the sides of the pocket were separated from the surrounding country rock, so pocket extraction was not too difficult. I worked my way towards the back of the pocket carefully pulling crystals away from edges. I was now laying on my stomach trying to get at the plate. It was finally time to reach into the back of the pocket to pull out the anticipated plate of crystals. I was able to stick a hooked screwdriver behind the plate and slow move the plate directly out of the pocket. The bottom/back of the plate faced me, so I didn't really know what I had. I slowly crawled/backed out of the hole on my knees and elbows like some kind of crippled crab. Finally, I extricated myself from the pocket and held the plate up in my hands for Bob to see.  From the look in his eyes, I knew I had something special. I sat up, flipped the plate around and knew I had a nice keeper.

      Doesn't look like much, but a lot of work needs to be done. 
See picture at end for the near finished product.        

I thanked Bob for letting me take out the plate and staying to help me. The last thing I did was remove all the loose debris around the spot where the plate had been, in case there might be any fits to the plate. With bad weather forecast to move in the next day I decided to bury the remains of the pocket and head home. I wasn't sure when I would be able to return and harvest the rest of the pocket.

A few days later I did return to the site and mucked out the dig.  A bit of snow had fallen, and the ground was frozen to about 6 inches. I carefully removed the debris I had dumped into the pocket and began extracting crystals once again. I didn't find any plates this time but did find a rather large microcline at the bottom of the pocket. I spent the entire day excavating the pocket and kept finding interesting albeit smaller crystals. A short video below details some of the action

Bob always says there is at least one good crystal in each pocket.  I counted about 5 very collectible crystals and a crystal plate that would find its way into one of my mineral cases. I wrapped up my crystals and figured I was 99% done with this pocket.  I would return to this spot one more time to inspect the remains of the pocket for any missed gems and then remediate the area.

Third trip back to the pocket. I had one area on the left side of my dig which was yielding microcline. It was over 5 feet down in the ground. There was a void, and I was able to pull out some small single microcline crystals. In order to further access this void I would have to remove about 2 square yards of rock and debris... no thanks. I'd removed the quartz seam producing the smokys that ran right through the center of the dig.  Very little if any quartz was found in the void, so I decided it was time to fill in the hole. 

Time to remediate the dig

When I got home the first thing I did was rinse and then sort my finds.  All microclines went in one pile and all quartz in another.  Next I decided to look for fits to my plate of crystals. Immediately I recognized that some rehealing of broken crystals had taken place. Fitting rehealed crystals that had broken off the plate may be next to impossible. I refer to rehealed crystals as those that have a secondary layer of quartz over the broken areas. I then divided the crystals into small, medium, large and rehealed crystals. There was also a lot of manganese mineralization (gunk) clinging to many of the crystals and some fluoride also mucking up my finds. I also found some small, shattered fluorite crystals in some of the debris I took home to analyze.

After doing an initial cleaning I noted the microcline do have a slight bluish tint to them. Not sure the color is strong enough for the microcline to be considered amazonite. Oh well, I still have many keepers and bragging rights to an end of season hurrah! See more pictures below.

Pictured below is the large plate cleaned and reconstructed. Seven separate fits were found to the plate. The importance of taking odds and end pieces home for further analysis and possible inclusion in other pieces (plate) can provide considerable enhancement to a collected specimen.

One final cleaning and a couple of small fits will complete this plate (12.5 lbs). I found the
sheared piece of microcline (right center microcline front), so that should help the look of the piece.

Large microclines with cleavelandite

Some cathedralling crystals above

6, 8 and7 Inch Smokies

I finished up my posts to my blog early as I caught COVID just before Thanksgiving, dosages of Paxlovid fixed me right up.  See you next year!

September Rock Hounding: Amazonite, Goethite, Quartz and more

Forest Service Road winding its way through the fall colors at Lake George, Colorado

 I will document 3 different finds in this post.  First was a goethite find, second some amazonite and finally quartz on another trip to Ouray, Colorado. I also snuck in a trip to the Denver Show as well.

My persistence digging this year was not paying off.  I went from one new discovery to the next with little to show for my efforts (see this year's previous posts).  I decided to return to an area where I had found goethite and amazonite in a prior year. I noticed a lot of pale but large amazonite pieces in one area and decided to give this area a second look. There was a lot of feldspar topping a large quartz blow where others had dug previously. I decided to attack the quartz and see what if anything i could find.  I intently worked the boundary between the feldspar and the quartz. In order to get anywhere I had to dug and pull out some massive quartz boulders. I gave up on the idea of finding amazonite due to the overall poor color and lack of completed crystals. Most of the feldspar was encased in quartz. I was however, finding goethite. Nearly every time there was a void between the contact area between the quartz and the feldspar, I would find smoky quartz shards with goethite. It seemed the goethite had preferential growth on smoky quartz shards. Here you can see goethite wedged in between layers of quartz and feldspar in the center to the photograph. I was hoping to find some fluorite or onegite, but was unable to locate any of those specimens in my dig.

Nice little spray of goethite from the area with a flat of specimens in the background.

More goethite on quartz above, I think I've had enough here and it is time to move on to something else.

Next up the Denver Show.

I spent a little time at the Denver Show this year. 

Fairly large crystals on many of these specimens

I like to help out at Austin Cockell's booth when he is busy, but it was a slow show from his perspective.  I'm more into digging and finding my own minerals unless I can get a deal. I was tempted by some faked citrine crystals, they looked nice, but no sense in getting involved in owning faked material. I did see some nice dioptase minerals from the Congo and purchased a couple of those. The dealer was absent from his booth when I arrived.  I noticed a few twenty-dollar bills on the ground and pointed that out to some coworkers. They got on the phone and the dealer showed up fairly quickly.  The dioptase crystals were of fairly large size, and I liked the contrast between dioptase and associated blue shattuckite. They needed a little cleaning, but i have no problem with that. Next up was a trip to Ouray, Colorado.

                                            Molas Pass, near Silverton, Colorado  

The colors were near peak when we arrived at Silverton. While I had promised my wife this would be a color tour, she knew I had my digging tools along. After all, how much leaf peeping can you do?  Rain was forecast for most afternoons, so color tour in morning, rock hounding in the afternoons.

Since the weather was less than ideal, I decided to hit up the crystal cavern in Ouray, CO.  After a couple wrong turns and trying to guide some lost tourists onto the correct trail I finally found my way to the crystal cavern. For anyone interested in the geology of this area, i took a picture of this sign.

Well, you get the idea, not so easy to read....  Anyway, my spot this day was near the Box Canyon in Ouray.  I understood the cavern was mostly dug out, but with rainy weather I decided i might give it a try. I am standing at the entrance of the cavern looking inside.

As you can see, much of the walls have been dug out.  I spent an hour or so exploring the cavern hoping for an unexcavated nook or cranny, but it was pretty well played out of crystals.  The crystals here are small druzy quartz growing over calcite crystals.  The calcites are mainly habits of rhomb and dog tooth crystals. At the entrance of the cave I decided to dig down and see what i might find in the excavated rubble, maybe some nice discards?  I was pleasantly surprised to dig out several small plates of exactly what i was looking for... quartz over calcite crystals.  I found one grouping that really surprised me and wondered who would not have taken this nice specimen home?  Below are some of the pictures of the specimens I found in the rubble pile.  I also show the one outstanding specimen.

I unearthed these discards and took many of them home for cleaning

Here was the prize of the day and the trip, of course there were also the invaluable leaf pics.

The whole point of collecting these is to place the specimens in hydrochloric acid and etch out the calcite leaving only the eggshell like quartz behind. Below is a movie showing part of the process (done outside of course). What you have left is an epimorph.

 

Once the calcite is etched out and the quartz was cleaned I ended up with this!

Note the shell of a double terminated calcite crystal in the foreground of the specimen.

😮🙀😵😘😊

Digging in the debris definitely paid off.  This ended the fall color/rock hounding trip.  I found one nice quality piece for my collection.  One more story for the month -- amazonite.

After recovering from a week's worth of leaf peeping, I decided it was time to spend a little more time at Lake George before winter closed the rock hounding season down.  I had noticed some interesting granite outcroppings near a spot I had dug before and made a note to get back and explore that area.  

We don't see moose that often out at L George, so I was hoping for a special day. Center of picture (small and fuzzy) but I make it a practice of not stalking animals

I got back to my spot and sure enough under the granite outcrop was some amazonite.  All the amazonite was embedded in the host rock, so nothing collectible there, bvut the rock going down looked promising.  Soon i was digging in some white quartz in what appeared to be a narrow seam between a pegmatite.  Sure enough, there was more amazonite and this looked a bit better in both form and color than the pieces above.  Not too many complete crystals. There was also a bit of fracturing. 

I continued to follow the quartz seam with amazonite until it ended in solid quartz.  I was 5 feet down and really not finding much to collect.  At the very end of dig I found some small onegite.  Onegite is a discredited term that we use locally to describe quartz infused with needles of goethite. 

Cleaned pieces after acid bath

All in all, September was a fun month with several nice finds.

August 2022 Rock hounding at Lake George [Amazonite & Goethite]

A spray of goethite on quartz from the August dig

I decided to dig in an area I had dug before. I had found fluorite, amazonite and goethite on prior digs to this spot.  There was a rather intimidatingly large white quartz blow in the middle of this area, so I decided to attack this quartz. With my digging partner's help and a crowbar, I managed to move some rather large chunks of quartz. There was a lot of microcline on the top of the formation with white quartz underneath. The microcline was a faint blue, but it was all frozen together with no single crystals. I had decided to pull out the quartz and see what might be there.  I found that on the edge of the white quartz, bordering the microcline there was sandy areas with pieces of goethite. While most of the quartz was white, the goethite grew off of grey shards of quartz. Every time I found some small shards of smoky quartz, I would find sprays of goethite clinging to the smoky/grey quartz. After 3 separate visits to this spot it seemed the access to the goethite just became too difficult. My shoulders were also beginning to bother me even on days when I wasn't moving 200lb boulders of quartz.  Time to end this dig and see what else I can find.

Another flat of goethite clinging to quartz. Only a couple smoky quartz crystals were found

A bit of prospecting in another area led me to a promising spot of amazonite.  The amazonite near the surface under a cap rock was of fair color, but I dug for better.  Heat from surface fires reduces the vibrance and dulls the color of amazonite. Since fires have gone through this area, sometimes amazonite further under the ground can be protected from the heat and exhibits better color. There was a soft spot under the cap rock, so I decided to follow this feature downward.  Once again, I had to deal with a lot of white quartz.  Teaser pieces of fairly good colored amazonite greeted me as I dug down, but no full crystals were found. I continued to dig down and into the hill with some small rewards. Mother Nature does not give up her amazonite easily. I finally reached the bottom of the dig by hitting bedrock. I dug along the top of this rock following a softer seam above it. 

Occasionally I was rewarded with an amazonite or two though most were heavily fractured and subhedral. Slowly the seam began to pinch off and I started seeing some smoky quartz shards. The seam finally pinched off and I took some of the quartz shards home for further examination.  I could some little secondary crystals on the quartz shards and hoped for some onegite.  Sure enough after a bit of cleaning and further examination I determined I had found some onegite (quartz infused with goethite needles). 

More amazonite getting neutralized after an acid cleaning bath

So ended August.  Got a few things, but nothing to report to the Denver Museum of Science. Haha. 

The next months post covers the Denver Show and a trip to Ouray, Colorado

The Blues and Moose on the Loose in July

 

Highlight of this month was some moose at Lake George, not crystals

The month of July was warm.  I took 2 weeks off rock hounding as it was just too hot.  I was following some fairly good colored amazonite crystals in a pegmatite seam that ran up the hill.  I followed float along the seam until I got to an old dig.  Nothing about the old dig looked right to me. There was just not enough host rock to support a pocket. As soon as I dug above the old pocket the float disappeared. I backed up my digging and found little.  Tried again above the pocket and refound the seam of small pieces of amazonite about 3 feet down.  I followed this seam for about 15 feet until it finally petered out with little to show for my efforts.  Teaser pieces kept me looking, but finally sanity prevailed, and I decided to look elsewhere.  I always spend more effort when I am following better colored amazonite, probably spent more time here than I should have.  I meandered back to an area where I found some goethite in a prior year. I spent much of the month of August digging quartz from that spot and found a few interesting specimens (see next post).

See below for picture of the July dig.  It is hard for me to quit on float amazonite when the color is so blue. 

No pocket, just single crystals

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