Prospecting a hill at Lake George for crystals

Will Winter Ever End???  (Couple weekends ago)

Feeling cooped up a bit as of late with springtime rains, wind and cool weather keeping me indoors.  Bob and I have a lot of prospecting to do this year as we don’t have a favorite spot yet.  Many years we find a productive hill and stay with it for a digging season or two.  This year we have found a hill that has some promise but we are still prospecting it to see if it’s potential merits our time.  We have noticed a number of old digs near a ridgeline leading into the hill and also noted the top of the hill has been heavily dug.  The slopes seem fairly virgin of prospecting digs, so we will concentrate there first and work our way up to the top.  I started on the side of the ridgeline and Bob, my digging partner, hit the side of the hill.  Soon we were both finding good sign, but not much in the way of keeper smokys or amazonite.  I found a well-formed quartz pegmatite with only small float smoky quartz crystals and some goethite chunks but no crystal pockets.

Goethite

  Bob dug into a nice crystal pocket, but it primarily contained microcline plates.  The microcline plates are well defined and Bob will clean them up and check for twins.

Lots of microcline plates with a little quartz... hoping for amazonite

 Due to the occasional amazonite chips above where Bob was working I decided to climb the hill 50 or so feet above him and try my luck near a promising looking quartz formation. The quartz was associated with some blue subhedral amazonite and after digging down into the pegmatite about 2 feet down I found a pocket with yellowish mud and a few smokys and amazonite crystals. Unfortunately the crystals were fairly small. I continued the dig until I had exhausted the crystals in this smallish pocket and then decided it was time to tear down the sidewalls and fill up my dig with dirt.  While pulling down the sidewalls a rather large double terminated smoky rolled out of the dirt. This float crystal may have traveled a bit from it’s origin and is a little scuffed up, but still collectible. My next job is to figure out where that floater came from.  There is another dig up the hill so I will work my way up the hill looking for more float. Bob finished his microcline dig and was poking around in some quartz nearby.  After I showed Bob my double terminated quartz floater I noted a few feet up the hill from where he was prospecting there was a recent dig with some grey quartz with well-defined faces. I mentioned I wasn’t sure why someone would stop digging there and so Bob gave that spot a try.  Soon he was pulling out small smokys but nothing too big yet.

 Next trip we hope to expand our searches in that area and with a little luck find a smoky pocket or two.

Rock Hounding Not So Hidden Colorado Treasures

Recent Colorado Mineral Purchases

Hints of an early spring gave way to a wet cold weather pattern so prospecting has been put on hold for awhile. Still there are plenty of specimens to see and purchase in the state of Colorado.  An older friend of mine used to put parts of his collection up for sale. His collection spans decades of prospecting with excellent specimens at reasonable prices. I made an appointment with my friend to look at his collection and see what I could find. Many of the pieces I ended up purchasing were originally found anywhere from 10-45 years ago. While many of these pieces needed a little TLC and some touch-up cleaning, I could tell there was a lot of potential in these specimens. I concentrated on his Colorado minerals and bypassed his thumbnails and other than Colorado pieces. Some of the specimens I purchased to add to my collection and others to resell. I spent well over 2 hours reviewing flat after flat of crystals. There was fluorite, goethite, amazonite, smoky quartz, cleavelandite and combinations--it was hard to pick and choose but I eventually settled on 20 favorite pieces and dropped a bit of coin. When choosing specimens, I kept a number of things in mind which add up to an individual crystal’s overall appeal including: aesthetics of the piece, rarity, size, combinations of minerals in a specimen, quality of the piece to include luster, gemmyness, perfection and resale value. In the pictures below I will rate the quality of some of the pieces I purchased by their overall appeal on a scale from 1-5*. Obviously I wouldn't purchase specimens of really poor quality but this way you can see how someone values specimens. My prices are low retail. I have seen comparable pieces in stores with more than a 50% markup to those shown here. If you have ever watched the Prospectors Show, you'll note my prices are considerably lower than their inflated estimates.

Score of the day, despite overgrowth on smokys an aesthetic piece (Value $275)
If the Smokys had been cleaner this would have been a solid 5* (4*)

Rarity of specimen(onegite), complete (Value $45)
Nice 4* piece could probably use a little more cleaning

Combination of amazonite and smokys(rare) (Value $275)
Only 3* due to peripheral damage and paleness of amazonite

Double terminated and sceptered smoky(rare), large (Value $225)
Downgraded to 4.5* due to some scuffing on edges of smoky

Double Terminated (DT), Good size, lustrous and gemmy (Value $125)
5* DTs don't get much better than this

Nice aesthetic grouping, gemmy & lustrous (Value $35)
3.5* Some minor tip damage

Triple mineral combination (rare), high resale (Value $250)
4* Incomplete amazonite and smoky is not gemmy

Good size, luster, completeness, good color (Value $65)
4.5* Color is a little pale but solid specimen

Exceptional size, good color, aesthetics, complexity, completeness (Value $225)
5* Four complete interwoven amazonites VF!

Aesthetic grouping, luster, completeness (Value $85)
4* Color is a little pale and one central crystal appears cleaved

Rarity of combination(amazonite&cleavelandite)  (Value $165)
4* Nice group but amazonite is a bit pale

Large Specimen, aesthetic appeal, color  (Value $175)
4* Would be a solid 5* but piece has been repaired on cleaveage planes

Rarity of specimen(combo), (Value $125)
3.5* Amazonite is pale and one smoky has some regrowth damage

Complexity of specimen  (Value $75)
4.5* Overall nice piece but a little pale

2017 Rock Hounding Begins at Lake George Colorado

Sunset over Pikes Peak, Colorado Springs, CO

Enough snow and ice has melted so that I decided to give rock hounding a try in the Rocky Mountains. While areas above 10,000Ft still have plenty of snow the lower elevations around Lake George, CO have many open slopes for rock hounding. This year I hope to expand my prospecting to include more areas outside of Lake George and find other crystals besides smoky quartz, amazonite, microcline, fluorite and goethite. Still, I’m sure I’ll visit my favorite Lake George rock hounding areas several times again this year. Winter was fairly mild though we did have a number of strong wind events with 60-70mph wind gusts in the mountains. The drought in Colorado is also taking its toll on mature trees. As the drought weakened trees are exposed to 70mph wind gusts they snap in half like toothpicks. We saw several mature trees broken off about 10ft above the ground as the one depicted below.

 Winter was fairly easy on the wildlife though I suspect foraging might have been a little more difficult due to the lack of water and foraging material. We saw herds of elk and deer with coyotes yelping in the distance as we made our way out to Lake George to start out 2017.

Elk looking for food

Deer oblivious to my digging, though they eventually caught on

Today Bob and I revisited an old spot we had prospected last fall and had pulled out a few pockets. We decided to return to this spot because it was on a south facing slope so the ground would be well thawed out and snow minimal. The pegmatite is fairly large and probably runs for about 30 feet.

Top-down pegmatite schematic

While most of the pegmatite is underground we have found float crystals in this area at the surface. The quartzy pegmatite runs NW-SE and intersects a more feldsparish containing pegmatite which runs N-S. It is at the intersection of these two seams that two pockets of amazonite were found last year. There was no smoky quartz crystals within the amazonite pockets. Bob and I continue to work the area with mixed results. I concentrated on the area of float smokys while Bob worked further up the hill in some float amazonite. While neither one of us were rewarded with pockets of crystals we did find some keepers. We primarily dug through areas around previously found pockets in hopes of finding some float crystals. We both found amazonite but only a few undamaged keeper crystals.

Typical floater amazonite with lots of iron staining to clean

I had the find of the day with an excellent 5” smoky quartz crystal. While we found many crystals only a few were considered keepers in my mind. We also did some prospecting in the area and found a spot or two we might try out again in the future as long as the weather holds. On the way home I decided to shop my 5” smoky quartz crystal at one of the rock shops along the way home. The proprietor of the rock shop said he could give me $60 for the smoky and I decided I would rather keep the crystal than part with it at that price.

5" Smoky Quartz Crystal

So 2017 has started out on a pretty good note with hopefully many more crystals yet to be found!

Winter's Closing Down Digging For 2016

Looking North From Lake George Towards the Tarryalls

Rock Hounding season is coming to a close as the temperatures drop and frost begins to set into the ground. I’ve been able to prospect a little longer this year than other years due to a lack of snow in the mountains. We’ve had no measureable snow yet and it’s almost December which is fairly unusual. This day I decided to do a little prospecting and one of my favorite digging opportunities presented itself in the form of a large dead tree and old digs (depressions) around the tree’s base. There were 3 main roots emanating from the base of the tree, each root was about as thick as my thigh and totally rotten. I could see from the old digs that somebody had found amazonite here when the tree was probably healthy and they quit digging as they ran into the massive tree roots. Now that the tree was dead and mostly decayed I decided to dig where others couldn’t and tear out the now decayed roots of the dead tree.

Old pine with digs around it's base bears investigating

 I was soon rewarded with amazonite. I continued digging out each root finding the hidden host pegmatite and digging out the root along with some small well-colored amazonite. I didn’t find a pocket of amazonite but there were still over 30 small collectible crystals.

Lots of small amazonite crystals aroud the tree roots

I was going to take the entire tree along with its tap root out of the ground, but the wind started to pick up and my spot went from sunny to full shade so I decided to prospect elsewhere and come back another day to take out the dead tree. It didn’t take long to find more amazonite float associated with a fairly extensive pegmatite. After digging a few holes along the pegmatite I reasoned this area was most likely already dug as the crystals I found were mostly broken and the rocks below ground seemed disturbed. Normally undug pegmatite will be grouped together, this peg had country rock(granite) and pegmatite mixed together along with the broken crystals. I checked a few spots up the hill and came up empty. The temperature was beginning to drop as the sun dipped towards the horizon and I decided it was time for me to skedaddle.

A Fall Rock Hounding Trip To Lake George, CO

Austin shows off 1st nice crystal of the day!

Austin wanted me to take him rock hounding and after hearing of a few of his negative adventures with others we picked a day and set off for Lake George. From Austin's stories it sounded like some of his "friends" are valuing rocks more than people. I had been prospecting a private claim for the last few weeks but did not have permission to take guests there so I decided to go to a reliable area where at least small crystals could be found. As I’ve said before when I take a guest I always hope we find something. Austin’s enthusiasm for rock hounding surpasses mine and I have been spoiled as of late with easy finds of amazonite so I was not sure how long I would last. We checked out an area where I’ve rock hounded before and found some small crystals and a few plates of microcline and quartz. We got started and were soon finding small quartz points and an occasional piece of white quartz. Things were going slowly and I was thinking about trying another area when I noted just a few feet away from where I was digging there were some larger pieces of pegmatite with embedded minor quartz faces. As I broke open the area with my pick axe by removing the sod from the surface I noted a small microcline group (see below).

Key to the pocket--where there is one crystal there is often more

Between the quartz faces on pegmatite and this microcline specimen I decided to slow down, put down my pick axe and take out my scratcher. Good thing I did because I soon was hitting large shards of smoky quartz and then a stout 4” smoky rolled out of the scree. Austin liked the material I was digging out and said he had never found any fluorite and sure would like to find a fluorite sometime. He no sooner spoke those words than a 1.5” fluorite rolled out of the dirt.

I pulled out a few more smokys and then turned the pocket over to Austin. I told him he could have the rest unless something unusual popped up. Within a couple of minutes he found his first fluorite ever and a number of microcline crystals. I prospected around a bit while Austin stuck with the pegmatite hoping for another pocket. Soon time was up for the day and we navigated the 4-wheel drive roads as a herd of deer looked on guessing we weren't interested in them and were just a couple of crystal hunters. Here is a picture of what I took home.  I took the best of my pocket while Austin got the bulk of the quartz crystals, along with several smoky quartz and microcline plates.

Microcline plate, 10cm Smoky quartz and Penetration twin fluorite

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Minerals At An Estate Sale

Got dem got dem dry bones - - maybe petrified tusks?

Got an email from our rock club informing everyone that there would be an estate sale from a local biology professor who collected minerals. I will travel in town to an estate sale and this one fit my criteria of having rocks and minerals so I thought I would give it a try (Getting information like this is one more reason to belong to a local club). When I arrived at the home I was told the rocks and minerals were primarily in the back yard and some books on mineralogy were located in the basement. I was told all offers would be considered--sounded good to me! I got into the backyard and there were several boxes of minerals and some crystals all with no labels. No labels means no provenance so though you may have an idea on where something was found you really don’t know for sure. In my experience usually more than half the value of any collectible mineral lies in the provenance. There was an abundance of fossils which I don’t really collect but some petrified bones (mammoth tusk frags?) caught my eye so I took those. There was also a vertebrae but it felt too light and may have been a caste. There were a lot of leaf and stem fossils as well. Finally I got to a box loaded with garnets in schist, wrapped in newspapers from 1970. Unfortunately most of the almandine garnets were incomplete crystals although they did look nice in matrix. 

Several garnets in this schist matrix

I’ve picked up similar specimens from the Wilkerson Pass Colorado area while rock-hounding and they could be from the same locale. I took about half a flat of these. Next up were a couple of boxes with desert roses or selenite/gypsum. I’m not sure where they are from either but could be Arizona I suppose. The roses were well formed and probably worth a few bucks.

One of a dozen desert roses I selected

I rounded out my flat of garnets with a number of these specimens. I also found a few pieces of opal, some beryl and fluorite. Next I went book hunting and in the basement was a 3 volume mint set of Dana’s System of Mineralogy 7^th Ed for $3. I also collect stamps and found some unused stamp storage albums which go for about $16 a piece. I picked up a few other oddities and almost went for a taxidermy rattle snake coiled and ready to bite but decided one of my nephews would get something else for Christmas. So I spent $30 for what I valued to be well over $200 and have no idea about the petrified bones/tusks. I enjoyed the camaraderie and banter with other bargain hunters and the sellers seemed happy to unload some rocks for money.

More Digging in the Amazonite Pool

Wildlife in the shadows

Turkeys welcomed me to Lake George, Colorado for another warm day of digging rocks in mid-October. We had high wind warning today for much of the mountains with potential winds of up to 80mph near mountain peaks. Since my digging partner Bob is laid up with hip surgery and he has the chain saw I decided I better at least take an axe in case a tree falls over the road and blocks my path.  I arrived at our favorite spot and commenced digging where I had left off last week. The area is remote and hidden in a thicket of aspen so I am not too concerned that someone else will discover it. The claim owner has given me carte blanche to dig the claim until the New Year so I am in no rush. I decided to finish up the old pocket and then back-track a bit and dig down the hill as the pegmatite I had discovered went that way. There were a few straggler crystals and a plate in last week’s pocket so I worked that and then moved down the slope following the pegmatite. The pegmatite was near the surface but then dove down at nearly a 45 angle into the earth. As I followed the pegmatite thick mud showed up to be followed by amazonite crystals—another pocket! Most of these crystals were singles but still collectible. I also believe a number of them have cleavelandite associated with them. I had a hard time getting these single crystals out as the peanut-butter-like mud and 3 foot hole made extraction difficult.

Todays Amazonite Finds Mostly Singles and Ready For Cleaning

Specimen In Hand Shows Cleavelandite Surrounded By Amazonite

 I broke a few crystals due to the difficulty, but the work involved in tearing down the pegmatite on all sides and resulting trauma to the crystals in the process probably wouldn't have been any easier on the amazonite. Well it was 3PM and time to leave. I loaded up the truck and headed down the road. Yikes, a fairly thick tree blocked my only way out so maybe I would have to use that axe. I decided it would be easier to chop down a few saplings and go off road than chop through a 10” green tree.

Got to be ready for anything out here... a 4-wheel drive vehicle helps!

After checking things out I was soon off again and headed home.