Crystal Hunting in Bear Creek Canyon *Updated 4 July

Set off bright and early planning on going to Lake George when the TV weatherman said it would be only 80F today and 10% chance of rain, I took him at his word and went to Bear Creek instead. Bear Creek is known for crystals but it gets a lot hotter and more humid in the summer due to the lower elevation so we tend to go there in the fall. While heading out to Bear Creek due to the cooler weather we found our way blocked by a closed road. Evidently last fall's heavy rains closed the road which meant an extra mile or so of walking up the canyon instead of driving. We decided the walk would do us good and it was cool so off we went. The closed dirt road is at about a 10% grade, so we warmed up quickly. We saw no bears, nor any fish in the creek. I believe this area is under consideration for closure to preserve an area for the green cutthroat trout which were all probably flushed out of the creek into Fountain Creek due to last fall's rains.

Bear Creek Gurgling Along

We rock hounded an area we had tried before, but had previously run out of time digging there. We had the whole day in front of us. While Bob was thinking of going up towards an area called Sentinel Rock, I was happy to dig in a well formed pegmatite further down the hill. By 10AM I was finding crystals, so Bob aborted his plan and decided to dig near me and try his luck as well.

May be a quartz scepter

By 12 o'clock Bob was finding crystals as well, so we never made it to Sentinel Rock this day. There are probably claims ringing it now anyway, but we'll get up there sometime this summer or fall to check it out.
After following a root through a pegmatite the pegmatite started opening up and getting moist with dirt. Soon I pulled out a rather large worm... lucky for me not so for him. I tossed him down the hill and started finding quartz with faces. Then I started finding full blown crystals. I called Bob over when I pulled out a 7 incher with fluorites attached.

7" Crystal Combo With Fluorites

I'm not sure about the color of the fluorites since they have not yet been cleaned, but they appear to be green to me.

6" Smoky With Fluorite Attached

Clay Encrusted Plate With Fluorite (upper right) and Quartz

A picture of the above plate in the collapsed pocket

Next up was another well formed fluorite followed by plates of smokys with fluorites and microcline. This find ended a somewhat dry spell crystal-finding for me. Bob decided to go to work almost exactly where I had thrown that worm. Now I don't think he found the worm, but he did find crystals. I guess I should have kept that lucky worm.

Bob's Nice Quartz Grouping

 By 1:30 PM the sky began to cloud up and thunderclaps were rumbling in the distance. So much for that 10% chance for rain. I decided I had more crystals (plates) than I could carry so we headed back for home. Forty pounds of rocks with equipment and 55 year old knees slowed me down some, but Bob was gracious enough to carry some of my crystals. I buried about a third of the lesser crystals within the pocket and then covered up the hole. Its a pretty remote spot, but no sense giving away the rest of the crystals with potentially more in the unfinished pocket. Not sure when I'll return, but it will have to be a cool day.                             Update: I returned to Bear Creek on 1 Jul to clean out the pocket. There were a couple of nice quartz crystals unearthed, but all were hooded (see picture).

The "Godfather" With Crystal Arms Oustretched {4" tall}

None of the new plates had fluorite on them either. As I continued to dig into the mountain following the crystal pocket, the crytal-bearing void continued to narrow down and the crystals grew smaller. The crystals on the plates were all laying down parallel to the host rock. The quality of the specimens I was finding did not merit further digging in my mind, so I filled in the 6 foot hole not planning to return anytime soon. On the 2.5 mile trek back to my vehicle we prospected an area dug for amazonite. I found a nice green fluorite on the edge of one of the digs which will probably bring me back to that site some day!

Blue/Green Fluorite with phantom

Overgrowth on smoky with pagoda top

Green Fluorite With Clear Late Stage Overgrowth Fluorites

Today's Haul of Crystals! Now for the cleaning to start. Looks like these will need a lot of phosphoric acid

Some Success Rock Hounding at Lake George

Greetings From Lake George

Today Bob and I returned to some of our old digs at Lake George. Bob dug on a pegmatite we had pulled out some nice fluorite in years past and I went back to an amazonite/smoky dig where I had found some excellent specimens. We spent a couple hours rechecking these sites with no success. We then moved on to another pegmatite where there is a lot of white quartz, but had little success. This particular site had been worked over by others several years ago. A couple years ago I found some fine onegite at this site and so Bob did some digging in that area,

Bob Checking Out Some Onegite Plates

and I did some digging along the quartz seam. I worked the quartz seam finding occasional crystals until a small pocket formed. The small pocket contained a couple of small plates which contained microcline, smokys and small fluorites. I thought I was going to find something really good when I broke into the pocket and found a large void behind it. Hoping the void would be pregnant with crystals I tore apart the country rock surrounding the void but found only dirt. Studying the rock around the void, it appeared to be entirely surrounded by country rock. The void was not an extension of the small pocket, but just a jumbled void in the country rock.

Bob found a few small onegite crystals and then a fairly nice smoky at a different dig that the person who had previously dug the site had missed. Bob's smoky was lustrous and well formed. So today we found a few interesting specimens but not the home run we were hoping for. Who knows, maybe the next time out our luck will change and I'll really have something to talk about :-)

Bob Found This Nice Smoky Group

Pocket Revealing Itself

Crystal Growth Exhibited On Pegmatite

Small Plate From Pocket

A Tornado in rock hounding country

No Crystals Around This Root Ball

Some of you may know from reading my biography that I am a meteorologist by training and a rock hound as a hobbyist. There was much excitement here last weekend when a tornado blew through rock hounding country up at Lake George, Co. The tornado moved through the community of Lake George and then went on to tear up some trees in the Pike National Forest in Teller County where I rock hound. From the description of a friend and local media reports I decided to see if I could find out where the tornado entered the forest and see what kind of damage it did. While driving down the forest roads I saw nothing. Once I got out of my vehicle and did some hiking I soon saw hail and then green trees strewn about.

Left over hail almost 24 hours after the tornado

Part of my interest was as a meteorologist seeing the destruction a tornado can do to 200 year old ponderosa pines, while the rock hounder in me wanted to check out each root ball for possible exposed pegmatites pregnant with crystals. While I found over 100 downed trees during my hike, crystals were few and far between. Not a single root ball exposed a pegmatite, let alone crystals. While it was disappointing not to find any crystals, I felt rewarded to be able to discover the impact area and analyze the storm damage created by the weekend tornado. I sent a note and a few pictures to the National Weather Service (NWS) Pueblo, as they asked for information on the tornado, but have not heard back from them. The NWS Pueblo has jurisdiction over Teller County while the NWS Boulder has jurisdiction over Park County and Lake George. All structural damage so far reported was in Park County.

No Crystals Here Either, but a 10+ foot diameter root ball

Dangerous Tree... Note Crack Through Entire Tree Trunk Near End Of Ax Handle

Somehow This Yellow Beauty Got Spared The Turbulence And Hail

These downed trees are mostly pointing westward, others were pointed east, north and south

Pretty hard hiking through these downed trees

May Trip to Lake George some Smoky Quartz CSMS

Well, I'm running out of titles for my blog posts so unless I find something special or opine on something other than what I've already discussed the titles will be somewhat uninformative. Anyways I returned to Lake George and planned on doing some prospecting. This particular day I prospected for only about 15 minutes before exposing some smoky quartz shards really close to the surface. Not sure I've ever found so much quartz with such little accompanying pegmatite. I expect the pegmatite that was host to this quartz just crumbled away over the eons and all that was left was the stronger/solid quartz. I called my digging partner Bob over to check it out as I was finding smoky quartz pieces with faces. Bob immediately got to work on the same knoll and hit a better-formed pegmatite and found some amazonite. While I wouldn't say either of us found any trophys, we enjoyed the day and found a few crystals to take home.

Digging through some kinnikinnick

Quartz shards appearing in the dirt, or is it more than just a shard? See below.

More than a shard, best of the lot (see pic above), a nice cathedral crystal (Bob digging out a peg in the background) This crystal grouping, only about 6 inches below the surface was in amazingly good shape!

Rock Hounding at Lake George

A View Of The Tarryalls... Will Winter Ever End?

Still snow up at Lake George. We had a recent 10 inch dump of snow last weekend and there is still a bit of snow lying about. While rock hounding at Lake George today we got some graupel, but no accumulating snow. Not exactly a Chamber of Commerce day up there, but it was good to get out. Flowers continue to bloom despite the weather. Digging was a little wet this day, but having been away for a few days due to illness I decided I was well enough to dig crystals!

We also saw some elk, but they were too far away for pictures. After scratching away at some pegmatites, Bob (digging partner) hit a promising seam. Small crystals started popping out of the ground, so I stopped prospecting and lent Bob a hand. Bob didn't need the help, but handed me one of his scratching tools as he knows it's almost as much fun seeing the crystals come out of the ground as digging them for yourself. We got over 50 smokys out of the ground and a number of small plates with smokys and microcline. There was nothing exceptional about this pocket, but a day in the mountains digging crystals beats just about anything else I know. I've attached a few pictures of the diggings. Everything is pretty much fresh out of the ground.

Iron infused dirt/clay with crystal definition showing in pocket

Small plate with smokys and microcline evident on piece of pegmatite

Interesting grouping of microcline

Fairly shallow pocket about 1.5 feet to bottom finished

A Return to Lake George

Now that all the snow has melted and the frost is out of the ground we decided to check out some of our crystal sites at Lake George. The winds had blown hard the previous week, so we came prepared with chainsaw in hand to clear the roads. Nobody seems to maintain these forest roads, most folks just try and find a way around down trees and create new roads. I'm not looking for a thank-you from the Bureau of Land Management or the National Forest Service, but I would think some of the folks who live in the area would bring a chainsaw instead of continually driving around the trees making new roads. On the other hand there are probably some rules prohibiting folks from cutting trees in the National Forest with out a permit whether they are blocking a road or not; however, there are also rules about staying on the road, so there you go. A couple of years ago we took out over 20 trees blocking the road. Today it was only about 8 trees fallen over the road. If you go to Lake George on a breezy day and venture out onto the forest roads, you may want to take a chainsaw or at least a sturdy rope if you plan to get home.

Looking up the road towards my SUV

I think Bob enjoys doing roadwork as much as he does finding crystals

After clearing the road we found we still have time to look for crystals. While prospecting the ground for crystal forms and pegmatites, one can not help but see the beauty of nature. It seems there was snow here only a couple of weeks ago, but the cactus are already in full bloom

Best Gems I Found This Day

Anyway, I finally found a promising seam of amazonite to prospect. I followed it for a couple of hours, but none of the crystals really panned out as they were all subhedral. Still it was good to get out and I guess we freed up the roads for everyone else.... you're welcome.

Subhedral Amazonite and Quartz Crystals From Pegmatite 

Lake George diggings of amazonite and smoky quartz

Welcome Back it's 2014!

Well, after a seemingly endless winter my rockhounding buddy and I finally got out to Lake George to check the conditions. We did a lot of walking around, checking areas for claims as well as prospective sites to dig this year. As you can see there was a lot of snow still clinging to the shadows and on the north sides of hills, but sunny areas were abundant and a few newly unearthed quartz fragments suggested crystal laden pegmatites below.

There was one area we were headed towards that I had been eyeing for a couple of years. The area was not claimed, but so close to the road that I doubted there could be much of anything there. Plus I don't like to dig near roads where others can hijack my dig before I am done. This day was different, it was very quiet and snow across the roads prohibited curious prospectors from driving down this particular road and seeing fresh dirt from a dig. I was drawn to this area because of previous digs, as well as a couple of recently fallen pine trees. The "Tree Root Pocket" on the Two Point (http://www.minfind.com/mineral-83909.html) is always in the back of my mind, so when I see a freshly downed tree I go check it. I walked about 20 feet from the truck to the fallen tree and there around the broken roots were fragments of amazonite.

I

Root ball of downed pine tree

I couldn't believe my luck, here it was my first day of the season and I'm already in an amazonite seam. At first I thought it might have been previously dug, but as I got past the initial dirt disturbed by the fallen tree I ran into quartz pieces that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. Onward and downward I went, digging ever so carefully between pieces of quartz and fragments of blue/green amazonite.

Rich pocket material  of quartz and amazonite beginning to show

The dirt began turning a yellowish color and I was certain I was digging into a pocket. The excitement quickened as the amazonite had good color and there was considerably smoky quartz shards also showing. Finding a nice sized amazonite and smoky quartz cluster would be a real prize for my first day in 2014. Unfortunately as soon as I found the pocket it disappeared into scree and white quartz. The pocket was very small, though typical of miarolitic cavities of this type in the Lake George pegmatites. Oh well, I got a few nice pieces and will return some day to see if I can pick up this seam again in search of other pockets of crystals. Below are a couple of pictures of some of the finds. These pieces are not all cleaned up yet, but they do show promise.

This grouping appears to be the nicest, approximately 3x1.5 inches. Always get a kick out of seeing established dealer prices on stuff like this.... and of course they always measure their specimens in millimeters.  So is it 2 inches, 5cm or 50mm. Fifty is more impressive number I suppose.