Rockhounding for Smokys at Lake George

Ray Berry, 81 years young, owns the mineral rights
to about 30 acres northeast of Lake George CO. 
Ray lets local clubs dig on his claims from time to time. Here you can see the Master crystal hunter at work.  Ray has been hunting crystals for over 50 years!

My digging friend and I arranged to permit the
Colorado Springs Mineral Society's crystal club to
dig on Ray's claim this past Saturday. Everyone found something to take home from the trip.  Some even found crystals.  Most just took home aches and pains, sunburn and the formation of new friendships.  We did find two pockets of crystals.  One pocket (5ft down) yielded about 30 crystals; however, none were more than 3 inches long.  Another pocket consisted of microcline and smokys.  None of my finds exceeded 2 inches in length. The pocket I found was mostly broken crystals with microcline, but at least we had something to show for our efforts.


While Ray retains the rights to any spectacular
(museum quality finds) he let us keep everything
we found.  Here we all are at days end sharing our stories of how the big crystal got away and examining our finds.