Elusive Quality Amazonite at Lake George

While I have found amazonite at Lake George and I found some this trip out, I haven't found anything anywhere near the quality that folks post for sale. I had found some float amazonite the previous time out and decided to return to that area to find the host pegmatite. The roads were pretty rough and there were piles of hail from a previous days storm. The ruts in the road are getting deeper and I noted someone before me had bottomed out their vehicle a few times. I put the vehicle in 4-wheel low and proceeded with caution. While the Forest Service has the road marked, they don't maintain it. We have worked to repair this road more times this year than all previous years combined and it looks like we'll need to spend some more time on the road again soon. Even though I had planned to hike towards the amazonite I'd found on a previous trip I always prospect wherever I go. This day while hiking in I found a large piece of float quartz and decided it merited inspection. I looked up the hill and there were no digs above me, so I decided it was time to search. Digging in the ground about 2 feet above the initial find I found another piece of well-formed quartz, then another and another.

Large Smoky fragment with more up the hill

The smoky fragments were fairly large and had no coating of secondary material. Looked like I might be on to something. Soon I began to find more concentrated quartz fragments and then some pegmatite leading me right toward a dead tree. Sure enough the closer I got to the base of the tree the better the specimens got. Keeping my fingers crossed and taking a few pictures I put my pick axe and rock hammer away and proceeded cautiously with a borrowed scratcher.

Pocket starting to show itself at the base of a dead tree

I lost my scratcher the last time out so I had borrowed one from my digging partner Bob prior to setting out. It's crystal time! While I found over 50 crystals only 4 or 5 were big enough for me to consider as display pieces. We'll see how they clean up, but they seemed pretty clean right out of the pocket.

Nice smoky, albeit small with microcline

I finished this pocket and then poked around in the area a little more to see if the pegmatite extended further up the hill with pockets. Find nothing and since it was about 1PM I decided I better get to my initial objective of the amazonite area. I had found some float amazonite the previous week but not the source. This day I had enough time to find the source and dig out some pegmatite. While the crystals were of good color so far they have been very small. Time was up this day but I will continue the dig soon and hopefully find a pocket of amazonite

Wild flowers are everywhere this year due to rains

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