Figured I had better write this before I get too far behind and forget the details of it, found a very pretty dogtooth pocket at the new secret spot a few weeks ago, bright orange dogtooths attached to some very pretty colored druse. Missy and I didnt arrive til noon and it was the start of daylight savings time, so I knew we had at least six hours of daylight in case we needed it and it was going to be a nice warm day as well, reaching nearly 75 degrees that day. Here is one of the nicer ones I found, just to whet your appetite….

…it`s not in very good focus, but is very appealing looking and you can see some of the colors I was enjoying as well. I actually found it by doing some raking around a few likely looking bumps at the base of the wall and  soon spotted some calcite indicators at the bottom of a ledge, as well as water filling the hole I was digging, which I really didnt like, but sometimes you have to take the bad with the good…..

…as I dug into the pocket, I started seeing twins and triples of poker chips…very few singles except those attached to clusters attached to the base rock on the sides as the pocket expanded into a trench that was about fifteen inches wide and started expanding to my left and deepening down…..

…the water in the pocket was cold….very cold…spring fed type cold….and kept filling in every ten minutes with whatever amount I took out by bailing….pretty soon it was evident that I needed something bigger to bail with, the little water bowl for Missy that I had wasnt getting the job done, so I went back to my truck and pulled out the 3.5 gallon square bucket that I keep my tools in, and began bailing water much more efficiently after that. I was taking seven to ten gallons out of that pocket every fifteen minutes and digging out crystals in between bailing times….here you see crystals just waiting to be pulled out of the loose fill and muck as the pocket kept expanding to my left….

…and here is a group of crystals already found so far….

…some attached to some pretty plates of bubbly druse too….

…and after about four hours of continuously expanding to the left, pulling out twins and triples and small clusters, including some I was able to chisel from the sides of the trench pocket, I came to the end of the pocket….

…after clearing away more loose fill and muck above, it turned into a cavelike opening, capped with a dome of ten inch thick dolomite rock, the pocket contained even more cold water and was filled with about twenty dogtooth crystals and clusters….

most of them just hanging out loose in the water waiting to be found…the one at the beginning of this post is the first one I pulled out, and one of the larger ones as well, here is a closer up and sharper view of it and another of the other ones as well….

…after removing these and wrapping them up with three cloths as opposed to the normal one cloth, I sat back and rested a bit, then gathered up my bags of goodies, tools, and buckets, and Missy and I headed for the barn. Sure was a nice productive day. 

Boy after the winter we have had this year, with the extremely cold temps and snow/ice, one would probably think a trip to My Favorite Quarry was impossible to pull off, but no one was more surprised than me to see about five days of beautiful warm weather and sunny skies, pop up into the calendar three weeks into the snowiest month of the year. Missy and I loaded up early Saturday morning, the 22nd and headed out to see what we could find. My buddy had called me a few days before to let me know that very little work was going on at the quarry, but they were slowly and surely removing the blast pile. I figured everywhere else the ground would remain frozen and with work going on there, we could prob find some looser material to work with. We arrived at the quarry about 8:30 am, and I pulled up on the east wall and saw what appeared to be some fractured areas in the wall that may have occurred as a result of freezing and thawing…I parked here to check them out…I soon had my bags parked next to a few pockets along the wall and began working them….

….I was working the smaller pockets when my buddy Jim showed up and stopped by to visit briefly, taking a break from working on his house. I had worked my way down from where I parked the truck and found several smaller pockets…could see the wall was fractured in several areas, although some of them were way up high too….

…my bags are about four feet up from the ground level, and footing up there was slip and slide, so those pockets higher than four feet were hard to reach, cause I was constantly sliding down in the loose gravel and dirt. I had filled my apron up with the smaller pocket goodies and then finally reached this area of the wall about thirty yards west of where I started and when I found this pocket, I knew I would need the bags, it was that nice looking up close….

…some of the first few pieces I pulled from this pocket, were these nice chunks of calcite druse…

 A few minutes later, a white car entered the quarry and drove over to my truck and parked, and a guy got out and said he hoped I would be there when he arrived…came over and introduced himself as Kurt and told me that he had been reading my blog site on rockhunting for the past year. Turns out he is a teacher in Lebanon, Missouri and new to rockhunting…he had dropped his wife off at a seminar in Rolla that morning and then decided to drive down and see if he could find anything, and was hoping to find me there as well. We talked for a few minutes and then I showed him what I was finding that morning and he decided to go further east along the wall and see what he could find. About thirty minutes later I looked up and he was over in the area of the original wall, which is still a very good producing area to work….

….I continued to work the bigger pocket, which was positioned under some heavy rocks, that seemed very attached to the base rock, so one less thing to worry about…..

….I started cleaning out the pocket, pulling out several smaller pieces of druse, enough to fill a bag by itself, and then started coming across smaller poker chip crystals mixed in. Soon I was able to look down into the gaps and see some darker poker chip crystals lurking in the shadows so to speak….

…and so far, I had a pretty respectable pile of keepers….

…I kept digging in and cleaning and pretty soon the pocket started burrowing in and more crystals started showing up in the dirt at the bottom of the pocket….

…and pretty soon, it had expanded a bit more and I came upon this….

…plus the bottom of the pocket started producing some very pretty poker chips, some of them quite big, some triples blended together like this one… 

…and here is the bottom of the pocket, where you can see yet another nice poker chip hiding in the dirt….what you cant see here yet, are the many other crystals that were hiding in cluster form, mainly because I haven`t yet dug them out and exposed them, but believe me, they were there, and I was able to chip them out a few minutes later….

…and here is the one that was hiding on the right in the last photo…..

Kurt left about 3 pm that afternoon, he had a little longer drive home than I did…Missy and I took off about an hour later, exhausted and very happy with my finds that day….sure was a nice day, as the temps got up to about 65 that day….

Well folks, as you can see, I am behind again…had a great dogtooth pocket weekend, I found a great pocket each day. Saturday it was just Missy and me and we arrived at the new secret spot about mid morning…we were expecting forty degrees, but the constant wind from the northwest made it feel more like 30 degrees. Once I got started digging in with my mini mattox, though, I warmed up fast and stayed right there all day, and once I started finding pockets and crystals, the weather soon left my mind.  As soon as I pulled in and parked, I looked over at this mound of solid looking rock, and decided to start raking rocks down the side of it and see if I could locate an opening to a pocket, so I started to the right of if and worked my way to the center of that mound….

…and as luck would have it, I didnt find anything except a poker chip or two here and there, until I reached the center of that mound, then I found a spot on the mound where there were a couple of nice looking poker chips just sitting there under some big rocks….

….now, its not that hole in the center above as that is one of several that range across the bottom of that mound of rock…the pocket I located is above my mini mattox above it…here it is up closer….

…see if you can locate the poker chip…I didn`t see it right away, but boy when I did, it was fantastic….I went back to my truck and came back with a bag and some wrapping cloths…I didn`t have many cloths this trip, had loaned out some and haven`t had them returned to me yet. Luckily I did have a couple of rolls of blue shop towels with me, and wound up using both rolls of the towels. Here is that poker chip closer up in case you didn`t spot it above….

…and the first few that I managed to pull out including the one above….

…here the next one shows the pocket starting to form up….

…and here are some that I pulled out from under that huge ledge of rock above in the next few minutes….

…the difference between this one and the last one, there are some druse plates in this one…and here you see the pocket going up under a small bluff of rocks….

…and here is a poker chip hiding up under the stone ledge in the pocket….

…or at least, what I thought was one poker chip in the pocket, turned out to be one of several, as I kept pulling rocks and slabs of ugly rock out of the way and revealed even more….

…with even more druse plates, as you can see in the next photo as the goodie pile continues to build….

…the next few that I pulled out of the pocket were ceiling plates, like this guy…he is a little out of focus and I`m not sure what the AF was concentrating on but obviously it wasn`t the nice combo cluster….

After pulling this nice one out, I looked inside and saw yet another one hanging upside down and decided to go after it as well, after stuffing the pocket opening with several cloths, and then attempting to chisel it out from the roof of the pocket, which was no easy feat as it was cramped and close quarters with a small opening to the pocket….

…here is the view inside the pocket that I had…..

I decided a little widening was in order, so I removed the loose stuff on the left with no problem and then tackled the big chunk of crystals on the right side of the mouth opening, which required a bit more work, chiseling it out from the far side where it was attached to the base of that mound of solid rock, but once out of the way, I had smooth sailing for removing everything else from that pocket….

….including this nice second combo cluster….

…it took me about an hour to clean out that pocket, it widened out at the back wall and I was able to remove some druse with chips there…there were some hollow sounding areas around the back of the pocket so I explored those, but they ended up being holie druse pockets, small and shallow. From here, I moved to the left and started raking and digging once again, and eventually came upon another spot that appeared to be promising…. 

…very promising indeed….. 

…it was located at the top of that ridge of solid looking rock…I had started scraping and raking at the bottom and worked my way up, snagging a couple of poker chips with the rake end of the mattox and then just looked for an opening, this one above….I carefully cleared out the loose stuff around it and pulled some loose crystals out, eventually the mouth widened out quite a bit….

…and started opening to the right side….

…I was pulling alot of druse out initially, then some chips and druse, as well as a lot of loose crappy rock, gray dolomite shale type stuff…. 

…and when I got that cleared, I looked to the right and just inside the pocket, was what appeared to be a beautiful yellow-orange dogtooth crystal….

…so I began pulling all the rocks above and around it out of the way and then, removed the dogtooth and let me tell you, there were many more inside the pocket, took me a good hour just to clear them out of there…here are a few of them…..

small ones and big ones alike….

…I stopped and took about twenty minutes to wrap them up real good using my blue shop towels….you may not be able to tell here, but those rock walls are about two and a half feet deep along the right side of the pocket…

…and as you can see, there is now an opening going to the left, which I explored for a few minutes and pulled out a few more dogtooths from…..

It then dropped down toward a deeper pocket and that`s where I stopped digging for the day, exhausted after moving all that rock and pulling all those beautiful dogtooth crystals from.  I decided to return the next day and see what else I could find, and contacted Ray to see if he would like to come down and work the dogtooth pocket where I stopped.

 We started down Sunday morning about 9:30 am…I had told Ray the night before, that I was not leaving until at least 9 am, wanted to sleep in a bit and rest up some from Saturday`s digging…my hands were still sore even after taking two aleve and getting a good soak in the hot tub. I told him on the way down, that he could start on the pockets I had worked the day before, where I found the dogtooths, and see if he could find more, was fairly sure there were more pockets there from what I could see when I left, the downward angle on the left side and the opening under the rock on the right side. I would leave it up to him if he wanted to work it or not.  

We arrived to find the temps starting to climb already, supposed to hit at least 53, and as it was, it reached the better part of 60, and felt great. After looking the pockets over, Ray decided to give it a shot and see what he could find, he had brought along an extra hammer and pry bar, called a Gorilla Bar, and he was able to move some of that heavy rock pretty easily with it.

…in the meantime, I decided to scratch around and see if I could find some more pockets to the left, so I started down that ridge once again, trying to loosen up my fingers and hands, still somewhat stiff and sore from the day before. Pretty soon, I heard Ray yell out that he had found a pretty dogtooth pocket…so I grabbed my camera to photograph what he had found….for starters, this nice jewel…..

…and the pocket it was located in was on the right side under the heavy rock walls….

…I went back to scraping and digging, and about twenty feet to the left of him, I opened up a pocket in the loose gravels and dirt wall….

…it appeared to be one that had fallen down fairly intact from the blast wall behind and above, with alot of loose crappy rock in the front of it, some of which came away when I grabbed it with the rake end of the mattox as I was scraping and raking downward….

….but leaving some to pull away and reveal what was still inside the pocket…..

…it appeared to me that the main ceiling plate had fallen down face first into the muck at the bottom of the pocket, prob dislodged by the initial blast, so I first cleaned all the little stuff off the top of it and then tried to move it. There was also a nice cluster of poker chips still attached to the ceiling, right above it….

At first it wouldn`t budge, figured it might be frozen somewhat, so I walked back to the truck and got some water and then grabbed another bag, and when I got back, it seemed to have loosened up, was prob just frozen to the bottom of the pocket. When it finally did come out tho, it came out in pieces, five pieces to be exact.  Here is a photo of some of the twins and singles that I removed from the pocket initially, as well as some druse plates….

…I had this pocket cleaned out within about 30 minutes and as I was wrapping up the goodies, I noticed Missy walking around on a big ice flow about thirty yards away….

By this time, Ray had walked up to the top of the hill looking for druse, chipping some plates and pieces of nice pretty white druse out of some boulders up there. I continued to the left for about another thirty feet, then walked back to some water holes, that we had dug out weeks before and looking down in one spot, discovered a dogtooth nestled in the gravels. I reached down and dug around a bit and started finding dogtooths all over the place, moved some rocks and found an entire pocket of dogtooths embedded in the gravel and under some rocks…

…and what appeared to be a hole in the ground, under a slab of rock, that might indicate a pocket below…by this time, late in the day, Ray was finishing up filling some flats with some druse plates he had chipped out of some more boulders, and decided to come down and see what I had found….

After filling another bag with my finds, I told him to take over if he wanted and see what he could find…as he was muscling out some of the rocks to see if there was another pocket below, he looked up and pointed out the sun setting on the trees on the far hill from us and my truck in the afterglow….

Ray was able to find one dogtooth that was nice and pretty, even after moving a few large rocks around…so we packed it in and headed home shortly after that….we did manage to find a beautiful sunset on the way home…cotton candy clouds amidst a sea of fire….

James 🙂

jwjphoto7@gmail.com