A Nice Three Day Weekend, Part 2….

Sunday afternoon, after another photo shoot, Missy and I loaded up and headed back to the secret spot to see if we could work on those other potential areas I found late the day before…this time we got a late start and arrived about 2 pm…..

01 Back to Bulldozed Area

knowing I only had a few hours of light, I quickly started working the first area with my hand rake…..

02 Starting Here Today

and pretty soon I was seeing signs of calcite, always a good sign of potential pockets nearby….

03 Calcite Shows Potential

and pretty soon I had a few nice crystals dug out of the beginnings of a pocket…

04 Crystals Found Initially

and pretty soon I was finding one pocket after another, usually one leading to the other by way of a narrow trench filled with crystals and small druse plates. Just as you would think the pocket was going to open up into a bigger pocket, you would come up against a wall of rock and nothing more from the pocket, an abrupt end to the pocket. Then I would move a few inches over and find yet another pocket forming and more crystals…here is what it looked like after the first thirty minutes of raking and digging….

05 Pockets Forming Up

and I had the same problem as the day before, piling my crystals up in the wrong place…of course today, it wouldn`t have mattered where I piled them up…the pockets expanded in every direction and I wouldn`t have been safe anywhere with them….after hitting a dead end quickly on the left hand pocket above, I moved over and started digging out the pocket on the right….

06 Explored Pocket on Right

 I cleaned it out and moved more to the right where I found even more small pockets….this area just kept expanding with one pocket after another….

07 Expanded to Right

and here is the pile of crystals that just keeps growing….

08 Crystal Pile Growing

and I kept moving to the right and digging down and finding even more pockets with crystals coming out right and left….

09 Upper Bench Pockets

this one pretty much came to an abrupt end when I came up against a solid wall of curved rock on the far end of the right side…but if you look under that pile of crystals, which by now I have moved back three times, you`ll see the makings of more pockets under those little bluff walls, and yes, you guessed it, I had to move the crystals once again to explore under those plates…plates of druse as it turned out….

10 Pocket Starts Toward Pile

so I took a few moments and high graded the crystals and plates, moved the rejects back about two feet and piled the rest over on the right side of the solid rock wall and started working those druse plates, til I found yet another pocket ….

13 Upper Bench Pocket

here are the druse plates and crystals that I took out to get to this point….

12 More Crystals Found

and here is the pocket up close, and you can see a few crystals inside it….I dug those out fairly easily and reached back a little further and pulled even more out…

14 Inside Upper Bench Pocket

as I was digging this one out to enable me to get my hand in there further, the top of the pocket came down and this druse and poker chip combo plate came down with the dirt….

15 Druse and Chip Combo

I took as many crystals out as I could and then took a break and wrapped up the nicer crystals and druse plates and carried them to the truck…I had about 45 minutes left and decided to check out one more area, where I had raked around earlier on a break and while raking, a hole opened up, that appeared to be quite deep….\

16 Next Pocket Started With Hole

found this hole about twenty feet from the original pocket from Saturday and closer to the truck actually. While raking, I came across an area of calcite that really looked promising and then I pulled a chunk of druse out that was hanging upside down and this hole opened up underneath it…..

17 Hole Surrounded by Calcite

I really need to start taking my flashlight with me so I can look into them and see if they bear exploring further…this one just appealed to me though, it seemed to me that it was deep and might contain another cavern and boy did it….

18 Deep Hole As it Turned Out

I pulled these druse plates out and the hole opened up even more…

19 Druse Plates From Hole Pocket

however, even though I could get my hand down in the hole and started pulling some beautiful crystal singles and twins out, the opening wasn`t large enough to get some bigger ones out, so I pounded on a large chunk of druse to enlarge the opening more and this nice druse chunk with poker chips is what came out….

20 One of the Plates

there are some neat looking hematite balls all over the druse on that chunk too. The next photo shows the enlarged opening of the pocket…

21 Plate Removed Expanded Hole

about a foot wide at this point and the next one shows better how deep the pocket is…or at least how deep it appeared at this point…

22 Hole Expands and Deepens

after a few more minutes of pulling one crystal after another, out of this pocket, including a few plates of druse with poker chips attached, and twins and triples, I sat back and shot this photo and it shows a nice few poker chips attached to druse on the ceiling of the pocket near the opening….

23 Crystals and Plates From Deep Pocket

and this also shows the pile of crystals growing on the left side…you cant tell here but the pile is about fifteen inches tall, mostly singles here, as I put the more delicate crystals and plates on the right out of view of the camera here…the next photo shows that nice ceiling plate still in the pocket….

24 Plate of Chips and Druse on Ceiling

I ran out of light soon after and wrapped what I could quickly and then packed everything away in my truck. The sun was setting rather nicely again, as Missy and I started up the hill….

26 Sunset Looking Nice

and then at the top of the hill as we headed home….

27 Sunset From Top of Hill

 

stay tuned for part three….

 

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