DRAGON'S MOUTH POCKET
SUMMER 2002
The summer mining season of 2002 is shaping up to be a great season. Shaping up because of the five significant pockets we produced, most specimens are still in stages of preparation.
We began mining on Saturday, 27 July as soon as we were allowed back into the area after the Hayman fire The fire burned from 8 June until the 15th of July and the area was closed until late July. It burned through the Smoky Hawk Mine on 9 June, leaving mostly charred trees. For awhile we feared we wouldn't get to mine at all, and I had begun wondering how we would accomplish our annual assessment work. We finally got word we could resume operations.
We had planned to sink another prospect on the Smoky Hawk Mine to determine if the previously discovered structure which produced the Green Ghost Pocket ran any deeper. The previous summer had showed good promise and a few specimens were produced. Even though we had good promise, Scott and Tim Pocket and the Green Ghost did not produce any quantity. Our experience, thus far, has been that a pocket produces a very few combination specimens, two to three at best, and many singles, and that's it. Even the remarkable find by hand diggers a few years earlier had produced only one world-class combination specimen. Of course those are the pieces that make the news.
The entire area we were working had been completely hand dug anywhere from 3' to 12' deep. We didn't expect to find pockets near the surface, but we were hopeful the structures ran below the depth the hand diggers had reached.
With this in mind, we decided to take the backhoe about 50 yards down the hill below the previous prospect and begin working back towards it. This area was marked by a small prospect downhill of one of the trees bearing our claim notice. A year before I had hand dug down to a very resistant pegmatite in this area which had shown some good amazonite fragments.
Through a lot of careful and tricky maneuvering on the steep hill, we finally got the backhoe to the west of the dig and began work. We first had to pull out the downed timber which had been felled by undercutting from previous hand diggers. In places, the timber was three to four layers thick. After seeing the backhoe down in what appeared a hopeless tangle of timber and hand-dug pits, I worried that we'd get it stuck. Jack, my operator, exclaimed, "There ain't a place I can drive this into, I can't eventually dig my way back out. You just tell me where you want it, Joe."
In no time Jack was turning over chunks of pegmatite about 1 1/2' thick. The sign was exceptional. Any time he pulled a chunk over, we expected to see a cavity. Sometimes 3" to 4" inch long subhedral amazonite crystals would tumble out, and large somoky fragments with euhedral faces occasionally showed, but no pocket was to be. We dug nearly the entire day without hitting any good crystals. I filled several 5-gallon buckets with good colored fragments, but nothing was euhedral.
We did nick a small seam near the marker tree which produced beautifully colored euhedral amazonite crystals. We also nicked a small seam on the south side, the uphill side, of the cut which partially opened.
Throughout the 28th, I continued to work the backhoe to the west of the tree, the tree being on the east side of the growing pit. Scott and Tim began working the small pockets we had exposed on Saturday. The pockets were badly fractured, but the color was nearly unmatched by any previously found. The amazonites were small, but had excellent luster. This seam became eventually known as the Baby Dragon Pocket. None of the openings exceeded 6", but the color from the hundreds of amazonite fragments was stunning. At times, it appeared as if green emeralds were spilling from the earth. Still, we had found nothing of size, nor were there any smokies to speak of. This was not going to pay for 13 solid hours of equipment and operator expenses.
By late afternoon a seam of coarse granite, approaching a true pegmatite structure, appeared across the length of the south face. It averaged about 3" wide but no crystals appeared. It was a solid tan color with some occasional smoky chunks. If we did open a pocket, it looked as if it would be microcline. Common microcline was even less promising. As evening drew near, we had a pit about 8' deep and we had mined through the coarse seam. Nothing but uniform, decomposing granite showed across the length of the face. We had now excavated uphill for about 15' from the initial spot and extended the dig to the west another 15'. Additionally, the original pegmatite we had been breaking up was completely removed. We never did encounter pockets within it. Sunday evening as I examined the prospect, I was rather discouraged. No pegmatite structures were visible and nothing of real substance had been encountered. I reminded myself that the time it had taken to get to this point had eaten up most of my digging capital. I had enough cash remaining for a few more hours on Monday and that would be it. The night of July 28, I must admit, I went to bed rather discouraged, and not certain of how to proceed.
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| Opening the Baby Dragon | Many loose good colored amazonites | |
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| Very fine color | A possible good combo | A combo revealed |