MINING HIGHLIGHTS FROM SEASON 2008
We began our season, as we usually do, by our annual tree-planting days on reclaimed sites. This year, we planted 100 mixed ponderosa and Douglas fir trees along with 120 mixed shrubs of mountain mahogany, meadow rose, and wax currant. We use these three shrubs because they are excellent forage for wildlife. We topped off the tree- and shrub-planting with reseeding. We use a mix of native grasses and usually seed in the fall before the snow and again in the spring. Some seasons the rains are good and we get excellent growth, but other times we need to reseed a couple times. It's not cheap. The native mix is $17 a pound and I use about 80 pounds a season.
About mid May, we began operating with mechanized equipment. We started on our northern claims--the C & J No. 1 and No. 2, the Free Hawk, and the Cut Dog. These lie mostly north of Little Beaver Creek and have previously only been hand dug. These are also on the northern extremity of the ring-dike structure and the pegmatites differ from those to the south where the Smoky Hawk is situated. Although hand digging produced several good pockets over the seasons, none of these claims had been dug using mechanized equipment, and we were excited to see the results.
We had permitted and bonded with the Forest Service in 2006 so we could put in an access road to get our excavator on site. Unfortunately, as with the 2007 season, we had our fair share of Gremlins and lost a track pin on the 690. Somehow, Robert was able to get the pin to stay in sufficiently for us to walk the machine back to the access road. I escorted in a maintenance truck from Colorado Springs, unsure if it could negotiate the 4WD road in. Somehow he managed! If he he hadn't been able, our season could have really been put on ice.
Although we worked for two weeks, you won't see any photos of any great pockets. There were none! So much for our northern expedition and high expectations. The pegmatites here contain amazonite which is almost entirely locked solidly in the quartz. Although a few faces showed in places, nothing opened into a worthy pocket.
We still have some prospects on the Cut Dog to check; however, if these don't prove up, we'll remove and reclaim our road and call it quits on these claims. They will continue to produce a few small pockets for diligent field collectors, but it appears the structures are not conducive to large open cavities.
ENTER FOR NORTHERN CLAIMS PHOTOS
We returned to the Two Point Mine for a planned two weeks and then moved operations to the Blue Streak No. 2 for a week. Last season, we worked completely around the site of the Tree Root Pocket found in 1997. Although we found a number of pockets, none had the same intense blue nor uniform coloration which made the Tree Root Pocket noteworthy. The best pocket produced this season held numerous small groups of good quality amazonite and smoky quartz crystals. These will be prepped for a future show.
Of note on the Two Point, we encountered a large pegmatite which opened, one pocket after the other of common, pale tan, occasionally a pale green, microcline with short, stubby smokies. Some of these will clean up to be nice plates of microcline and smoky, but none were strongly colored. In one pocket, we hit a number of outstanding fluorites. These were a distinct pale green with some bluish zoning, which under artificial light appear purplish.
ENTER FOR TWO POINT AND BLUE STREAK NO. 2 PHOTOS
We spent the remainder of the season operating on the Smoky Hawk. This mine has produced consistently--both a large number of pockets and amazonites of exceptional color. We had planned to excavate below our known structures and determine if pegmatites existed at depth. To do this, we began by cleaning off the old excavation site and then drilling and blasting. This is the first time we have blasted since 1991. It took four days to get the overburden removed. A knob of rock protruded from the floor. This was the site for our first drilling. It took eight rounds to fracture this section and remove it. Unfortunately, no good pegmatites showed within this structue, but blasting revealed a small pegmatite running behind the knob. This eventually opened into a couple small, but excellent pockets. One held five amazonite clusters of manebach twins.
The south wall was entirely unaltered granite. We decided to remove as much as possible to open up the floor area to allow additional blasting and deepening of the excavation. Again we did not expose any pockets in the unaltered rock we removed by blasting. Again, however, a seam opened behind the rock. This pegmatite turned out to be the best of the summer. It actually breached the surface--so a field collector could have dug the uppermost pockets--and then dipped at about 45 degrees downwards completely into the excavation floor, running about 25 feet in length. We found a remarkable eight pockets along this pegmatite. All held intensly colored amazonites--some of the best color we have found. Unfortunately, all these pockets were rubble and held only a few single amazonites worthy of collecting. We did collect the cutting rough, however, because of the outstanding color. The third pocket from the surface opened into our best pocket--called the Smithsonian. It eventually produced a remarkable number of good plates. (This pocket will be addressed through a separate page.)
Otherwise, mining on the Smoky Hawk was stingy. We recovered a fairly high number of pockets, again, most had good color, but most were badly fractured and only a few held decent combination plates.
At the close of the season, we left the main pit relatively open for study. I had agreed to host a pegmatite symposium and wanted them to be able to see some of the pegmatite structures. Afterwards, I did host a club visit and some friends who found some beautiful fluorites in the upper portion of the pegmatite. The bottom section of this pegmatite was buried to prevent looting. At season close, it was beginning to show some huge amazonites. If there are any pockets, the crystals could be exceptional. But this will wait until the 2009 season.