Jeff showed up Friday morning eager to dig. We had successfully pumped nearly all of the groundwater from the pit. This left some treacherous mud - a wrong step in certain places could get you stuck up to your waist in thick mud.

Click on the above picture to enlarge

We were able to recover a decent amount of amethyst from a wall section of the pit. Many of the pieces were somewhat fractured and distorted as an apparent result from contact with the growing roots of pine trees. But there were more than a few wonderfully shaped and colorful crystals.

    
Click on above pictures to enlarge

I made several attempts on Friday to dig near the central portion of the pit. It was particularly difficult digging in this area as it was coated with thick mud up from 2-feet to who knows how thick. The mud has to be scraped away to reach the highly weathered rock below. To make digging even more difficult, groundwater continuously seeped up through fractures, so if you dug a hole it would quickly fill with water that would have to be constantly bailed. There was one spot in the pit that kept calling my name throughout the day. Late in the afternoon, I returned to this spot and discovered was appeared to be the start of a pocket. For whatever reason, I started fishing around below the mud and water with my hands and, much to my surprise, I pulled out a killer scepter like the one pictured below.

Click on the above picture to enlarge

"Holy Cow!", I exclaimed to Jeff who was poking around a spot of his own. His interest in the other location diminished quickly as he headed over to see what I was getting into. I wasn't long before I, again, reached down into the muck and pulled out another scepter, only this one was much larger than the first. As you can see from the following picture, the scepter is composed a double-terminated pale amethyst crystal on a hexagonal quartz rod.

Click on the above picture to enlarge

Before the day was over, I pulled out a couple more small scepters. These new finds certainly got all our adrenaline flowing again but it was getting late in the day so we decided that it would be best to hit the spot in the morning when we would be more fresh.

We returned the next morning and pretty much hit the big time. We spent a great deal of time and energy digging out the area in an attempt to locate the pocket that we hoped would contain more amethyst crystals and scepters. After about an hour of digging, we started recovering lots of crystals as we completely exposed the pocket.

The following picture shows a close-up of the pocket in the middle of our great run

Click on the above picture to enlarge

By around noon on Saturday, the pocket had been completely worked but we had recovered dozens of wonderful amethyst crystals including numerous scepters. We stopped to take a picture of each of us to help illustrate what will become a wonderful memory of a fantastic day of rockhounding.

 
A Couple Silly but Happy Rockhounds
Mike Streeter & Jeff Deere

The following pictures show some of what I was lucky enough to take home from our dig.

Click on all specimen pictures to enlarge

Click on all specimen pictures to enlarge

Mr. Ivey's mangy-headed little dog was sorry to see us leave Saturday afternoon, but there were nothing but smiles all around for Jeff and I.

KOR

Mike