Morganite

Fall 2011 Razz is taking to the mine like he was born to it. He is very curious. I am hoping I can train him to sniff out tourmaline, but so far I have had no luck with the other dogs. He loves to be where the action is. He has many of the similar traits that Otto had, at times it's a little spooky. Where Boston Terriers don't have a very warm coat he won't be able to come up much longer as they don't like to spend too much time outdoors when it is cold.

New dog in town-Razz Ma Tazz 

It is getting close on to a year that we have been working in Otto's pocket. As we expand the pocket in some areas there is not much interesting to find, but you never know when this will change. In cleaning off some of the rubble around the pocket the decision was made to try working it in a new direction. This would mean that when we expose the ledge to work the new area it would limit the access into the rest of the mine for a period of time. Since the goal is to find new mineral specimens there was nothing wrong with that plan. Where we already had worked the adjacent area fairly deep, it make expanding the pocket in search of new material frelatively easy. It seemed that the pocket area in the new section that we were working was not nearly as deep. This could be the pocket might end. We were pulling out some smokies when all of a sudden I felt something different.

Photo by Raymond Sprague   Frank Perham with a large piece of morganite just out of the pocket. He was pretty excited about pulling this out. As you can see he had on a rain jacket but that was not even a consideration in light of what was being found. He said he would have walked all the way from home if he knew he could pull something out of the ground like this. He lives at least 30 miles away.

Another large piece of morganite out of the same pocket. You can see some smoky quartz crystals under the milky quartz, just above the morganite. 

Originally some small pieces of etched beryl came out. Just by the feel you can tell what they are when you rub your fingers over them. It feels like your hand is getting snagged on the etched sections. As  we dug a little more, some larger pieces which were mostly orange came out. We called Frank Perham to see if he was interested in coming down to see what we were pulling out. By the time he got here we had pulled out most of the larger pieces but as he started digging in the pocket he found a fairly nice  piece that we had not got to. Whenever you find anything like this you hope that it keeps going or that you are only at the beginning and the specimens are only going to get better but it shortly runs out and then the search is back on. Usually you don't appreciate the moment until it is gone. After the morganite came out it the pocket went back to just quartz. As I kept working the rest of the pocket, the rock on top started to thicken up making it difficult to keep going. Winter was starting to come on and it was decided to leave the pocket and the mineralized zone alone until it warmed up in the spring.

Photo by Raymond Sprague Frank Perham overseeing the digging of the pocket.

Photo by Raymond Sprague One of the first pieces of morganite to come out of this section of Otto's pocket. This was a little earlier in the day and at the time no rain coats were needed. 

Going to the mine isn't all about mining. That of course it the primary reason, but there is other things to do, although not truly out in the wilderness there is fair amount of wildlife to be seen. There are are hawks that hang out around the mine from time to time. There is a bald eagle that I have seen on several occasions. One day there was some type of weasel running through the air compressor I assume looking for mice. I have seen coyotes, deer and owls and there are many turkeys on occasion. In the fall is is nice to take a walk down by the river. We usually will do this on a Sunday so as not to have to worry about hunters. The dogs love this time as they are not having to compete with the mining. It is also nice to get up to the mine early and just find a place to sit in the sun and contemplate the mine and what needs to get done. Most of the time when working the mine there is some type of equipment running which ruins the solitude.

The Havey quarry overlooks the Hatch Farm on Mount Apatite Cookin Carol, now owns  it, and you can get access to the Hatch Ledge through her. Up beyond the farm house on the edge of the field is the Hatch Ledge where they first found tourmaline in this area in the 1860's. Feldspar production started in the late 1800's  farther up the hill in the wooded area. At the time it would have been all fields and you would have been able to see people working at several off the different quarries . The famous Pulsifer quarry noted for it's world class purple apatite would be out of the picture to the upper left on the lower slopes of Mount Apatite. This part of Mount Apatite is privately owned but access can be had by going through Poland Mining Camps. The wooded area behind the farm is part of Mount Apatite Park which is open to the public and many rock hounds continue to work the dump piles still finding some nice specimens, but you need to dig deep as they have been worked very hard. There has been some conversation about turning the dumps in the future. This is the only public tourmaline mine in the US that I know of and you can get it for free. When the miners were working for feldspar almost 100 years ago much of the tourmaline was looked at as a waste product and thrown on the dumps. 

Little Androscoggin River about 1/4 mile from the mine. Back in the early 1900's when they were working both Mount Apatite and the Berry Havey quarry for feldspar there was a raft they pulled across the river so as to be able to have quick access to both mining areas. Besides owning the Havey Quarry, Forest Havey also oversaw the production of some of the other feldspar mines. 

Trail along the edge of the property where they run sled dogs in the winter it makes for a great walking path as it gets very little use in the off season. Razz is some happy that he doesn't have to pull a sled in the winter. He much rather be under a warm blanket.

Otto's Pocket Extension

Photo by Ray Sprague Any pocket that is big enough to sleep in is a good pocket. This was a quartz pocket that we had been working on with  not a decent crystal in the whole pocket which is quite rare. It provided a nice respit on a hot summer day. We believe this pocket was part of  the Otto Pocket extension. 

Summer 2011 Although there was still some workable area in Otto's pocket it was hard going and the results were marginal. At this point it was difficult to work and  was mostly producing some inferior quartz crystals. Not that we were giving up on it but it was time to move forward and keep this as a fall back position. A blast had been done and there was a full entourage at the Havey, with Ray, Jim and Mike, myself and the dogs. Things were getting crowded. We were cleaning up from a blast hoping to find some interesting.. There were some  pink bubble gum colored tourmaline in quartz. They were completely opaque but they were still interesting. The area looked like it held potential and as the day went on Mike was holding out hoping that we were going to break into something soon. He had made another commitment and needed to head for home and he didn't want to miss the big score. After he left we continued scraping off some of the debris with the excavator, Jim motioned for me to stop and he  pulls out a smoky quartz crystal. Finding the smoky with the excavator is not what you hope to do, raking the teeth of a 30,000lb machine is not usually good for the specimen.

Here is diagram that was sent to Encar Roda PhD with some of the pockets labeled. As she is in Spain, Ray sends frequent updates to what is going on with the mining. This was taken a few weeks before we hit Otto's extension. What is labeled as the Big Smoky Quartz and Morganite Pocket would have been the original Otto's Pocket and the Otto's Extension is labeled Newest Big Pocket area. Where it is labeled Your Quartz Pocket, that is a pocket that Encar had worked in at the same time that we was working the Spaniard's Tourmaline pocket that is labeled in the corner. Of course  to get access into the pocket some ledge was needed to be blasted above it. 

Photo by Ray Sprague A couple of very dark smokies that had come out to the right of the hammer.

Photo by Ray Sprague A large parallel growth smoky you can see the underside in the picture above.

Jim got to work the right hand side of the pocket and I got to work the left and we met in the middle. My side was not producing much of interest, there were quite a few areas of micro quartz with an occasional few larger ones up to small finger size mixed in. Some of this material was put on the high grade dump pile for the collectors to find. Jim's side of the pocket was much different there were smoky quartz crystals stacked one on top of another and it was a difficult and slow puzzle to take apart. It was well worth the effort as a couple smoky quartz plates came out with very little damage.

Photo by Ray Sprague When this  was cleaned up and the staining removed it turned into a pretty spectacular specimen.

Photo by Ray Sprague Looks like I am trying to sneak over onto Jim's side which was producing much more interesting material than my side.

Photo by Ray Sprague Jim helping steady this large quartz crystal This is Raymonds contribution to the pocket. This came out just to the right and below Jim's feet in the previous picture. The smoky quartz side was down and the back side that was up was just plain ugly. It is was a nice piece when cleaned with several different types of quartz growth patterns. If my mother ever gives it up it will go back to it's rightful owner. Raymond spent several days working on getting it. 

After Raymond had removed enough material to get the large quartz there were several other large quartz crystals underneath it. Although they were all smaller and most came out in several pieces. This could be because I was working the area and didn't have the patience of Ray. Thankfully even though some of them came out in pieces non of them seemed to be as nice as Ray's. There was a lot of feldspar showing beyond this with dendrites and it looked promising for the pocket to keep going so we worked the area to find an additional chamber fill with you guessed it, more smoky quartz.

Its nice to have enough room to lay in the main pocket with room to spare and work  a "small" chamber off from it.  We knew it couldn't go much further as I had blasted in that area earlier in the year.  You can see the feldspar with the dendrites above where I am working.