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.