well had the surprise of my life last week when I drove into the upper area entrance, my expression to Missy was ” Holie Cow”……cause there were about 25 head of cattle milling around, mostly white ones and a big black bull, in an area we have never seen or even imagined finding…. cattle…..
….well we drove on down to the lower area and searched around the pocket I found last week to see if we could find some more nice stuff….and below it to the left quite a ways.
I didn`t find any sign of another pocket at all, so after about 30 minutes and thinking I wasn`t going to find anything except a couple of drill holes , I started looking on the other side of the first pocket…and began looking at the depressed areas, areas that looked like they had some depth to them..and settled on the area of a big clay mudhole between the parking area and the ridge where we have been finding pockets.
I dug down and within just a few inches of muddy gravel, started finding plates of druse embedded in this gravel upside down, and within just a few minutes, the druse plates had poker chips attached to them…
..and then a few minutes later, poker chips were seen mixed in the gravel between the plates, all over the place…and then shortly after I found the first pocket which looked like a typical pocket.
..here are some of the plates that came out of the first pocket….
…and in the photo above you can see some of the plates that are embedded in the soupy gravel mixture, that are upside down with the ugly side up…I started searching to the right and finding druse plates upside down and poker chips in amongst them…
..and then came back to the first pocket to do some more exploring…
…clearing away on the sides to see how much it would expand and open up…finding plates and crystals loose in the gravel on the bottom…like these in the next photos….
..moving to the right, I found and opened yet another pocket….
and the first thing I pulled out after removing hanging plates, was a beautiful twin poker chip attached to a small druse plate…
…as well as the following druse / chip combos…
..including this unique flat crystal ….
While clearing off what looked like a thin shelf above the first pocket, I found what turned out to be a second pocket of druse plates with poker chips attached…. most of them were just coming out with no chipping required…once I had them pulled out I was able to work on the first pocket plates even more and found an embedded poker chip cluster in the center, attached to the base of the pocket…
..I decided to wait on it and moved to the right more to see if there was more crystals and plates to be found, and within just a few inches I found even more loose crystals and plates embedded upside down….
Here is a single crystal, probably about four inches long and heavy, that was embedded in the gravel upside down in this hole…
I filled another bag with the crystals I removed from this area alone. I took a short break to stretch my legs and photograph my progress so far…
After the break, I went back….
and removed it as carefully as I could, and surprisingly it came out in pretty much one piece. You can also see the results of the pocket found above the first pocket, what I thought was a thin layer of rock turned out to be yet another productive pocket of plates with chips attached to druse….
..producing these two plates….
…and the following singles and small ones….
…so then I stepped back and studied the embedded cluster once more and decided I needed to see if I could safely remove it…it was calling to me to remove it….
…so I did carefully remove it…with the chisel mainly, prying back it just popped loose….
I moved toward the ridge again and found yet another pocket, with these pockets hanging upside down on the ridge side, two feet to the left of pocket two…in the direction of the foliage….
..which when turned over, revealed these plates guarding the new pocket…
and in the middle I discovered several more loose crystals in the soupy gravel mixture…….
..enough to fill yet another bag….the new pocket began opening up…
…and more plates began to emerge from the gravel like these….
..and then this nice cluster came from the new pocket….I was floored to say the
least….
Within a few minutes though, this pocket dried up and so I followed the plates hanging upside down to the right and under them found a hole of water with plates hanging upside down inside it…..
….close to pocket two….
…..and taking a closer look at pocket two, one can see what awaited me there too….
..so while there, I decided to see what I could pull out….
..and then returned to pocket six, and after feeling around in that pocket, which was several inches deep in water, mud and clay, and after pulling out several loose crystals including some twins and small clusters, I also felt a solid bottom of crystals and clusters. I was reaching in up to my shoulder and felt that pocket go quite a ways deeper inside, possibly the entire width of that clay mudhole…I uncovered the top layer of clay mud and decided that it will prob require either a lot of hard work and a big hammer to open it up completely. I pulled these singles and doubles from the watery depths of pocket six….
…enough to fill yet another bag as you can see. I grabbed my camera and shot this next overall photo of all the pockets…
…and the chips in the bag from pocket six alone….
..and more druse plates removed from some of the pockets….
After working for five and a half hours, I decided I had enough and had pulled enough out as well, and it was starting to heat up anyway. We headed home about 1 pm. on the way out, we saw the cows had relocated to the upper area and still milling around, looking like they were waiting on the food truck to show up. All in all, another great morning of pockets and goodies.