You are currently browsing the archives for January, 2010.
A long process, but the Obliq Recordings web site is getting close to done. The goal was to have lots of music streaming and available for download–regular and high quality. I have uploaded over 120 mp3s of almost all of our releases, some live sets and some DJ mixes. I plan to start putting more DJ mixes here on this site as well as Obliq as soon as I get a chance…do the RSS feed to be informed on that.
Check it out –> obliq.net
Went twice up Deadman road near Red Feather Lakes and found crystals. I started digging into a Quartz vein and pulled out a nice set of crystals within the quartz. The kids just went around and picked up float and everyone had a great time.
The second time I went up my dad and I went alone. There was obviously a serious snow storm coming and the ground was frozen about 4-5 inches deep; but it wasn’t too cold to mine. I ended up digging along where I thought the quartz vein I had luck with last time which was mostly big sand and small rocks. My dad ended up sifting through this with my screen and we were finding several crystals per shovel full of dirt. So we did this all day. I found the quartz vein about 24-30 inches below the ground but we didn’t go that deep into it as we were having fun working the looser dirt. Most of the crystals here are clear but coverted with yellowish or gray staining, some of which is Hemotite. Once it started snowing really hard we decided to leave as I had to head home that day…I started my new job that week.
We found several double terminated crystals on this second day.
We found many larger crystals and lots of smaller ones too.
And more crystals…crystals…crystals…
Most of these are stained and Oxalic and Myriatic Acids do not take these off. Anyone know of a way to clean these kind of dirty crystals that appear the bad color to be caked on by heat?
In retrospect, I had a great year digging at Devil’s Head in the Pike National Forest. Firstly, I can be digging in about 65 minutes from starting the car here at the house. Nothing like being close to the action! 2009 was definitely a beginner’s year for me and I learned quite a bit. I also got quite lucky (and unlucky).
I ended up finding a spot (luck!) that produced right away. I visited that hole about 6-7 times this fall. Most days were good; but there were a couple of days that did not produce. I buried the hole but am thinking about digging it out again next spring…we’ll see, it won’t be the first time I buried that hole and then dug it out again! 
I believe everything I was finding was Miarolitic Cavities as opposed to pegmatite vugs. For the most part these these were right at the boundary between the roots and harder rock about 8 – 18 inches below the surface. Joe Dorris has a nice description of these on his website. I also found, digging in old unfilled abandoned holes, several deeper pockets filled with thick red clay and some crystals. I’m assuming these are more “vug” type structures in the pegmatites. That red clay is definitely a mess!
Highlights of the hole I was digging in were the many large double terminated crystals my dad found on the first day of snow in Colorado this year. Also some really nice orthoclause crystals, one which is multicolored in squares. We found nice smoky quartz crystal heads from sub-inch to about 4 inches in all different quality. Some were nice large “gemmy” color…the further south you get the darker the crystals it seems here in Colorado. I have a cigar box full of small crystals, and several larger individuals and a few crystals on harder matrix/feldspar.
Here are the fruits of my (and Hunter’s) labor on my second day in my hole. We found a pocket that I could stick my hand into which was very exciting, that seemed more like a small vug/pocket as it was surrounded by very hard rock. Most of the small crystals came from a pocket about a foot higher, likely a Miarotilic Cavity?
This is the same hole but the next time I went with my dad. It was snowing so hard that we ended up having to leave we were so cold…
These were some of the best crystals to come out of this hole. My dad was digging and extracting the bigger crystals and I was taking my new screen I just bought at the Gem and Mineral show the day before to sift for “smaller” ones.
On my last day in this hole of 2009, I found several small pockets along the root/rock line parallel to a quartz-ish vein about a foot away from the vein. That afternoon I dug for about 5 hours and found nothing, so I need to determine if this spot is worth continuing with next year. This is the coolest thing when you pull off a rock and see a “hole”. Sometimes they pan out, sometimes they don’t.
Here is another pocket I found. I would just run my hand along the top of this hole loosening the dirt/rock and the cleared out base would be filled with rock and crystals. This is a common way I pull these smaller points out of the ground.
2009 was blast and I got hooked on finding smokeys. We have joined the Colorado Springs Mineralogical Society and plan to learn a lot this year and go on several digs, including the private claims that the society works. My number 1 goal is to better understand how to find geological features that will tell you where a good place to dig is; that is the hardest part so far in my experience.
Oh, and sometimes, a rock falls onto your hand and there is a crystal on top of it. This happened twice this year. That was nice slender half-dollar sized crystal!
Just finished watching this video from 2004. Yeah, better late than never! This is a great video that I got on loan from the Jefferson County library system because Douglas County didn’t have it. The DVD shows the mining for Rhodochrosite crystals in an old Silver mine near Alma in Park County.
I’ve read about mining before but I didn’t really “get it”. This video definitely filled in the gaps. They showed what the veins looked like, how they mined and all the terminology associated with mining. They showed extraction of the Rhodochrosite crystals. They showed where the probability of vugs was the greatest. One of my favorite parts was how they showed some of the chemistry to vector into the highest probability sections of the mine. Pretty neat how they learned about the Geology and put the puzzle pieces together in the 13 years that they mined the Sweet Alma mine.
Anyone into minerals or mining should defnintely check this video out, it is great!
Here’s one of the pieces shown in the movie (and the current price direct from the miner)! If you haven’t seen the Rhodochrosite exhibit in the Denver Mueseum of Nature and Science, that was also featured in this movie and it is simply spectacular! Rhodochrosite is the Colorado state mineral. Oh, and the movie was narrated by Karl Mecklenberg too!
Here are some music videos for my bands.
Multicast – Calisto (Solar Sailor)
Multicast – Hall of the Inverted Mushrooms
Recently finished up with the LarkspurFunRun.org information and registration web site for the local PTO. You should get out and support this event, or at least donate to the cause.
The website was written in Coldfusion and is basically an information/dontation page and then a registration cart. Pretty simple actually, less than 10 pages for sure.
Check it out! –> LarkspurFunRun.org
Multicast was able to provide soundtrack music for the “Museum in the Dark” opening at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History. This was a fabulous showing of great paleontology and geology, especially with the “spooky” atmospheric music ala Multicast with Charles Balas.
You can listen to the show in 192K MP3 format. Download a printable CD cover.
This was a great night from my little perch east of Larkspur. This storm had great structure from my location and I set up the camera on tripod taken open exposure shots of the storm. Meanwhile, I was enjoying the show to my South East (much more lightning but much further away).
Kristy (my sister) said that was probably the most intense lightning storm she can remembr in Denver. As I got a lot of open exposure shots from the tripod, I decided to do another experiment with time lapse.
Click here to see the slide show.
I have been playing with keeping the still camera taking long exposure shots and then animating those sequentually. This day I recorded clouds/lightning about 1/2 way between Burlington and Wray on 385 on June 1, 2009. The cloud color was outstanding as the sun went down for the evening. The storm was moving north straight towards me so I ended up getting overrun from the storm and had to put the camera away.
View the Lightning Open Exposure Time Lapse Experiment.
Had a great time a the Mesa new year party. Took the DJ gear and DJed the night away. Happy 2010!