My dad and I are both new members with the Lake George Gem and Mineral club and were able to go on this great trip.  The New Hope Amethyst location was claimed by the Canyon City Geology club and on BLM land, but you had to pass through multiple private parcels of land to get to it.  As with any claim, you MUST have permission from the claim owner to collect; even though its on public land.  The Canyon City club arranged with the owners to let us pass through their land and we headed out to the claim.  There were a lot of horses on the first property that were running around curious of what the procession was all about!

Once we got to the site my dad and I went straight to the old mine area and started working on a slightly exposed vein.  There was a lot of hard-rock work; pounding and using chisels and pry bars for this trip.  I was very sore the next day!  🙂

The Canyon City club members there were awesome and taught us much about how to expend effort wisely using the hard-rock mining techniques.  This was great information and something as a novice rockhound you can only really get going on these club field trips with the experts!  Thanks!  We ended up working with several folks to expose a nice vein.  The vein of crystals were pretty brittle and would break apart along terminations easily if the vein was not excavated correctly.  We ended up with a couple of pieces with the vein intact, but mostly just smaller crystals.  All the terminations were coated with a white milky quartz.  The crystals all had smokey quartz with the amethyst; so they were absolutely beautiful multi-colored purple/black with white veins!  These are not like the amethyst you see in rock shows or shops, but they are unique and beautiful!

Extra thanks to both the Lake George and Canyon City clubs for this awesome day!  It was great pulling purple crystals out of the ground!!!  My favorite part is many of these crystals are in the shape of tornadoes; I know–pretty geeky–but makes the day extra special!