 Well, man, you guys have just found something. Hello and welcome once again to the rugged rockhound. Today is Monday. This will be day one for this week, out here north of Grand Junction, looking for the Barrett Crystals. This is the same place we were, just Saturday. And there's a cow sitting up there. And I wanted to go back to that spot we found on the side of the road that definitely had some good stuff in it. Because after looking around here a bit, it seems like you can sometimes get a few different pods in one zone. And I wanted to maybe scrape a little bit more dirt away and just see if there's more. If I don't find anything, I'm gonna search around on some of the hills I haven't searched on yet and see what I can find. Don't have a lot of time, about two, maybe three hours. And yeah, let's get at it and see what we can find today. So our main hole was right there. I decided to scan over. I didn't get a whole lot of calcite there. And I've just been kind of scanning along. I see a little bit of calcite here and there. But it wasn't till here I started seeing some more. And so I decided to just kind of start scraping. I started scraping the surface. You know, just up through here. And then when I got here, look at that. I over turned some rocks and look at that. Good vein of calcite right there. Very nice. So that is where you want to dig. You're trying to find those veins of calcite. This is looking really good. You got the nice red. And you got the nice thick vein of calcite. So fingers crossed we find something good in here. So yeah, you can see we've been pulling out some decent chunks of calcite. No terminated crystals, but you just never know what could be right behind any of this. Exciting. Just found a terminated calcite crystal that was right there. So here on the left side and it looks like there's a lot of calcite right here. We're going to go that way. Here's this big chunk of calcite washed off. Yeah. Yep, definitely lots of calcite here. It is really thick though, not allowing for much space. So I might be hard pressed for barites until it maybe opens up a bit. But yeah, it still looks very promising. Now that's a big thick vein of calcite. Yeah, I've been digging away at this. Just lots of calcite, just been stacking up the calcite. Got some good crystals out of it. No barite yet. Decided to take a break from the calcite pocket over there. Come back to the original hole where we were digging the barites. And right in the back I found a little pocket and a bunch of tiny crystals. But I moved another rock and I found a chin there. Look, I found a better pocket behind it. A little bigger. Still very small crystals, but it is better. We'll see if we can't get those out. Here's this one washed off. I thought it was really neat. You got a bunch of little barites all over and a few slightly larger ones. But yeah, all of those are barite crystals. I got them sparkle. I did manage to get a whole bunch of little loose barite crystals. So here's just a little handful of them. They're really neat. After some very careful work extracting, I got it out. The best part of the pocket, the specimen at the back. Look at that. Look at those little barites right there. Beautiful. Yeah, I'll get it home and cleaned up and that'll look nice. Here's this one washed off. This has a bunch of nice standing barite crystals right here. Hopefully you can see those, but they're really nice. Beautiful crystals. And of course more barites kind of all over it. Once again here in the main pocket where we found those barites the other Saturday. I took this rock out that's where my hand is and exposed all of this. Now that looks like a big calcite crystal and I think there was a fracture barite crystal here that I got a little bit out on that. And who knows what else is lying and wait back there. Here's this one all cleaned off. So this used to be a complete barite crystal that had multiple fractures going through it and you can see broken sections out of it and a few other little broken barites around as well. Pretty neat. So I don't know what's about to come out here but I thought just in case it's amazing why don't I be filming it so we can see it together. Okay, just calcite here so far. Here's the crystal. Not as good as I had hoped. Well, something. It's just there was empty space so it's like maybe there's a nice crystal of something in here. Let's see if any of these broken pieces down here are barite. I think that's all calcite. Looks like it's mostly calcite on there. Here's this piece washed off. So you have one barite crystal this way and one this way and of course heavily fractured and broken but still really cool. Here's this broken barite crystal. It's nice though because there's one crystal here and one crystal here but yeah both are broken. Really cool. These pieces broke into some nice triangle shapes and look how clear they are too. So this piece was one big piece of barite. It was still a broken crystal but it was a large piece and when I cleaned it off it all fractured. So this is the first one I cleaned off where it actively fractured in my hand when I cleaned it. I'm like okay got to try and do my best to get the right temperature and maybe clean them off in a different way. Anyway, so here's a big piece of barite. Really nice isn't it? Look how shiny those are. Smooth and just beautiful crystals. But what's kind of fun is it started out as a crystal that wasn't very clear but it turns out one of the sections when it broke off was just absolutely beautiful clear. Just look at that. This one was just stunning. So I'm kind of happy it broke because then this piece came loose of all the other ones that weren't very clear so that we could appreciate and enjoy how clear this one was. Here's this big chunk of barite now that it's cleaned off so I'm glad I caught this because we wouldn't want to leave that there. This is a big piece of barite and it's got a nice crystal face here and a little bit here and just that's really cool right there and it's really heavy. And it's day two! So yesterday I was digging mostly over there where we had found that one spot and I did a little poking around but the main thing that happened is as I was walking over some of these hills over this way I found two spots that looked accessible as in they might have the concretions we're looking for ones that have just been fairly recently exposed because out here this place has been hit so hard anything that's been exposed for a while has been dug into so what you're trying to find is after some recent rain or a lot of precipitation over the winter months hopefully steeper hills look for some place where maybe a concretion is just barely getting exposed of course that'll be hard to spot that's one way to try and find a new spot that hasn't been found so I've got two possibilities up here I want to go poke into and just see if it's what I think it is if it is the edge of a concretion that got recently exposed so yeah I'm going to head out over that way hey here I'm at the first spot this right here looks promising to me see all this stuff going down calcite and look at the size of this one and then there's another loose one right there but I can't really point out so this is where cattle have walked before you got and me there's my first step but so where cattle have been walking before and as far as I can tell it doesn't look like anybody's really dug I mean maybe but we had some slope failure here with all the rain yeah this looked like a promising spot to dig where is the calcite coming out usually it's up from where you see it is that another piece of calcite no it's just rock so yeah I'm going to just kind of start digging into the dirt through here somewhere I think I'm getting the hang of this so I went ahead and dug right where that last piece of calcite was and look at that pulled up some rock with some calcite veins in it already so we're in the right zone just broke open this rock that was full of calcite yeah we'll take a closer look at it see if I see any bearite or any good calcite crystals so I pulled this off and this is definitely the edge of one of the what they call eggs that this stuff is in but it was laying in a funny way as if it had fallen from somewhere else up from there I pulled that off and this is looking promising looks like it's got a little bit of space definitely got the calcite going through it so it looks like it might be an egg which I'm hoping and it might be this whole thing right here this this entire thing might be what we're looking for I really started digging around and stuff it feels like it's a loose just a single piece here and then the pocket used to be down below it but it was all covered in dirt so either this was a block that fell from somewhere up and the main pocket is missing or it had been dug in the past down here and it just got buried so well that you couldn't tell I wanted to show you that I found a tip of a Barrett crystal just down there and how I know this Barrett crystal is its weight because it's heavier than calcite and it just kind of looks different so anyway yeah it's just the tip of a Barrett crystal and you know it's already been dug but sometimes you can kind of poke around the edges and find some little pockets with little crystals that they missed because they went in the pocket that had the bigger crystals I started here where there was a little loose spot up here with a tiny bit of calcite and as I dug in it got worse and then finally there was a little bit of calcite right here and when I removed that I found the edge of a Barrett crystal so it's one that didn't get to fully form and it came out in a few little pieces and the rest of it's on that so there was a little bit of a Barrett there so how I know this Barrett is see how smooth that is the calcite isn't that smooth so and of course it's heavy this kind of cool looking crystal that trapped itself in the rock you can see how it grew into the rock there around it kind of cool I mean it's just calcite it's not Barrett but still it's pretty cool and that is why you wear gloves out here and usually dig with a pick give you some distance so that these scorpions don't sting you oh man you guys have just found something I've been moving a bunch of rock and right here pulled this up pulled this out that had that darker color in it which is a good indicator and then I pulled this up look at that look at that Barrett crystal sitting right on top of there this is probably my best specimen now so far oh exciting a little fractured it was really close to where they were digging so may have been exposed a little bit but yeah that's still so exciting and who knows what more may be down there here's that big one cleaned off so it is a nice big crystal look at that double terminated got one edge here goes to there and then you got another crystal underneath it here and a broken another broken one here and so it does have a few breaks you can see the fractures going through it it's unfortunate but overall I'd say that's a pretty decent specimen that nice Barrett just there in the matrix oh and there's a little bit over here too so I've been digging for a while I've moved a lot of stuff I've pulled out a lot of broken pieces and just like partially formed Barrett's but then I just thought I'd bring you in to show you that cool one just sitting right there more and more it's broken calcite here so yeah just got it out that's how it looks got a nice little crystal there a little larger one there just kind of a couple more run together really cool and maybe more stuff behind it we'll see here's this one cleaned off you got two fully terminated crystals right there on the end it's broken right there but otherwise it's really nice well I got a pile of potential stuff here so a lot of it's really dirty and I can't tell so I'm just going to take it home and wash it all off but yeah that's the overall end of the pocket that I've been digging as in that's where I'm ending today it probably still keeps going down but it's getting hard going and the daylight's running out sun's starting to set so this looks like a good place to stop and I'm going to have probably a lot of stuff to show you once I wash everything off because I don't actually know what's all in there here's this washed off it was really interesting it had this nice terminated calcite crystal right in it thought it was just kind of neat here's this little crystal cleaned off nice and terminated just a tiny little thing but really nice here's this piece all cleaned off got a nice bar right here actually I think it's two crystals kind of run into each other still really nice and then you've got the one right here that's unfortunately broken but still really pretty it's day three today it's overcast cloudy we're supposed to have some stormy weather coming in tomorrow and Friday so this will be the last day this week after work so day three and that's it and we pulled out some good stuff over these last two days haven't we so that's exciting so I was thinking about today I've only got two hours so I'm thinking I'm going to go back to that pocket I was digging yesterday the one that somebody had already dug but I managed to pull out that cool crystal on the matrix and I think there might be more stuff if I go down I don't know for sure it was getting kind of dark and I had to kind of leave in a rush so I think that's a good place to start today and if it keeps going we'll just do that and that's probably where we'll end it otherwise we might walk around a little bit so that's the plan for today so I've got to walk over I've got to go over three ridges and then I'll be at the spot I was digging looks like I got sidetracked so my vehicle is just on the other side of that ridge right in front of me and I saw this it's a place where people have dug before but once again I couldn't hear it and there was an exposed vein just sitting there so I was like I'm going to dig down I dug down hitting a nice vein of calcite here and then there's this empty gap right here that already kind of filled in but between the vein of calcite see that's all calcite and that empty spot I'm like I should probably stop a moment and dig here there's what looks like the edge of a crystal or two crystals is it calcite or barite let's get it out look at that it's broken I think it's calcite personally working it out and yeah looks like calcite but look at that darker stuff it's heavy alright that's always a good indicator when you got that darker color that you might have some barite it's heavy whether there is barite in it or if it's because of the iron concentration really cool though there's a crystal right there that might be barite so it's full of clay but I have been occasionally pulling out some crystals that are heavier so they're probably some barite crystals either partially formed or broken and I can't see them all but I've got I've pulled out like five or six like that so far this whole thing just came loose and the stuff I've been following was along the edge you know going through this so here we go I'm going to just like set you down somewhere forgot to bring the tripod today we go all I see is dirt underneath so I'm breaking the rock that was behind the one I moved right here and that is some good sized calcite that's exciting let's see if we've got anything in here huh it's got a lot of stuff on it maybe we'll hold on to that yep there's a chunk another chunk another chunk do you see anything that looks like barite maybe no that's probably calcite another chunk so many chunks in here so many where is the barite there's a nice chunk too probably going to have to take quite a bit of this home just because those pieces these big chunks might have something on fun just don't know let's get this wall down nope calcite more calcite all over it's just everywhere now see that looks like it might have a barite crystal inside of it yeah let's grab a bunch of these see that might be something and I think I mostly cleaned out all the stuff that was here and piled it all around here the winds picking up the sun's getting low and I've got to quickly go through these and find out what's worth keeping here's this one washed off it is a terminated crystal kind of a large stubby one but unfortunately it ran into the other side here and it's got fractures and a few breaks on it otherwise it's pretty nice here's this little one all cleaned off it's got a little bit of that darker color in it kind of a brown here's this one all cleaned off it's just the tip of a crystal so it had broken off of the rest of the crystal it's got a very tip here's this one cleaned off so you can see it's a terminated crystal with some fractures it's still very nice here's this one cleaned off looked pretty cool because that was the tip of a crystal that would have been down here but it stuck to this and so it has kind of a cool look to it there's this one cleaned off it's a twin crystal so you can see there's the tip of one here's the tip of the other so two crystals here's this one cleaned off it's two crystals that grew right next to each other so you can see the tips of both here made it back to the vehicle and the sun is setting over there so good timing again another good day now I haven't seen everything washed off but you guys will have already seen it all and know how good it actually was or wasn't well definitely want to expose that pocket in the back I really think there was a large barite in there that was just shattered because I kept picking up these little pieces that I'm pretty darn sure are barite anyway you guys already know so yeah great day great trio of days and remember there is treasure everywhere