On my reurn from taking Leilani to Billings, I wanted to stop at Crystal Park and find some smokey quartz crystals. ?Crystal Park is about an hour or two south of Butte, and I didn’t arrive until late evening. ?I quickly set up camp, slept the night away and headed for a day of crystal digging. ?To my surprise and disappointment I found a sign stating that the park was closed! ?Apparently there was a need to remove beetle killed trees in the area, and the powers that be didn’t want anyone to get hurt while the trees were being removed. ?The dates of the closure were Sept 4 thru Sept 16.

I was rewarded with a nice view of this owl though so I didn’t go away empty handed.

Making sure I didn’t ignore the closed sign at Crystal Park!

I started back to Butte, but then remembered that Calvert Hill was almost on the way. ?Turning left at Wise River, I quickly made my way to the dig site at Calvert Hill. ?Calvert Hill is an old tungsten mine with a variety of crystals, including smokey quartz, epidote, aquamarine, garnets and others. ?The mine is an open pit that has filled with water, leaving the sides and tailings for the diligent rockhound to dig and pound on rocks.

The water in the pit is not recommended for human consumption.

I hiked around the edges of the pit, poking my way into the many cracks hoping to find some crystals. ?I found a lot of massive epidote and a few small epidote crystals, but not much else. ?At one point I was about to give up, when I noticed what looked like a piece of black jasper with golden agate in it. ?I started looking up slope and quickly found the source. ?I collected a small sampling of this material, and headed back to the truck.

Black Jasper with golden agate.

One piece was more golden with a large dendrite. ?I don’t think the dendrite will remain if I polish this piece but it is quite striking.

The dendrite is at least an inch long.

I left these finds at the truck and continued searching the slopes for crystals. ?At one spot I spent about two hours beating on the white quartz looking for aquamarine.

I had some company show up while I was working on the white area for aquamarine.

The truck belongs to a couple that have been here quite a bit. ?They knew where they were going and what they wanted to find, and when I last saw them they were working on what looked like a dangerous spot to be.

This couple must be finding some nice material.

I finally gave up looking for aquamarine(I don’t really know if I would even know what it looked like), and headed to the tailing piles of rocks. ?I worked my way through the large boulders looking for some indication of cavities or crystals. ?I finally found one large boulder that had promise, and started breaking it up. ?I was rewarded for this hard work with some really nice garnet crystals.

This is probably the best crystal I found.

This one is the largest one I found.

It was now getting quite late, and I wanted to make it to Missoula, so I packed up my gear and headed out.

Even though I was disappointed about Crystal Park, I had a great time at Calvert Hill.

Thanks for joining me.

chasfire