The Hunchback vug, Hansen Creek area, King County, Washington
Day 1: Opening
The afternoon on a cool late September day up in the mountains - my friend Branden and I had just finished working a hole that had produced some average crystals. We decided to go a ways from the thoroughly dug and re-dug areas in search of some fresh ground. Shovels and picks clanking, we stumbled our way across the steep 40-degree hillside. We climbed over fallen trees long forgotten, walked across rock piles, and scrambled up clearings until we felt that we found a promising area - old stumps and logs surrounded our spot of choice, making it much easier to start a tunnel than otherwise. Then we got to work.
Punching past the topsoil, we ripped through small roots and cobbles. Then, we were into the fresh soil - somewhat sticky red material with a sandy consistency. These first few inches, we found scattered shards of white quartz here and there. This was a good sign - the mineralizing fluids that came through the bedrock millions of years ago had reached this part of the mountain. We knew that digging further would yield at least some fresh crystals. Hour by hour, the afternoon passed. The quartz chunks gradually gave way to nicely terminated points. They were still scarce though - we’d take upwards of 10 minutes between finding each crystal. And then I found a scepter.
With that scepter, everything changed. We were into pure quartz and limonite shards. Nicely terminated quartz crystals began popping out much more often. Behind every boulder, it appeared that there was a huge concentration of pure crystal gravel. We were in it!
The amethyst started coming out soon after the crystal explosion. We started finding all sizes of amethyst scepters and scepter heads - smaller clear ones with rich color and larger frosty scepter heads. My highlights of the first day were a frosty 2.5” amethyst scepter with a well-defined stem and minimal contacting and a doubly-sceptered smoky-amethyst “dumbbell” with an extremely well-developed smoky sceptered termination. Branden’s side of the hole had produced some amazing altered pyrite cubes, one of which had a fingernail-sized octahedral modification and was larger than a golf ball. By this point, it had started to get dark. It called for us to continue the next weekend.
Day 2: Abundance
This dig, Branden and I were accompanied by my longtime collecting friend Michael. Our plan was to first collapse the overburden. The previous weekend, we had tunneled in about 4 feet, and it was getting hard to work. My Estwing was definitely going to come in handy. We spent a couple hours knocking down the overburden and expanding the hole. At this point, the hole was 4-5 feet wide and Branden and I were ready to rumble. There was a boulder that we had exposed in the back of the hole the prior weekend and it was now much easier to work around and remove from the hole. 15 minutes of concerted effort later, the boulder moved and we were back into crystals! And this time, lots more amethyst than before. Nearly every crystal at this point had amethyst sceptering! Soon the hole became too narrow for two and we would take turns digging out new crystal paydirt and sorting through it.
A fantastic handful of scepters from the second day of digging. The far right piece turned out to be of exceptional quality.
Scepter after scepter popped out. During the first day of working this pocket, we found small reverse scepters and overgrowth scepters that had some really interesting multi-generational amethyst growth. However, to the contrary, today was different. We uncovered some really amazingly well-defined scepters with glass-clear stems with actinolite and chlorite inclusions, the best of which had an almost square head on a slender 5cm stem! Furthermore, we recovered a couple small clusters and two amethyst scepter heads with truly outstanding color. In all, we found probably over 100 amethyst scepters in this one day. No dumbbells were found, but I knew that there were more in store the next weekend.
My haul from the second weekend of digging the pocket. Great color and facetable areas in the 2 pieces on the left side of the bottom row. Branden got most of the really textbook scepters but I didn’t do too shabby either.
Day 3: Climax
It was raining quite a bit this dig. We put up a tarp to keep most of the water off of us - it worked only somewhat. As it poured down rain, crystals poured out of the hole! We found more and more amethyst - the trend dived down below a huge set of boulders. Wedged between two smaller boulders, we started finding larger crystals. I found many larger frosty scepter heads that turned out to have nice color, as well as the glassy amethyst scepters we were finding before. And then out of nowhere, a large (quarter-sized) face appeared, then another and another. I gave the crystal a slight wiggle, and out plopped the largest amethyst scepter I’ve personally collected. With a head larger than a golf ball atop a 3.5cm stem, it’s in exceptional shape and is of great quality for any Hansen area locality. Then Branden took a turn in the productive zone, and he pulled likely one of the more unique specimens found in King County in the past few years - a perfect undamaged dumbbell scepter 5.5cm long with a nice amethyst AND smoky end. Afterwards, taking turns in the pocket, I found my own small dumbbell and Branden found an AMAZING slender glassy amethyst scepter around 5cm long. We ended the day early as it was getting cold and miserable.
7cm+ lustrous amethyst scepter with complex termination and a sidecar. The scepter is complete all-around.
Fantastic dumbbell scepter 5.5cm long. Perfect and undamaged. Left (smaller) end is amethyst, and right (larger) end is smoky.
Day 4: Closure
Gigantic scepter from the “last hurrah” chamber.
With much better weather this weekend, Branden and I returned to the hole. We felt that we had cleaned the pocket out pretty well our last trip and wanted to either break into a new discovery or to close things out. We moved a lot of the muck that had piled up from the last wet, cold, and miserable trip. Crawling in to the now 3-foot tunnel under the giant boulder that was probably 5 feet wide and weighed at least a thousand pounds, I knew this hole would not survive the winter. It was November and it was colder than usual, so the season would come to an end soon. Aware of this, I dug away at the back wall, in hope of something.
I didn’t have to hope for long. In the upper reaches of a small arm-hole I dug in between several large boulders, I started finding goethite chunks. Then, crystal faces started to show! I was into a sub-pocket. Although I didn’t see anything with the nice color or luster as we had been finding, I ended up finding some crystals that were quite large, including a giant 2” x 3” scepter head (I found the stem a short while later). A few select crystals had dense inclusions of hematite specks that made them look almost smoky!
After the goethite lens finished, I poked around more. But all good things must come to an end - and this was the best thing in my 3-year digging career thus far.
I ended up acquiring all of the crystals Branden dug and managed to reconstruct some of the crystals together into small clusters.
Top picks from the pocket.
