Little pegmatite hunting nets me a few keepers, and one that has me a little stumped.

[IAMZIM]

Went out searching for some pegmatites to explore, and found a few nice things in a wash the other day. I need to go back sometime and continue digging up till I can hopefully find the pocket, but as you can see I found a lot of shattered ( I'm assuming from being frozen in the bottom of the wash over and over) smokey quatrz, a really ugly double terminated clear quartz, a little very nice cluster of what I think is albite, or some kind of feldspar, and some weird cluster of orange crystals. At first I thought it was just some quatrz covered with something, but the more I look at it, the material is solid, not a "coating". My best guess is calcite, but I'm not confident about that I.D. What do you guys think? Oh yeah, and a little broken cluster of schorl, was a cool find too, spot has some potential I am thinking!

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

How to Research for Treasure Hunting and Metal Detecting From Lead Generation to Vetting - Grab it through Amazon!

[Kray Gelder]

Nice finds. Definitely worth exploring upstream. Not too far either, those crystals are in good condition. Keep searching!

 

[smokeythecat]

Orange crystals look kind of like wulfenite, but I think a pegmatite is the wrong place for something like this.

 

[DDancer]

I'll hazard a guess on the orange cluster. Tabular quartz though it appears to be worn. Try a hardness test.
Here is a link and an image I pulled off mindat to compare.
https://www.mindat.org/locentry-312344.html

 

[Eu_citzen]

I'll second what DD said. Do some tests. My initial thought was wulfenite to, but I've seen specimens such as those DD mentions.
Calcite will react with vinegar - rinse quickly after the test with water.

 

[IAMZIM]

I tried a streak test on the back of my toilet lid, but it didn't leave a streak, I need to invest in an actual test kit lol! When I tried to scratch it with a pocket knife, it would not scratch it, but it did leave metal on it from the knife, so it must be hard like quartz. Again, I need to invest in a kit I think..... Vinegar did nothing to it. It seems like quartz, but it's just weird because it is opaque, and bright orange! I've never seen anything like that.... There is wulfenite in Montana, but everything I have ever seen came from really deep in the mines they came from. To be honest, I don't know a lot about wulfenite, because it's rare around here, I've always wanted some for my collection, but it's always REALLY expensive to buy from here, and self collection doesn't seem possible because as far as I can tell, all the mines it comes from here are shut down! I'm still leaning towards quartz though....

 

[DDancer]

Wulfenite is relatively brittle, much like topaz but softer, and soft enough that it would leave a streak on porcelain. The hardness you are describing lends me to believe it is tabular quartz. It is attractive and their may be more where that came from. I have some samples of tabular quartz in storage from when I was a kid digging in the pegmatites near Pikes Peak in Colorado while looking for smokies and amazonite. Tabular quartz is often associated with feldspar rich environments from what I understand.
Wulfenite is associated with lead minerals not commonly found in pegmatites but associated with contact zones near such.

 

[IAMZIM]

Here is an update on the orange crystal cluster: I took it too the mineral museum at Montana Tech, and a geologist told me it is actually feldspar terminations with chalcedony coating them. So quartz is right as that is what chalcedony is! I missed a spot on the bottom that shows feldspar, and she showed it to me. The guy at the museum said it was a great piece!

 

[DDancer]

Cool Thanks for the report.