Crystal Mountain

This weekend we decided that going rock-hounding sounded like a lot of fun. Ben had checked out some books from the library on rock-hounding in Colorado, and he found the destination that was closest to our house-- Crystal Mountain. It's about 20 miles away up one of the lesser-used canyons by Fort Collins. There is a lot of private land in the area which makes the canyon not as popular as Poudre Canyon.

We drove up through a beautiful canyon and hiked up a short ways up the hill to where we started finding books of muscovite mica and beryl in an old mine area. (GPS Location: N 40° 34.310 W 105° 25.610) They are beautiful! We hacked a few of the beryl crystals out of the rocks, turned other rocks over, and found a few rocks that had been drilled through prior to blasting.
After we finished looking at rocks, we wandered back down the hill to our car and dropped them off in the back. Then we went over to a little creek flowing down the bottom of the canyon. We rockhopped down the creek for a bit. We got most of our feet wet- ok it was only half of them- we both slipped off a rock and landed in the water. There were a few little brook trout in some of the "bigger"pools. Our splashing scared them to seek cover.

We had a fun little getaway. We'll be back!
Here are a couple pics of us and the area:







Nearest City: Masonville, CO
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