Bear Mountain Thundereggs Bear Mountain, Silver City, Grant Co., New Mexico |
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The thundereggs of
the Bear Mountain are known for many decades and
widely visited by local rock clubs, but they
still can be found even today despite the
complains by local rockhounds about not finding
anything except small ones. The Bear Mountains
along edge of Gila National Forest, are mainly
limestone with a very hard limestone sticking
out like a sore thumb on one side and there are
isolated pockets of rhyolitic lava flows, the
source of thundereggs. I hit on a strata
enriched in the thundereggs on March 2004 and
found many thundereggs containing rare sagenite
needles (after zeolites), aragonite fans, black
calcite crystals, waterline agates, and some
with shadowing effect. The colors of the agates
are typically colorless to bluish gray, and some
white and rarely brownish agates have been
found. I obtained few "freak" thundereggs with
peach to yellow colored agates. I came back to it two years later, but did not had any luck with digging, and that was when I realized that I passed the narrow strata. That strata was buried under so much tailings left by inexperienced diggers, and it's going to take a lot of work to uncover that strata. The agate in the thundereggs are typically colorless to blue with some white colors. It's rare to find those with brown colors and those with shadowing effects are even rarer. I have seen excellent amethyst geodes and agates with shadowing effects from that area. As of Jan 2022, it's on Gila National Forest so rocks can be collected only for hobby purposes as according to this link: |
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