Skokomish Obsession

Orbicular Jasper, Skokomish River

Somebody stop me. I have made two trips now to the Skokomish River looking for orbicular jasper. Today was a beauty, sunny and warm, and the river was running gin clear (see photo below). Good conditions for looking for jasper. As before, there are loads of interesting jaspers on this river, but very few have well-defined red orbs, so you spend a lot of time picking up stones, and then discarding them.

This one was high and dry on the gravel bar, and jumped out because of its vivid color.

I found others in the water, as in the photo below. The only trouble is...you can't see the water. Believe it or not, these rocks are under a smooth sheet of water, e.g. just about perfect for scanning for rocks. And surrounded by drably colored rocks, the red jasper almost jumps out at you!

The Skokomish Runs clear in August

Hands and Knees Jasper

Cherry Creek Red Jasper

No, I haven't discovered a new type of jasper - the title of this post refers to how I spent most of my day today...on my hands and knees (in the water)

 I decided to go out this morning to Cherry Creek, near Duvall, Washington, to look for bits of high-quality red jasper. I had been there two years ago, and all I can say is, plants grow fast here in the Northwest. This small creek was walkable last time I was there - this time I was literally crawling up the creek, under an almost solid thicket of shrubs and small trees.

The only upsides to this technique are 1) I was a LOT closer to the stream gravel, so I could see some of the bits of jasper which tend to be small. and 2) I suspect I was the only person willing to put up with this - there was a pretty good scattering of jasper once I left the "easy" part of the creek.

This location has been well-known for decades, and a lot of mineral clubs have field trips to the site,

(see: http://home.comcast.net/~wams1939/trips/cherry.htm)

so it's not exactly easy pickings anywhere. But it is close to home, and there is always the promise of a really nice bright piece of jasper. Not sure I found it today, but I got a nice bag full in a couple of hours.
Having said that, I probably won't be back without a machete...

Rock Saw Discoveries

Over the past year or two, I have been collecting rocks from a variety of sources - from the deserts of Idaho, to the Pacific coast, to the beach just below my house. Most end up being polished in my two Lortone rock tumblers with terrific results.

However, until this week, I was never able to cut into the middle of larger pieces: I needed a rock saw. Well, after hemming and hawing, I finally bought one last week on Craig's List. It is an antique Lortone LS-10, well-used, but still working - and I have been cutting ever since. I had a large box of large rough under my workbench that I had been waiting to cut into, and now I am finally getting to see what is inside these pieces.

Examples above : a pale jasper from western Idaho, and a piece of Succor Creek Jasper from the Owyhee country.

Cutting a rock is like Christmas: you never know what you're going to get. Sometimes you find great stuff - sometimes you get nothing. Still, it's another tool in the arsenal. Next, I'll have to start polishing the slabs.

Owyhee Agate Vein

Agate vein, Succor Creek, Oregon

Although most of what I found in the Succor Creek area of the Owyhee mountains earlier this summer was jasper, I did come out with some other interesting pieces. One of the most intriguing was this thin agate seam cutting through another rock I don't recognize. The agate is bright and colorful, and completely unlike anything else I have found in that area. Who knows where it came from, but the Owyhee country has so many spectacular rocks, both agate and jasper, that nothing should be surprising...

I'll be heading out there again next month for a week of rockhounding. Can't wait.

Rialto Beach Redux

Poppy Jasper, Agate, and....? , Rialto Beach

Last year I made a pilgrimage to Rialto Beach, not far from Forks, Washington (aka "Twilight" Town) to beach comb for orbicular "poppy" jasper. This has been a well-known location for jasper beach cobbles for decades, and every time I'm in the neighborhood, I make a point of stopping by.

I spent a happy hour or two looking for jasper, but also stumbled onto some other nice things as well - some petrified wood, and at least one piece of yellow plume agate. It takes a while to train your eye here: the weather was uncharacteristically dry, so all the beach stones had that pale, scuffed look, making them very hard to identify. I did carry a water spray bottle to test stones -and licked a few - but after a while, I began to see the characteristic smoothness of the harder rocks (mixed in with a lot of rough-surfaced sedimentary rocks, the most common thing on our outer coast).

In the end, I got a nice stash of poppies, and some other things I'll look forward to polishing. Always a great place - and the best part is,  after next winter's storms (profound on this wild coast) there will be a whole new crop of rocks thrown up onto the beach.

Gravel Galore, Rialto Beach