Winter Beaches

Banded Jasper or...?

The beach below my house is primarily sand, esp. during the quiet months of summer, when the surf is at a minimum. But in winter, storming winds and tides throw rocks up onto the beaches, and right now there is a thick layer of pebbles at the tideline. This is perfect for sampling the extraordinary diversity of rocks that characterizes this ancient glacial landscape.

This good-sized cobble attracted my attention today. It was heavy and glass-smooth,  typically a sign of a hard rock like agate or jasper, but with some lovely green and brown banding.  I haven't seen anything like it here before - but that is almost always the case here : rocks deposited on my beach are likely remnants of boulders dropped by glaciers here 10, 000 years ago.

In any case, I popped it into the tumbler - and in a week or so, I'll be able to get a clear look at it. Then it will either go into polishing - or get tossed back onto the beach.

Alki Beach,  New Year's Eve Eve, 2013

Peacock Rock

Peacock Rock, Puget Sound

The water along the shores of Puget Sound was almost dead calm today, and the sun was shining: both relatively rare events here in Seattle.  It seemed a perfect day to prowl the shoreline looking for rocks, esp. where the rising tide washed over the beach, revealing the stones' true colors and patterns.

Along the shore of Lincoln Park is a favorite spot since the strong currents make for good-sized rocks, mostly free of barnacles and other marine life (I prefer to avoid killing things that live on the rocks, and for that reason avoid low tides).

I walked for half a mile along the beach, and my best find was this multi-colored, thinly layered cobble. I brought it home and cut through it.  It has a handsome patterning and wonderful, subtle colors. I haven't tested it for hardness yet, but I'm hoping its hard enough to take a polish. Either way, it's not like anything I've ever seen here before.

Beach Surprise : "Plume Agate?"

Beach agate, West Seattle

It's been a while since I was out on the beaches near home - blame it on cold weather and too many buckets already full of rocks, waiting for the polisher.

But on a handsome sunny winter day, I hit the beaches near Alki Point. I am always attracted by color and design, but especially if there is any sense of transparency, e.g. that glass-like quality that suggests "agate."

Here's one I found yesterday, an already well-rounded, naturally polished agate. My first thought was that it was what is known as a plume agate, in which impurities grow into the quartz often in lovely, lacy patterns. But when I took a close look at this, it does not have the typical "plume" patterns, but instead appears to be some sort of brecciated rock into which quartz has filled the gaps. Hard to tell what the green stuff is, but it's clearly fractured and shattered. Now, of course, it is suspended in the quartz matrix. Not sure what to call it, but it's handsome nonetheless.

I'm Back...with a Mystery

Mysterious Rock, Puget Sound

I have not posted for quite sometime, not having had much time - or weather - for rockhounding. But every chance I get to walk on the beaches below my house, I typically find something. In this case, a few weeks ago, I spotted this interesting cobble (about 2" long) and threw it in the tumbler. The polish revealed a fascinating pattern which I can't identify or explain.  Any ideas? A kind of agate?

(Click on photo to see a little bigger)

Surprises

By now, you will realize that my idea of heaven is to wander along local beaches picking up interesting stones and trying to piece together the stories behind them. I often fill a bag within an hour or so, and only weeks, if not months, later get to polishing them. So I can maybe be forgiven for not exactly remembering where I found this one, which emerged from the tumbler today. It is of a free-form yellow jasper together with what looks like a pinkish agate. Pink agate?  Never heard of it before - and as always, I have no idea where this rock originated, thousands of years before it landed on the beach where I found it. Yes, it would be nice to know: I'm guessing there are more like it...

A Polished Gem

I was photographing birds along the shore this morning (see below) but out of the corner of my eye noticed a shiny, rounded pebble with an unusual pattern. I pulled it out of the sand, and rinsed it off. What was immediately obvious was that it was heavy, hard and already very smooth - as if it had already been through a tumbler (which, I suppose you could say, it had).  I will polish it further but hopefully this striking pattern is not just on the surface and will survive the experience.

Speaking of surviving the experience : here's a gull trying to swallow a starfish on the beach below my house this morning. Amazingly, he finally got it down - but he didn't look altogether happy with the decision.

Under the Sand

Sometimes a rock will catch my eye with only a tiny spot visible - that was the case with this handsome stone that was mostly buried under the sand. No idea what it is, with its smooth swirls of red and green, but it was definitely worth digging up and tossing in the bag.  It'll be a month or more before the thing gets a polish.

It's Easier in the Rain

Just home from two weeks in California, and a rainy afternoon gave me a brief opportunity to scour the beaches I have not seen for a while. The rain broadens my access by revealing colors and patterns of rocks across the entire beach, rather than just in the surf zone. This one was high on the beach, and at almost 6" long, jumped out at me.

The one below will almost certainly NOT take a polish, but it might be pretty striking anyhow once it's tumbled a bit.

Good to be back!

Washington State Gemstone

I didn't know until recently that petrified wood is Washington State's official gemstone.  It makes sense: we have some wonderful sites for petrified wood around the state, most notably at Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park above the Columbia River near Vantage. There are many other sites as well, many accessible to the rockhound - and some, memorably, in people's back yards.

But to my knowledge, all of the best sites are scattered around Eastern Washington, many associated with lava flows and ash deposits from Washington's long volcanic history. There are far fewer really good sites on the western side of the Cascades. But for months I have found chunks of this black and brown petrified wood among beach cobbles here in Seattle (See August 25 post). I have found enough of them in fact, of very similar color and composition, that I can only think they are from a single source - somewhere north of here. (But as I have said many times, the glaciers that carved this area could have brought them from hundreds of miles away)

Still, it's always a treat to find them, though in their rough, surf-tumbled state, they are not always easy to recognize...

The Conveyor Belt

Beach Cobbles, Lincoln Park, Seattle

One of the best rockhounding locations in the Pacific Northwest is so close...that I can see it from my house. Seriously, one of my favorite rock-hunting spots is along any of the cobble beaches along the shores of Puget Sound. You can never tell what you might find out there including a variety of jaspers, agates, petrified wood, and just some beautiful stones of unknown origin. In fact, almost all of the rocks are from somewhere else.  Why?  Because almost all are leftovers from the Ice Age, when a glacier 5000 feet thick carved Puget Sound, and, like a gigantic conveyor belt, carried rock from a hundred locations to the north and dumped them here.

I find this fascinating. Some of the rocks I pick up along the beach may have been plucked from an outcrop in British Columbia, or have fallen off a peak in the North Cascades.  There are igneous rocks, metamorphics, and, of course sedimentary rocks as well: to be honest, I have no idea what half of them are!  Here are just a few samples from the beaches here, mostly jaspers, and at least one petrified wood.

All in a Day's collection, Puget Sound

Where are they from?  Who knows? Yes, sometimes it's a little frustrating to find a real stunner on the beach, knowing that you probably won't see another one, and with no clue where it originated. (It is rare, in fact, to see two rocks that appear to have come from the same locality.)

Having said that, most are beautifully rounded, making tumbling a snap. No surprise: they've been getting tumbled in the ocean for 10,000 years!