Small Treasures

Jasper Patterns, Owyhee country

OK, OK, I've been pushing the Owyhee jasper a lot lately on this blog. The truth is, that's about the only rockhounding I've had time for lately, and most of it has been just going through the pile of material I brought back from my last trip. I've been cutting a lot of pieces on my Lortone 10" saw, with mixed results as I've mentioned before. Sometimes there is great stuff, and sometimes there is just another wasted hour of saw-time.

These never saw the saw: they were fragments of a rock I broke open to see what it was made of. I knew right away it was something special, but it was not big enough to slab. So I opted to toss them in the tumbler - and both came out smooth and lovely, with handsome patterns on all sides. (Both have a lot of blue on at least one face.)

Anyhow, nice stuff...of unknown provenance. I suppose I could keep better records when I am in the field, i.e. get a GPS plot of every piece I pick up - but hey. I'd rather be looking for rocks than bending over my laptop. Anytime.

I will be traveling for the next few weeks, so probably not posting. Maybe I'll bring something interesting home.

Hidden Universe

Exterior : Raw and Colorless

Interior : A  Hidden World of Blue

Most of the well-known Owyhee jaspers come out of named sites, with private claims and - typically - heavy equipment. I follow the low-rent strategy, searching for intriguing rocks in canyons and gravel bars.  The challenge is that most of the things I find don't look like much. As I have pointed out several times in previous posts, it often takes a rock saw to show what's hidden inside.

This is a perfect example. The upper picture is of a rock I collected somewhere in the Owyhee area (I didn't keep track). Like many of the jasper fragments I've found it is covered with an orange weathering crust that reveals very little of the rock's internal structure.

The rock saw, however, revealed a blue universe inside the rock that I would never have suspected, full of color and crazy patterns: a real surprise.

Unexpected Fossils

Fossil leaves/needles, Owyhee country

Sometimes, when I am in serious rock-collecting mode, I am picking things up on a whim - a flash of color or pattern might catch my eye. But I generally don't spend a lot of time inspecting each one. Often they just go into the bag for future study. Maybe this is why my car rides so slow when I come home from a trip!

As I have mentioned in previous posts, I was recently collecting in one of my favorite areas, the Owyhee mountains on eastern Oregon. I have been sorting through the specimens I collated, tossing out some, and polishing those that are worth the effort, especially picture jaspers. (see earlier blog post)

But this one was a surprise, different from anything else I saw, and with a pale purple that caught my eye. I tossed it in the bag and only took a closer look today. Breaking off a piece revealed an inner layer  crammed with leaf fossils. I haven't identified them, but they look like conifer needles, twigs etc. strewn throughout a single layer in what I am guessing is rhyolite tuff. A nice surprise!

Christmas Morning

Owyhee Jaspers revealed

One great advantage of a rock saw is that you can non-destructively look inside a weathered rock whose outward appearance is almost nothing like its inside. I have just come home from eastern Oregon with huge amounts of jasper from the Owyhee country, but very rarely are the patterns and colors obvious through the weathered crust. Some things that look intriguing on the surface are dull inside. However, the reverse is also true - some real treasures have no outward sign of what's inside until you break them open - or use a saw.

In the past I had nothing more than a rock hammer to see what was inside - but jasper is really just a natural glass, and often cleaves and shatters in unexpected, and unwanted, ways. I hate to think about the number of really fine rocks that have disintegrated under my hammer! A lot of weathered picture jaspers, for example, are riddled with cracks, which is precisely why there are such great patterns in the first place. These clearly have no business being hammered...

The saw, meanwhile, provides a window into the rock, without risking damage. Now, all I have to do is choose the pieces that look good - like the three above, which I just cut yesterday from very humble fist-sized pieces. The best  go into the tumbler to smooth out the rest of the stone.

After this last trip, I've got many, many more waiting to be opened up.  Can't wait.

Crazy Mixed-up Jasper

Owyhee Jasper

For years now, I have been in love with the stunning variety of colors and patterns that jasper can take on. And when you are talking about colorful jasper, it's hard to beat those from the amazing Owyhee Mountains of Eastern Oregon. Yes, I find plenty of interesting things around my home near Puget Sound, but several times a year I make the 9-hour drive out to this, my favorite rock location on Earth.

I spent just a few days there this time, collecting in the Succor Creek drainage and along Leslie Gulch. To be honest, I stuck to some pretty familiar, accessible locations. Frankly, if it hadn't been 95 degrees I might have explored further away from the roads, but I promised my wife I wouldn't do anything too crazy. What's truly amazing is how much there still is, within easy reach.

As I may have mentioned before, my inspiration has been Hans Gamma's breathtaking collection of Owyhee area jaspers both on his website and his book.   He knows some really hidden corners of these mountains that some day I will get to. But for now, I have several hundred pounds of jasper to sort, cut and polish.  Stay tuned for results.

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.

The Tip of the Iceberg

Succor Jaspers - polished

A nice batch of Succor Creek Jasper came out of the tumblers today, which shows you some of the diversity possible in this area, and the quality of the polish that the rock takes. Yes, there are a few nicks and scratches from the tumbling process; hopefully these will come out by the end, but a few still remain (usually the result of having some over-size rocks mixed in - these tend to break chips out of one another.)

The obvious question its "why not slab this stuff and enjoy the patterns in 2 dimensions?"  Well, I might if I had a saw, but I also get some pleasure out of the random-ness of this process, which seems somehow more "natural." Probably just a case of rationalizing my own equipment deficiency - but that's how it goes. I tend to scavenge for small tumbler pieces, preferring them to large hard-rock excavation, the kind that produces good slabs.  Maybe that will change one of these days.

Succor Creek Wood

Petrified Wood, Succor Creek OR

Haven't been out into the field lately, but I am still working on the material I collected at Succor Creek in early June. Although most is high-quality jasper, including some with nice "picture" designs, I also found a fair amount of petrified wood.  Here are just a few of the pieces I gathered along the creek.  I'm sure there's a lot more out there...

Hope to make it back to the area later this summer. In the meantime, I will be exploring some locations closer to home. Stay tuned.

Succor Success

Succor Creek Jasper

I'm home and have had a chance to clean up some of my rocks from Succor Creek.  Wow!  I am delighted to have hundreds of pieces of every size and shape. Some I will save for slicing, but I have loads of tumbler material of very high-quality - much better than I got last year.  I am particularly happy to get so much of the Succor Blue Jasper, which I think it stunning.
I haven't shown any here, but I also got some very nice petrified wood fragments - including one very dramatic chunk of swirling black wood. (I'll try and post it later)
I also did some poking around some other areas in SW Idaho, and found a small creek in the foothills around Boise with some stunning football-sized chunks of Yellow/Orange Jasper.  It looks like it may have cracking problems, but I will have to cut into it to see how it holds together. But it has the potential to be stunning.  Two sample pieces below.

Idaho Jasper

All in all, a VERY successful trip. But as I mentioned in my earlier post, next time I go back, I really have to explore some more. There must be vast quantities of hi-grade jasper in those mountains...

Return to Succor Creek

Succor Creek Canyon,  E. Oregon

I've come out to eastern Oregon/Idaho for a few days to do some photography - and also to do some rockhounding in one of my favorite locations - Succor Creek in the Owyhee Mountains.  It is a beautiful place, and a terrific location for jasper, agate and petrified wood. I have done well with all three, simply by poking around the extensive gravel bars along Succor Creek.
Last time I was here it was a month or two earlier in the year, and the water was much higher, faster and colder - so getting to any gravel was hard. But now the river has dropped - but the fierce summer heat hasn't hit yet.
I spent 4 hours out there today, and came back with about 100 pounds of tumbler material. Most was found just along about 200 yards of overflow river bed - see photo below. I am really pleased with some of the picture jasper pieces and some large chunks of wood.
Every time I come here, I plan to explore the hills around the creek, which is presumably where all this stuff comes from - but I do so well just scavenging the river bed that I've never gone much farther afield.
I'll post pictures of some of my better finds when I get home this weekend.

Gravel beds, Succor Creek

Missed Opportunity

Owyhee Picture Jasper

I had big plans to head back to the Owyhee country in eastern Oregon this fall to search for more jasper. I had been there in the spring, but high water made access to some of the best collecting sites too difficult, so I promised myself to make an autumn trip.  Well, the rains have started, and autumn has arrived faster than I expected - and my schedule is now too full to allow a minimum three-day trip to the desert. I guess it will have to wait until next year.

These three fragments, polished chips from a piece I collected last spring, will remind me of what I'm missing: one of the greatest collecting locations in the Northwest.

A Visit to Mecca

Succor Creek Jasper

About two months ago I drove over to the Idaho/Oregon border to search for Owyhee Picture Jasper, one of the most spectacular in the world. It was my first time in the area, and I concentrated on the Succor Creek region SW of Homedale Idaho. Many people come here for Thundereggs, but I really wanted to find jasper - and I did.  However, because of heavy snows, the creek was still running too high to get across to some of the better jasper areas, so I concentrated my efforts in a few drainages coming out of the hills to the west.

My technique was simple, just wade up the still flowing stream, and look for things that looked interesting in the cold, clear water. I quickly trained my eye to spot the tan color of the jasper and filled my collecting bag in no time. And a second time, and a third time. Before I knew it, 9 hours had gone by and I had a car full of rock and an aching back!

Much of this jasper does not look like much in rough form; the colors and patterns are too subtle. But whenever you hit a rock and it breaks in conchoidal fractures (e.g. smooth glass-like flakes)  you know you're into jasper.

None of this was slabbing material : it was destined for my non-stop tumblers, which always have a series of rocks being polished. The small sample above, about 1.5" high, is one of my favorites. Not spectacular, but handsome enough that I enjoy having it, and many others like it.  Can't wait to go back.

Welcome

Owyhee Jaspers, Succor Creek, Oregon 

I am starting this blog just to record details of my completely unprofessional hobby of rockhounding.  I studied geology at the University of Washington three decades ago, and have always been interested in the subject, but only recently have I started actively looking for rocks as objects of beauty and design.  No, I am not a jeweler, and so far have resisted the temptation to invest in cabbing equipment and expensive polishers. Instead, I prefer the naturalistic forms of tumbled stones, particularly jaspers in all of their astonishing varieties of color and pattern.  As my wife can testify, our house is increasingly filled with polished stones.

These jaspers were all collected in a small streambed off of Succor Creek in Eastern Oregon, one of the best rockhounding locations I've ever seen.  Walking in the water, where the true colors of the stones were better displayed, I quickly filled up my collecting bag, not once, not twice, but three times - all in less than half a mile. I couldn't stop myself!  By the end of the day, I was more physically exhausted than I have ever been,  having spent 12 straight hours bent at the waist. That's the true nature of obsession...

More to come.