Revealed

I am slowly working through the rocks I collected in southern California last month, including some interesting jaspers from the Central Coast. One of my favorite locations, as I have mentioned before, is the stretch of coast between Cayucos and San Simeon. Some of the most colorful, varied, and spectacular jaspers I have ever found were here, a place I am sure to go back to again and again.

Sometimes, I pick up rocks that show very little on the outside, maybe a little color, or the glassiness  of agate or jasper. I don't remember what I saw with this one. It was yellow overall, with the smooth sheen of jasper, but very little patterning on the surface.

Today I cut through it revealed a wonderful variety of patterns, almost like the "Picture Jaspers" I look for every year in the Owyhee canyons of Eastern Oregon.  These are the two cut ends of the same piece, about the size of my fist.  Wonderful.

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.

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.

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.

More Succor Creek Jasper

Succor Creek Picture Jasper

I've been home from Owyhee country for two weeks, and am starting to get some of this material polished. These are probably not the most dramatic picture jasper pieces I've ever seen, but they have a wonderful variety of color and pattern.  I am also very pleased with some of the petrified wood that came from the trip.

I have much, much more to go through - and some will be reserved for the day - one day - when I actually buy a saw, and cut some slabs. I have hesitated to invest in a saw up until now because 1) they are expensive and 2) because I have no interest in making jewelry. I really only do this for the pleasure of discovery and the beauty of what emerges after simple tumbling. In every hobby there is the inevitable choice - do I keep this casual, or invest in more equipment with some larger goal.  Frankly, I'm not there yet.  But as I find larger, better pieces, I will be tempted to cut slabs from them - if only to enjoy the larger canvas for the art of the stone.

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.

Brazilian Gravel Revealed

Unknown Jasper, Amazonian Gravels

As I mentioned in my previous post, I found some extraordinary rocks in the gravels used to line trails at a field camp in the Brazilian Amazon. I have now had a chance to tumble them for a week or so and reveal their color and structure.  As I suspected, they are stunning, full of stained veining like some of the best US picture-jaspers.

The raw pebbles were clearly river rocks - they had the characteristic rounding and light polishing that rocks get from natural tumbling - but no one seemed to know where the gravel was sourced.  A pity, since it is clearly a rich area for fine quality stone. More research is needed...

In the meantime, I have 20-30 very unusual additions to my collection.

POSTSCRIPT : After posting the above I sent an email to a contact in Brazil, hoping to get some details about the source for this miraculous gravel. To my surprise, I already heard back - this gravel is commercially available everywhere in Brazil.  Interesting - and surprising - but sadly, that fact alone doesn't get me any close to finding a source for the original stone!

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.