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.

Buying vs. Finding

Kaleidoscope Jasper

 So, here's the question: is there a difference between finding and buying a rock?  Quick answer: I'd rather find my own. For me, a big part of the pleasure of rockhounding is the hounding itself -- the research, the hunt, the sudden thrill of discovery. The intensity of this pleasure is reflected in the vast boxes and bins filled with rocks waiting to be polished or sawn, or somehow dealt with. I collect WAY more than I will ever find a use, or a place, for.. .

This doesn't mean I haven't spent an embarrassing amount of time on eBay, drooling over gorgeous pieces of stone that someone else has found and offered up for sale. I have even bought a few. But there is no comparison between finding one in a Priority Mail box and finding one on a gravel bar, beach or cliffside.  I can admire the rocks I buy, but lost are the memories, the stories, the sense of accomplishment.  To me it's the difference between catching a salmon, and buying one at the market for dinner. (OK, there are weaknesses to that comparison - rocks stay with you long after the salmon dinner is done)

I suspect everyone's a little different on that score. I can fully understand the value of wanting to collect the most beautiful specimens in the world. After all, it is the extraordinary beauty, and astonishing diversity, of rocks that attracts us to this hobby in the first place. Want to see an amazing collection of jasper?

Go to Hans Gamma's site here

or be blown away by the Morrisonite slabs here

Yes, I would be happy to own any of those. But I would be even happier if I'd FOUND one of those. 

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Note : the piece pictured above is from a box of Kaleidoscope Jasper rough I ordered last year. Polished, it is a thing of beauty - but does it compare with some far less exotic things I have found myself? Not even close.

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...

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.

The Limits of Photography

Biotite on Granite

This is one of my favorite rocks, found - as always - along the shore of Puget Sound. But the reason I love it is not apparent in this photo. The black biotite (mica) crystals that cover the top of this palm sized cobble shimmer with reflected light. It is a layer of crystals, vaguely parallel, but with just enough variation in orientation to catch the light at slightly different angles.

That's a lot of explanation for a simple rock, not well-photographed. I may need to try some other technique to capture the glittering mica crystals. Trust me, it's a beauty....

Things of Beauty

So far, no one has asked me why I collect this stuff (and why our garage is filled with rocks waiting to be polished - or disposed of). Hard to explain really, but let me put it this way. I find the abstract patterns and designs in nature to be stunningly beautiful. It has been argued that nature is ultimately the inspiration for all art; certainly I find the variety of color and design I find on the beach to be as lovely as anything I have ever seen.

This rock, for example, with its subtle shades of color and striking web of black lines, is not so far from classic abstract expressionist art. In fact, I might take up a brush and try painting something like this.  Until then, however, I am content - delighted, in fact - that such beauty exists in so prosaic a setting as the cobble beach below my house.

Patterned Quartzite (?) and Petrified Wood, Olympic Peninsula

I set out this morning to look for a source of variolites, the polka-dotted rock I have posted about in the past, and which probably originates in the basalts of the Crescent Formation on the Olympic Peninsula. I tracked down a couple possible source areas - and found no evidence of variolites. In fact, I didn't find a single one, which is unusual - I have found them in a variety of locations along the Olympic coast. This would suggest that the source is somewhere further west than where I was looking today.  So another expedition is clearly required...

However, I did get some time to poke around the coast near Sequim, where I found - among many other things - these two beach cobbles: a stained quartzite (or Jasper?) and a handsome piece of petrified wood. Not bad for a quick beach walk.

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.

What the Glacier Dragged In

Unknown Rock, Puget Sound beach

By now you will understand that patrolling the beaches of Puget Sound for unusual stones is one of my favorite spare-time activities. This rock helps explain why. I spent an all-too-short half hour on the beach recently, not finding anything special when this one caught my eye, full of stripes and marbling.  Agate, maybe?  Or something softer like travertine or diatomaceous earth?  I need to test the hardness.

Whatever it is, it is unlike anything I have ever found on the local beaches. Who knows where it's from? My hope, in fact, is that someone somewhere seeing these posted pictures will recognize the rocks from their part of the Northwest. It would be fun to know where the glaciers found them...

Back from Brazil

Just back from a month in Brazil where, among other things, I was photographing rare giant armadillos (see here ) in the Pantanal. But, as always, I kept my head down, with an eye for interesting rocks - especially since Brazil is one of the most mineral-rich countries on the planet.

Well, not where I was. In fact, most places I visited (Amazon, Pantanal) are flat sedimentary basins with little or no bedrock visible - and frankly not even many rocks. Mud mud and sand, mostly. In fact, the best looking rocks I found were some jasper/chert (not sure which) mixed in with gravels used to line pathways in the Amazon!  I have no idea where the gravels came from - no one seemed to know - but some of them exhibited some striking color and pattern.

While I wait to see what the tumbler reveals, I thought I'd show this pebble I found on a Puget Sound beach a few months ago, a handsome, multi-colored rock of unknown provenance and composition. This is the joy, and the frustration of Puget Sound rockhounding: you find a rock like this, and then never see another. It could be from anywhere...

Meanwhile, stay tuned for shots of the Brazilian gravel. If I'm not mistaken, there could be some real winners from that pathway.

A Map of the World

Agate/Jasper, Puget Sound

Another pebble from the beaches near my home, this one reminds me of a slightly wobbly planet with golden continents surrounded by a deep blue ocean.  Hey, you've gotta have imagination.

Meanwhile, I leave Friday for a month in Brazil. No, not rockhounding, but you better believe I'll be keeping an eye out.

The Corner of the Eye

Petrified Wood,  Lincoln Park, Seattle

A walk on a beach used to be all about the view: not anymore.  Start me walking on a cobble beach, like so many here in Puget Sound country, and it's all I can do not to stare down at my feet as I walk. It's usually better to do this on my own, rather than impose my distractions on friends and family, who might wonder why I never look up...or speak...

Sometimes, it is nearly impossible to stop scouring the gravel for something interesting. In the great tradition of treasure-hunters and fishermen there is always the forlorn hope that something miraculous is about to happen: your pan will reveal a gold nugget, a massive fish will bite, or (in this case) a beautiful, unexpected stone will suddenly appear at your feet.

Consider this: there may be several million cobbles on a hundred yards of beach. So how do you train your eyes, and your reflexes, to ignore the multitudes in favor of the unique?  I have no idea. I look for bright color, of course, or a striking pattern. I'm guessing it was the latter of those that drew my eye to this thing, off to one side. No reds or blues to catch my attention, just an eye-catching irregularity that made it jump out.

There is a maxim in beach-rock-hunting : a dry rock is, by and large, an ugly rock. That's why it makes sense to patrol the water's edge, where the surf has dampened the rocks, revealing the true color and pattern of the otherwise gray shapeless cobbles that cover the beach. (You can also go on a falling tide, or better yet, a misty day.)  This one I liked it so much, even dry, that I couldn't wait for a wave, and simply gave it a quick lick - sanitation be damned!

This salty exercise revealed a small, slightly glassy agate-like stone, but with a distinctly non-agate structure.  Who knows what it is or, as always, where it originated?  But it's one I was delighted to find.

Back to Mt. Rainier

Sunset and clouds on Mt. Rainier

 It takes about 3 hours to get from my house to Paradise, on the 5000 foot level of Mt. Rainier.  I dashed down there yesterday hoping to get some shots of wildflowers, which so far are about 6 weeks behind their normal bloom schedule. Well, after hiking up to my favorite meadow, I found the flowers just emerging from under the snow. If they bloom at all this year, it will be a miracle.

Driving home, I made a short detour to have a look at the Greenwater River just northeast of the volcano. There are few gem quality rocks on the mountain itself: too young and too active. But the volcano we see today rose through much older volcanics, many of which produce large quantities of agate and jasper. There are a couple of well-known areas for agate in the hills above the Greenwater, but today I decided to just poke around the riverbed to see what was washing down from the surrounding watershed.

In an hour or so I had a bag full of small agates, some jasper and even a nice piece of petrified wood.  But the find of the day was this good-sized multi-colored agate which I pried out of the riverbed. I haven't decided what to do with it yet - it seems criminal to whack it with my sledgehammer and run the risk of it shattering, so I may wait and cut it open - or polish the whole thing with the hope that it will reveal some nice patterns.

Agate from Greenwater River

Fractured Jasper

Fractured Jasper Pebble, Puget Sound

Jasper is one of the most common, colorful rocks among the beach cobbles of Puget Sound. It is composed of micro-crystalline quartz (e.g. its crystal structure is too tiny for the eye) and therefore is very hard and takes a nice polish.  Often the samples I find are broken, fractured or badly-shapen.

This one, however, had both a nice shape, and a handsome fracture pattern similar to the "crackle" in pottery glazes. Despite its symmetrical shape, I did not cut it, but simply polished the stone as I found it, which rounds out sharp edges, but otherwise changes the rock very little. To be honest, I enjoy these "natural" shapes much more than cut cabochons so popular in the jewelry business.  It will never be a necklace, but I enjoy it all the same.

Mystery Rocks

Mystery Rocks, Olympic Peninsula

I would love to figure out what these rocks are. I have found them repeatedly among the beach gravels of the northern Olympic Peninsula, along the Straits of Juan de Fuca, but have not managed to figure out where they are from - or what they are.  (I found them in many locations but they are especially abundant around the mouth of the Elwha River)

They are brittle but soft enough that they do not take a polish, despite the superficial resemblance to the Orbicular Jaspers (with red spots) found in the same region.  But the raised dots are odd, and I can't think what rock type these might represent.  Anyone recognize them? The matrix is grey-green and apparently crystalline, but whatever it is, it's a really distinctive rock.

No mineral value, of course, and no one is going to make jewelery from this material, but if there is a geologist out there that recognizes it, or where it outcrops, I'd love to hear about it....

POSTSCRIPT : One reader asked whether the blebs are just surface marks, e.g. barnacle scars, but I broke some open and the spots are distributed throughout the rock.

POSTSCRIPT TWO :  MYSTERY SOLVED 8/26 !  More on a later post...

"Topoliths"

"Topoliths" , Eroded shale, Falkland Islands

A few years we discovered a location in the Falkland Islands where the ground is littered with these wind-carved pebbles of shale/slate. Because of the layering, and the incessant wind, these stones erode into wonderful "topographic" shapes, akin to the contours of topographic maps. (I particularly like the "map" of California above, app. 4 inches long).  Because of their similarity to contour maps, we call them "topoliths."

We have dozens of these remarkable little stones.  Let us know if you'd be interested in having one.

Far, Far, Away

Polished beach pebbles, Chiloe Island, Chile

Yes, I know, this blog is supposedly about Pacific Northwest rockhounding, but it is also a chance to highlight some of the oddballs in my collection.  Last year, I spent 2 months working on the island of Chiloe in southern Chile. While there, I was told by locals - who knew about my interest in rocks - about a nearby beach with "beautiful stones." Intrigued, I had them take me there. It was a nondescript little bay, like many others along this ragged coast, but I did notice that the beach pebbles had a striking variety of patterns, and the smoothness and heft of silica-rich stone. I collected a few pockets-full (God, how I wish now that I had gotten more!) and brought them home to polish.

The six samples above show how wildly different the stones were, in patterns and colors, yet all had the same relative hardness, and shine. But none are recognizable as agate (no transparency) or jasper: some have what looks like sedimentary layering, while others have no linear structure at all.  Clearly there is something interesting going on in the geology of this bay, but I have not been able to find any references online.

If anyone can suggest what these rocks are, I will tell you where I found them. I only wish I had an excuse to go back...

Mystery Solved...

Brecciated Cherts, Channel Islands, CA

I collected these stones along the shore of Santa Cruz Island in California's Channel Islands last year. They were obviously silica-rich and took a nice polish, but were structurally all over the map: some were clearly banded like a conventional sedimentary rock, while others were fractured and chaotic.  I collected a dozen or so, but could not seem to find out what they were.

Then, recently, I struck up a conversation with a California geologist, who turns out to have done his PhD on the rocks of the Monterey Formation and immediately identified these as nice examples of brecciated cherts from the Monterey!   I still haven't figured out the exact mechanism of their formation, but they are pretty unusual in any case.

St. Kilda Oddity

 Granite/Dolerite Breccia, St. Kilda, Scotland

I collected this rock two years ago on the remote island of St. Kilda, off Western Scotland. It is about 9 inches long, about the size of an enormous russet potato.  I was stunned by the structure of the rock, composed of angular blocks of dolerite (Basalt) "floating" in a granite matrix. This was the largest one I could carry - but much of the island ( a World Heritage historical site) is made up of this stuff. No gem value, obviously, but just a wonderful piece of geology.