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.

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....

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!

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!