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.

Skokomish Obsession

Orbicular Jasper, Skokomish River

Somebody stop me. I have made two trips now to the Skokomish River looking for orbicular jasper. Today was a beauty, sunny and warm, and the river was running gin clear (see photo below). Good conditions for looking for jasper. As before, there are loads of interesting jaspers on this river, but very few have well-defined red orbs, so you spend a lot of time picking up stones, and then discarding them.

This one was high and dry on the gravel bar, and jumped out because of its vivid color.

I found others in the water, as in the photo below. The only trouble is...you can't see the water. Believe it or not, these rocks are under a smooth sheet of water, e.g. just about perfect for scanning for rocks. And surrounded by drably colored rocks, the red jasper almost jumps out at you!

The Skokomish Runs clear in August

Hands and Knees Jasper

Cherry Creek Red Jasper

No, I haven't discovered a new type of jasper - the title of this post refers to how I spent most of my day today...on my hands and knees (in the water)

 I decided to go out this morning to Cherry Creek, near Duvall, Washington, to look for bits of high-quality red jasper. I had been there two years ago, and all I can say is, plants grow fast here in the Northwest. This small creek was walkable last time I was there - this time I was literally crawling up the creek, under an almost solid thicket of shrubs and small trees.

The only upsides to this technique are 1) I was a LOT closer to the stream gravel, so I could see some of the bits of jasper which tend to be small. and 2) I suspect I was the only person willing to put up with this - there was a pretty good scattering of jasper once I left the "easy" part of the creek.

This location has been well-known for decades, and a lot of mineral clubs have field trips to the site,

(see: http://home.comcast.net/~wams1939/trips/cherry.htm)

so it's not exactly easy pickings anywhere. But it is close to home, and there is always the promise of a really nice bright piece of jasper. Not sure I found it today, but I got a nice bag full in a couple of hours.
Having said that, I probably won't be back without a machete...

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.

Rialto Beach Redux

Poppy Jasper, Agate, and....? , Rialto Beach

Last year I made a pilgrimage to Rialto Beach, not far from Forks, Washington (aka "Twilight" Town) to beach comb for orbicular "poppy" jasper. This has been a well-known location for jasper beach cobbles for decades, and every time I'm in the neighborhood, I make a point of stopping by.

I spent a happy hour or two looking for jasper, but also stumbled onto some other nice things as well - some petrified wood, and at least one piece of yellow plume agate. It takes a while to train your eye here: the weather was uncharacteristically dry, so all the beach stones had that pale, scuffed look, making them very hard to identify. I did carry a water spray bottle to test stones -and licked a few - but after a while, I began to see the characteristic smoothness of the harder rocks (mixed in with a lot of rough-surfaced sedimentary rocks, the most common thing on our outer coast).

In the end, I got a nice stash of poppies, and some other things I'll look forward to polishing. Always a great place - and the best part is,  after next winter's storms (profound on this wild coast) there will be a whole new crop of rocks thrown up onto the beach.

Gravel Galore, Rialto Beach