‘We discovered our individuals.’ WA’s rock hounds comb mountains and seashores for stony treasures
There’s treasure in Washington’s mountains, seashores and creeks. It comes within the type of crystals and agates, fossils and petrified wooden. The state is rock hounding paradise, say those that pursue the pastime.
You’ve simply acquired to know the place to look.
A mid-August weekend outing by the 500-plus member Puyallup Valley Gem and Mineral Club and the Washington State Mineral Council revealed veins, rock hills and hidden digging pits within the mountains above Greenwater.
Skilled and beginner rock hounds gathered on the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest ranger station in Enumclaw early on the morning of Aug. 17, the place membership president Tony Johnson and others had unfold rocks of various sorts on folding tables. Petrified wooden, geodes, opal and jasper shone in quite a lot of colours.
From their exteriors, the grey and brown rocks are as uninteresting as a russet potato. However sliced or cracked open, they glow with colours and patterns.
“I’ll take any person up right here (to a rock website) and so they don’t see it,” Johnson mentioned of probably spectacular specimens. “They stroll proper previous it.”
Caravan
Vans, SUVs, vans and even just a few courageous sedan drivers adopted membership leaders from the ranger station, up state Route 410 and onto Forest Service highway 70, simply previous Greenwater. Individuals drove from Seattle, Lengthy Seaside and Walla Walla for the journey.
The group’s first cease was at a scree-filled slope. Right here, the objective was to seek out moss agate. The veterans within the group instantly started pounding rocks with rock hammers and spraying the the stones from water bottles. The water acts as a short lived polish, permitting colours and patterns throughout the rocks to briefly emerge.
Herds of passing Jeeps and motorbikes kicked up clouds of mud and briefly drowned out the sound of hammering.
Hounding collectively
The Web is stuffed with data on rock hounding in Washington. However discovering the precise location of web sites may be complicated. That’s what prompted Milton couple Tasha Parker and Nate White to affix the membership.
“That’s why we joined, simply to sort of get individuals to point out us precisely the place to go and the place to dig,” Parker mentioned close to a seam of inexperienced and white agate. “We simply discovered our individuals and find it irresistible.”
Parker and White are each lifelong hikers and luxuriate in wilderness.
“It sort of combines being outside, mountain climbing round within the woods, after which the treasure searching,” she mentioned.
Lapidary
Some rock hounds like to go away the specimens they discover of their pure state. Others are extra formidable.
Delicate minerals, just like the examples discovered glowing in museums, typically require little modification for his or her magnificence to shine. However most of the rocks discovered within the Cascades want chopping and sprucing to succeed in their full glory.
Lapidary is the time period used to explain the transformation of rocks into show objects, jewellery and artwork.
The Puyallup membership has quite a lot of machines used for lapidary work. Rock hounds know the enjoyment of chopping open an unpleasant, unremarkable geode to discover a glowing middle of crystals. Kids are wide-eyed when the uninteresting stones they put into tumblers come out in crayon-like colours and patterns.
Duds and diamonds
Not all finds are valuable stones. Johnson tries to dissuade some rock hounds from slicing open stones he is aware of are duds.
“You don’t actually wish to waste time chopping this up as a result of, yeah, it’s rubbish stuff,” Johnson mentioned. “However, all people thinks they acquired a prize.”
Johnson says a snowmelt is an efficient time to seek out rocks within the mountains.
“They simply come out,” he mentioned.
Some stones, significantly purple and orange carnelian agates, may be present in creeks and on Washington’s seashores. One proliferate agate hunter, Chris Sims, who goes by the deal with “Carnelian Chris,” has 180,000 follows on TikTok.
Parker and White use their finds to make cabochons — polished stones with a flat again and rounded entrance which might be made into necklaces and different jewellery.
“There are such a lot of completely different inventive people who do various things (within the membership),” Parker mentioned. “Inlay, sculptures, wind chimes … they wrap issues in leather-based … strolling sticks.”
Household affair
Deep in a fir forest, the rock hounds unfold out. As Ryan and Megan Armstrong of Tacoma regarded for spots to dig, son Vorian, 6, was already pounding away along with his rock hammer.
“Is that this a rock down right here,” he requested as he dug in a small gap. “Yeah!” he answered as he pulled up what, for him at the least, was a significant discover.
Ryan Armstrong mentioned he was a rock collector as a boy. The household has been taking rock holidays across the west since getting hooked on the pastime in 2023 once they went searching for geodes close to a hearth lookout in jap Washington.
“We discovered a pair items, after which it’s all been downhill since then,” he mentioned.
Ethics
Some rocks may be discovered subsequent to Forest Service roads, or in some circumstances, within the highway. Different websites require a hike.
After exhibiting individuals the place a seam of agate ran down a hillside, throughout a highway and right into a rock slide, White led them to a gated highway. The group, carrying buckets, shovels and rock hammers, descended right into a mom lode of petrified wooden and customary opal.
White reminded the fanatics to not undercut tree roots whereas they dug and fill in holes once they had been performed.
“Among the greatest stuff I’ve ever discovered has been in individuals’s tailings,” he mentioned, referring to the dug out and picked over stays of a mining or digging operation.
Membership members aren’t mining operations. They carry buckets and produce house solely what they will work with, White mentioned. The Forest Service permits small scale rock hounding on the land it administers. Rock hounding on personal property requires the proprietor’s permission.
First time rock hounds
Amiera Abdel-Fattah traveled from North Seattle for the enterprise. After an hour, she had a crammed the underside of a bucket together with her finds.
“I’m amazed at how a lot materials is simply round,” Abdel-Fattah mentioned. “I sort of thought it’d be tougher to seek out, however it’s considerable.”
Her mom, Jasmine Campbell, got here alongside to help her 25-year-old daughter. However she was rapidly bitten by the rock hounding bug.
“I’ve gotten the thrill, it’s so infectious,” she mentioned. “I’m truly excited by the stuff that I’m seeing, and I’m grabbing this, grabbing that, grabbing this.”
Abdel-Fattah mentioned she collected rocks as a woman and lately turned enthusiastic about them once more.
“I simply suppose the rocks are actually fairly and there’s one thing enjoyable concerning the hunt, looking for one thing that’s just a little bit exhausting to seek out generally,” she mentioned.
Washington state places
The state Division of Pure Assets maintains a website with rock hounding places.
Right here’s an abbreviated record of rocks and the place to seek out them.
Crystals: Hansen Creek, Snoqualmie Move.
Geodoes: Walker Valley, close to Mount Vernon.
Agates: Damon Point, south of Ocean Shores.
Petrified wooden: Saddle Mountains, east of Yakima.
Teams
Puyallup Valley Gem and Mineral Club (Puyallup) PVGAMC@gmail.com
Washington State Mineral Council (statewide)
Shelton Rock and Mineral Society (Shelton) SRMS242@yahoo.com
Washington Agate and Mineral Society (Olympia) WAMSolympia@gmail.com
