In the Wells area, the wind was formidable. It surprised me, as I would not have expected it to be that windy, especially not in late summer. Along with the wind was incredible dust.  I like to travel with windows down, but after just a few minutes of back roads I decided to roll the windows up. Too late. The inside of the rig was dusted – thickly, and closing the windows just sent the dust into the air in choking clouds. So I figured out which windows to open and how far to keep the dust out of my face and things went a little better.

I headed toward back roads to do some exploring.  There were a few that were pretty well maintained.  The offshoot 4WD roads were not as well kept. Many were washed or pitted enough that I couldn’t drive them. There was a lot of jasper (a NV usual no matter where ya go).  I’ll spare the usual pic of a red and yellow jasper and show you a few of the lively greens from the area.

The one in the middle is actually blue rather than green. It’s also got a strange texture to it. It’s almost as opalite like as jaspery. In the long run, though – it’s jasper.  The big green chunk to the right of it really excited me for a minute.  It looks like wood. It’s not, though.  It’s just the way it layered in the mountain that gives it that look.  Still a nice chunk of jasper, though, so I was pleased with it.

There was a lot of opalite up there.  One location had a lot of this pink opalite. This piece is about 6 inches across. Some of the opalite is very brittle and will shatter easily. Some is rather hard – this piece has a fracture or two but it basically a hard piece.

There was a lot of obsidian up there.  There were also a lot of Apache tears – many were the size I’m holding. And yeah – I do know my hands are dirty.  Playing with rocks does that.  I’m thinking anyone interested in this article probably spends as much for soap and emery boards as I do. One of the hazards of the field.

While I did spare you all another pic of the red and yellow jasper which seems to appear almost every place you go in NV……at least Northern NV – I did feel it proper to add a picture of the Nevada agate from there, which also seems to be scattered across the upper part of this state. This was a pretty common find, but had some patterning that seemed might be pretty when cut.

After leaving Wells, I descended south to the Ruby Mountains.  When you get back up into those mountains, you’ll find some absolutely beautiful scenery.  Even during the late summer, these mountains were very green and, in spots, actually lush. There’s a lot of lakes in the upper regions.  There’s also a lot of pegmatite.  I was hoping to find a little beryl when I was up there, but that didn’t happen.  I did go to two locations where beryl has been found, but one would have taken digging, and the other was just expansive. I did hike around and found a few rocks with garnet type crystals in them, but didn’t see any beryl.  I’m pretty sure a few more days in the area might have turned up some, though.

The rock in one of the areas was almost more granite than pegmatite.  It was a blue green, though, that would be perfect coloration for beryl. This is from the location that I thought digging might reveal some crystal.  As you can see, the smaller sample actually looks more like massive beryl than quartz. Haven’t really tested it yet, but don’t need to test to see that it will make a nice cab.

The pegmatite from the other area a few miles north of this one is laced liberally with mica. I picked up a few small mica books around an inch across or so. Not huge, but nice chunks for decorating gardens.  Not sure if you can see the little crystals in the following pic or not, but they seem to be low grade garnet. I could be wrong.  I would think anyone in that area that puts in the time might come up with some nice crystals of some sort or other.

The next day found me in Ely at Garnet Hill. I proceeded to the park area at the top of the hill where I was incensed by what I found. I’m amazed that this area is still open to the public. The top of the hill is covered with digging holes. Many, many trees have been rooted and people have left the holes without filling them back in.  Really – people that careless should not be allowed off of sidewalks.  What they think they’re doing is way beyond anything I can fathom.

Anyway – I walked around for a few minutes, shaking my head at the mess. The whole top of the hill is  nothing but rock fragment, and underneath just rocks to chip at. I stopped at one beautiful little tree that had been rooted and filled the hole back in.  I did find one fairly nice garnet while filling the hole up, so got a little reward for trying to save the little tree.  Then I proceeded downhill and hunted via my usual method for finding garnet. I got a relatively nice score. While the pic doesn’t show the color, these are an intensely deep wine red.  I might be able to get the color to show after cleaning off matrix rock and cleaning them up a bit. As you can see, they’re generally nice sized garnets even if the beautiful color doesn’t show up.

As I was leaving a family with two little girls had parked and were just starting the hunt. These little girls were extremely excited and there was no way they were going to be digging in that hard rock above, so I showed them how to hunt for the stones on my way out.  I hope they got a few nice ones.

I left Ely to continue my trip via hwy 50.  My next stop was Eureka, and I found I hadn’t brought my information on the area.  I wanted to hunt for the trilobite fossils in the region.  So, I stopped in town to ask around. I talked to several people but nobody seemed to know what the heck I was talking about. For some reason I can’t quite put my finger on I found the place a little eerie and opted out of staying for the night and continuing my hunt there in the morning.  Someday I might go back when I am not traveling on my own and have my information about the area with me. At any rate, I headed for Austin.

It was almost dark when I reached Austin and there was only one room left in town.  I was considering taking it, when someone had heard me say I’d camped all nights but one on my trip.  She asked me if I knew there were hot springs there.  Hot springs? Oh yeah – I’d rather do that!  She gave me the directions and I spent most of the night sleeping on top of my rig where I fell asleep watching that spectacular sky out there in the middle of nowhere, parked by a nice hot tub of running water.

The next morning found me in a little cafe in Austin having a chat about blue agates with an interesting man with sharp intelligent eyes, and a long silver pony tail. He reminded me of Gandolf and I immediately liked him. After lunch and some stimulating conversation, I headed out to look for Airy Mt agates……….which are not on Mt Airy. Go figure.  I’d never have found them with just the information I had.  The man at the cafe had over-estimated my eyesight when he gave me a landmark to look for, but at least I was on the right road.

Not seeing the landmark, I doubled back and saw something out in the distance that I thought might be what I was told to look for. So I headed down a 4WD path.  I got up even with the marker, but saw I was on the wrong path. Still – I wasn’t planning on staying on the road anyway, so got out of the car.  I immediately picked up two blue agates off the path and decided that whether I was in the exact location or not, I was close enough and did a little hiking……….and a little picking up rock.  I had pulled these out of a bucket of water take the pic so the cement is a little wet, but the agates are basically dry in the pic.

When I had had enough hunting, I made my way back to the rig, and as I got ready to leave, I suddenly saw the landmark that I’d been told to begin my search at.  The next time I go out to the Austin area I will know where to start my hunting. And I will go back there.  I will also be studying up to see what else can be found in the vicinity.  With a hot springs and blue agates, I’ve got at least one night and one day covered.

So all in all, I had a pretty great trip.  There were a few disappointments and a lot of very great views and great rocks and hot springs to offset them. I’m hoping the weather holds long enough for the next trip I want to take to explore the Black Rock Desert.

Until next time;

Life’s short –  Rock hard

This year’s hunt was led once more by Tony Funk (member catmandewe), and he’s proven once again to be the ultimate in rock tour guides. I thank you, Tony for yet one more spectacular meetup!

So – without further discussion — here’s the rocks!

The pile of green in the center of this pic are Garry Green wood.  The one with the visible green ripple leaning on the wall in back is from the green jasper stop.  Sorry – I can’t remember what the heck the name of that jasper is.  It’s green. That much I can tell ya.  I got lucky when I was hauling those two big hunks of Garry green out of the canyon when a few members of the party drove by in Trucks and gave me a boost with them the rest of the way up the hill.  They were a lot heavier than they looked and it would have taken me all day to get them up on my own……….but I really wanted em.

Here’s a few close-ups of this beautifully banded wood.

While this next one is not the color you expect to see when you’re hunting Garry Green, it was my favorite find from that location.  I was surprised that there’s actually a lot of blue up there mingled with the green.

This next shot is a little blurry, but I just wanted to show the color of this agate so tried for a close up. OOPS.  It’s called purple cow and it’s not a real translucent agate, but it is purple. I also got a piece that is much the same shade of lavender as the lavender quartz I got last year, but a little more translucent. The piece in the pic below isn’t the most purple of the agates found by the group that day, but it’s an example of the color.  Despite it’s blur, I think it gives you the idea of what purple cow is.  Hopefully, someone else will have a more clear pic of  a little more lively colored piece of this stuff to offer.  

This next shot is from another wood location Tony took us back to.  This is a highly opalized wood – and I was delighted to find some actual tiffany fire in it.  At first I thought it was just flash from a fracture, but later inspection proved it was not fracture. While there was only about an inch long area of color in this one – I’m hoping, if I get back to that area again to find more of it. A lot of the color (on the right side) doesn’t show up the way the sun hit it – but you can see a little of it.  That blue area all the way to the right end contains color.  On the left, some of the beautiful banding in this piece is visible, too. As you can see, I haven’t mastered close up shots at all.

This last pic of wood from the McDermitt area I found at the mouth of a canyon that I very much wanted to get into.  There was a herd of range cows with some very young babies that had other ideas about me traipsing around their water hole, though.  I liked the colors, none the less,  and will go back to this area whenever I return to the McDermitt area in the future and try again. I have a feeling there’s some nice wood hiding down that canyon.

Okay – that’s my favorite of my McDermitt finds.  Now here’s a few miscellaneous pics of stuff I’ve wanted pics of for awhile now.

Above the rock pick are a few of my finds from my hunt in Central Washington a year and half ago.  I’ve got a few close ups of this wood just below this pic.

The top of this one isn’t going to slice, but I have a use for it anyway.  The rock about 4 inches from the top is pretty solid and I have plans for other uses for that once I get it sliced from the top. Gonna have to find someone with a big saw for this one. It’s a foot across and a little over that deep.

The next one is a little more solid, but I have other uses besides lapidary for this piece, as well.

As you can see, this Washington opalized wood is a multitude of earth tones.  All this wood made me fall in love with opalized wood.  Still love agatized wood, too – but this stuff is just really special in my book.

The next two pictures are also opalized wood – but,  are from Nevada.  These are from the hunt I went on with John (member Orygone) and his side kick, Patti when our 2015 meetup was canceled due to weather.  It wasn’t the best weather that day, either – but at least we were close enough to solid road that we were able to hunt despite the rain. The pictures don’t do a couple of these boldly banded pieces much justice.

While I didn’t see anything opalized in Washington that wasn’t earth-tone – there was a little more variety in Nevada.

This next rock I got in the same area on that hunt with John and Patti.  I’m not sure what it is – rhyolite, jasper, opal?  I sure do like it, though.

Next pic is some banded wood that Bob (coldwatergold) and I found not too far out of Dayton last spring when he came out to see a friend of his who lives there.  Some of this stuff has more color to it, but it is predominantly white with darker banding.

Okay – the last two pics are of rock from my local area out here in NV.  The first one is just an example of the jasper out here. There are other colors, too, here and there fairly local – but there’s tons of this red and tan stuff everywhere.

And this last pic is because we have several members who live out around here or visit sometimes and I get sooooo many questions about Lahotan blue lace agate.  This is the blue that is here. I guess some of it works into some really neat cabs, but the color of the blue is not that bright blue found elsewhere in the state.  It’s blue, but it’s a muted blue, and is not a highly translucent rock, either.

So – that’s all I got, today folks.  Hope you enjoyed the virtual tour.

Until next time;

Life’s short –  Rock hard

For those who are really disappointed about the meet being canceled – I met John and Patti (member: Orygone and wife) in Lovelock, and even that far south the rain made things a little hectic.

We’d already gotten some good hunting in when John decided to drive through a puddle.  My rig is light and had no place to hook a monster like that truck to so Patti and I drove to cell phone reception and called John’s rescue friends.  They had him out in 20 minutes from call to tow, so we were able to finish out the day at another fun and interesting location.

The biggest find of the day was a great piece of opalized wood that John was able to get out of a ravine.  The pictures don’t do this much justice – it’s gorgeous and a little more colorful in person – and probably a lot more so after cleaning.

This piece is about an 80 pound boulder.  There were a few that were probably a couple hundred pounds that I would have loved to take home.  There were plenty of others, though, that were actually small enough to carry – and we could have collected beautiful tumbler pieces all day.  As it was, I got a couple of backpacks of beautifully banded greens, yellows, oranges, blues, and reds. Below is a sample of the multicolored nature of this wood.

The last spot we went to had wonderstone, agates, and a more jaspery wood.  The colors were incredible.  Below is a piece with a lot of pink in it.

There was also a lot of yellow wood.

All in all – we got some great rock, had a great time, and a few laughs when John drove into the puddle.  I hope some of the other RHS1 members get a chance to get to Nevada this summer. If you like rocks – it should be on your bucket list.

My thanks to John and Patti for showing me a wonderful day even though the meet was a bust.

My trip started late –  it was 2:00 am on Thursday night when I got out of work and hit the road.  I wasn’t due to meet up with the others til 10:00 Friday night so figured I’d have time to sleep and stop and do some hunting on the way down.  Since I didn’t sleep as long as I expected, I ended up in the Peterson Mountain area around noon unexpectedly and decided to try to figure out where it was.  I stopped at Hallelujah Junction to ask which road led back to the Mt. There were no atlases or local maps, so I had to ask people who were coming and going.  Finally one gentleman gave me some directions.  I’m still not sure they were correct, but I did get back onto the peaks and did some hunting, even though I never saw anything that looked like the pics of Peterson that I’ve seen. So who knows where I was. I was just happy to be out and actually picking up a few crystals.

There were a few other people on the mountain hunting and some pits, so I was at least close to being where I wanted to.  At one point there was a very steep dirt “road” that I found a nice little smoky at the bottom of.  There were some pits up high and I figured that’s where the smoky came from so I decided to try the road.  I was about 10 feet from a landing I could have turned around at and something caught my eye on the side of the road and I slowed down – and that was it.  I was stuck on one of those roads that there’s nothing on one side of you, no way to pull off on the other side, and a rig that wanted to slide when the brake was on.

So I just gave a silent and very sincere thanks that the guys at RHS1 weren’t around to help me not live it down forever (there would have been pics, oh my God).  I backed down the mountain slowly lifting off the brake just a little then braking again and letting the jeep slide a foot, rinse and repeat.  The guys hunting a couple hundred feet over on the hill seemed to be entertaining themselves watching me back down and were probably placing bets with each other whether the stupid woman driver would go over the edge or not. It was a white knuckle back-up job and, with almost no sleep under me, my nerves twinged more than just slightly.

Finally down, I decided to go back and take a split in the road that took me to a ravine that led up to the pits and hunt there.  I knew backing down the hill left my nerves in rougher shape than I thought when a little rattler shook his tail at me and I turned around and yelled at him real hard about not being in the mood for his crap and he fled. I felt bad for that.  He was just letting me know he was there.  But the tantrum made me feel more solid again and I ended up finding some nice, but small, smoked quartz crystals and promised myself the next time I went past that area I’d be armed with the correct directions to Peterson.  Had I expected at all to be there, I’d have done that this time.

I hit Reno at Rush hour.  I’ll never do that again. Serious.  If I get there at that time of day, I’ll park and wait until the roads clear.  I’ve never seen drivers  so wildly aggressive anywhere – and I’ve driven all over the states and Europe. That night I spent at my friend’s in Silver Springs and Jess and Jay who arrived after dark, a little nose broken that they missed the crystal hunting but excited about the weekend.

Feeling a little more lively after a good night of sound sleep, we headed out in the morning with our first stop being for Lahontan agates. The area that we hunted had plenty of light blue agates, lots of red and blue, and just truck loads of browns, oranges, etc.  It’s hard to be discretionary about what to keep and what to leave in a field like that where you are just walking over agates everywhere, but we were good about being fussy this time. We wanted room in the rig for other things.

Here’s one of the more colorful pieces we picked up there:

Next we were off to get Wonderstone. We drove around that area for awhile looking for the mystical blue agate but only spent a little time since we had a special area for blue we were headed to the next day.  After seeing only chips of blue we decided to hang that up and headed over to the hills.  We found a few excellent locations and got a lot of beautiful wonderstones. The picture really doesn’t do this sample much justice, but, you get the idea:

Here’s a close up of one:

I have to include a note here about the excellent food that Jay cooked for the trip.  The homemade salami and the Gumbo were absolutely incredible.   It’s the first time I’ve sampled his cooking skills and I was extremely impressed.

We spent the night in that area then proceeded on the next day to a road South of Highway 50 and closer to Middlegate. Our aim for this hunt was agates  and jasper.

We were looking for blue agate.

We didn’t refuse anything just because it wasn’t  blue, though. My favorite find of the day was a yellow jaspagate.

Of course – being Easter, we did do a little egg hunting.  Jess had the best find of the day:

We had plenty of the locals come out and watch us hunt:

Our last stop of the trip was to pick up some of that nice colorful jasper on the way back from the agate location. We had to make this stop especially for jasper for me to take to the RHS1 2014 meet-up next month so nobody can carp at me about never picking up jasper like some of the guys there love to do.

Here’s a sample of the jasper I picked up for you, guys.  You can take your pick of them at the meet:

All in all, I’d say it was a pretty good trip out.  We filled up the back of a pickup and a jeep:

With the sun getting low and everyone having to work the next day we headed out a little reluctantly, and more than a little sunburned.   I still had room in the back for another day at Wonderstone!

Oh yes – and here it is 2014, so I guess I’ll end this report with the obligatory “selfie”.

Life’s Short – Rock hard.

Anyway – I just thought you fine folk would like a little picture tour of what can be picked up out here not far from the Silver Springs area.

Mason Pass sits just to the west of a pleasant little town called Yerrington.  If you like blue minerals, this is a trip you have to take.  Crysacolla, azurite, turquoise, and malachite (yeah, I know. Malachite is green) all can be found in varied quantities in the Mason Pass area.  Here’s a few of my finds from there.  Gorgeous stuff, all of which  is usually found as seam material. The rocks have plenty of seams throughout though, so when you find blue, you can break the boulders up into smaller samples and still have beautiful specimens.  I got several angles on these for ya.

Here’s a view from a different angle for ya.

Petrified Wood:

Petrified wood is prevalent in many areas of Nevada in various color combinations and in varying amounts.  Here’s a few pieces I picked up right near home where it is a rare find. There are some areas just a little bit NW of where I lived that it is much the same in quality, but is much more common a find.  Getting back to it can be a pain in the butt, though. The trails are sandy and rocky, and sometimes you just have to park and walk in.  Needless to say – you will  probably want to go further to the South or East to hunt for Nevada wood than the Silver Springs area.  In some locations wood becomes much more similar to the colorful woods of Arizona.  My region wasn’t one of those locations.

The smaller chunk in front is what the wood in my general vicinity usually looks like:

Here’s a better picture of the big piece in back. I’m not sure if you can see the rings, but you can in person. This piece is a bit more unusual. It’s mostly black and agaty, but the agate seems to tend toward opal in spots.  The color is also blue in a few spots rather than black.  I can hardly wait to get a slice off of this piece!

Agates.  What you can find a lot of in my neck of the woods is agates.  I can honestly say it hasn’t sucked living where I have agates within a walking distance of me.  They are all over the place in pockets on the north side of 50 once you get past highway 95 in the Springs.   You almost have to be trying not to find agates not to find them out here.

Here’s just a general view of some of the different colors of agate that’s out in this area.

That big agate at the back is actually a dark royal or navy blue. I’ve never seen one near the color of this one. Most of the darker agate here is grey.  This is another one I’m extremely anxious to get a slab and a few cabs from. As you can see these stones are pretty rich in color.  They are more translucent than a picture allows me to show you, but you get the idea, I’m sure, if you’ve ever hunted agate before.

Here’s a closer shot of a blue crazy lace and a carnelian. The banding on the lace doesn’t show in this picture, but it is beautiful in person.  Perhaps when I get some of this cabbed I can find a higher resolution camera so you can see more of the details.

This agate shows how multi-colored a lot of the agates are and gives a little more detail than the other pics I got of my agates.

Well the agate shots didn’t show as much detail as I had hoped, so I’m just going to skip over the rest of them and get to another rock that comes in all sorts of variations out here – jasper.

The most famous of the jaspers in Nevada is called Wonderstone. Some of this jasper is a matte stone, other is quite waxy.  It is just gorgeous either way.  There are a couple of hills out West of Fallon between Grimes Point archaeological site and Middlegate.  One is called Wonderstone mountain and the other is Yellow Hill.  There is another by the old camp of Wonderstone.  I’ve heard of others, but never saw them.  Here’s a few pictures of some of this incredible stone.

Most of the Wonderstone is pink, maroon, and yellow as you will see in the pics – but this particular prize shows how diverse the colors can be.

Here’s a pic of more conventional and common Wonderstone specimens.

Here’s a close up of the large stone on the bottom:

While Wonderstone is the most widely known of the Nevada jaspers, there are jaspers of all colors out here.

The green jaspers in the pic above come from the area just SW of Fernley.

This next jasper and the pic under it came from another hill composed completely of jasper.  You can tell the hill  is pure jasper even from a distance. It is red.  The guy holding the jasper in the first pic here is a friend of mine, Aaron Aveiro, who took almost all of the pics here.  (Thanks Aaron).   He liked the piece he is holding up because of the vugs of dark drusy that form a face in the rock.  These are just small samples of the gorgeous agate from that hill.  If you are hearty enough and have the right equipment, you could pull specimens the size of my jeep off of that hill.

I don’t remember exactly where I picked up some of the jaspers. You can find a mix of these jaspers when hunting in the agate fields, or you just go to a hill made out of the stuff.  I’ve never seen anything quite like it.  A lot of the jaspers have  agate in them, too. Sometimes just seams, but some actually qualify to justly be called jaspagate.  When I get some of these beauties worked into cabs I’ll get some more detailed pictures of them.

Well that’s one longshot from being an all inclusive list of what you can find in Nevada – in fact it’s just a tiny start.  There are fire opals, black opal, garnets, topaz, quartz crystals, and a whole list of other gemstones throughout the state.   When, some day in the future you come back here to the Gazette, don’t be one bit surprised if you find that a group of us went out and got a whole new line up of pics of other mineral finds from out here.  I might be moving – but have an open invitation to visit this summer, so I’ll probably drag part of the RHS1 gang with me.  I don’t think I’ll have to twist many arms to get them to come, either.

[sc name=”cgssm”]