The weather cooperated, Weyerhaeuser cooperated, and I managed to squeeze a short creek hike into my busy schedule. ?The creek I selected was one I had never been to, but was in the middle of a large andesite flow. ?Andesite contains quite a lot of silica so the odds were there would be silica base minerals in this creek. ?Bear Creek is behind the Weyerhaeuser gates so I had to wait for the gates to open for hunting season.

It looks like there is a lot of water down there.

I waited until about 8:45am to start out from the house and it took me about two hours to reach the creek. ?That didn’t bother me since I wasn’t planning on spending the entire day here.

The first thing I noticed when I reached the creek was the lack of small gravel. ?In fact it looked like there wasn’t anything smaller than a basketball.

Doesn’t look like there is many gravel bars here.

I didn’t give up though, and actually found a couple of small jasper and agate pieces within the first ten minutes.

A small jasper piece with what could be dendrites.

A small agate conglomerate.

This caused me to become excited and so I decided to head upstream. ?The main problem was all the water.

Very few places to cross when there is this much water.

I finally found a place that was shallow enough to let me wade across, and I continued upstream. ?I was able to locate a few more small pieces of agate and a couple of small tumbled zeolites.

A small agate weathering out of basalt.

Not sure what kind of zeolite, but it has radiating needles.

I finally came to an area where the water was deep and the banks were steep. ?I decided to head up and over the cliffs next to the creek and drop back down farther up the creek. ?This turned out to be almost impossible. ?I kept getting farther away from the creek, until I finally found a steep slope that I was actually able to climb down without danger of breaking my neck.

Cliffs that are to steep to navigate.

When I made it to the creek I didn’t find anything worth keeping, so I decided to head back to the truck. ?This took a little bit time, since I had to be careful on the steep slopes. ? I arrived back at the truck all in one piece and headed for home.

I wasn’t able to find the mother load of agate on this creek, but the day was just what I needed. ?Great weather, a beautiful rushing creek, and time in the woods.

Thanks for joining me.

chasfire