A good FRIEND gone.

Lots of you remember reading about Jerry is some of my field trip reports. ?I am saddened by his untimely death this past week. ?He ended up having heart surgery to replace a valve and repair a major vessel. ?Unfortunately he didn’t live through the process. ?I will miss him.

I went rockhounding to one of our favorite places down by Toutle today. ?Jerry was there in my thoughts. ?I started out at 8:45am and arrived around 10:30am.

Truck

Parked and waiting.

I quickly got into my gear and waders and headed down to the creek. ?There was quite a bit of water in the creek, but that didn’t stop me from wading right up the middle.

Creek

The fork in the creek.

I spent a little time checking out each fork to before deciding on taking the left one. ?It was a good choice, because my first find was a nice softball sized piece of carnelian with buckskin covering.

Creek

The left fork of the creek won the toss.

Carnelian

This one begged me to pick him up.

This got me excited and I spent a little bit of time in the area probing and digging in the bank. ?I found a few others, but none near as good, so I continued on up the creek. ?I hiked about 1/4 mile checking out as much of the creek bottom as I could. ?This creek gets picked over during the year, ?but I think I was the first one here since the heavy rains we have had. ?The rains may keep me at home but after they quit I like to spend time on the creeks.

It was finally time to head up and over the ridge to another fork of the creek, where I had found some nice material on previous trips. ?This time was no exception and I found some nice dark red carnelian in the dirt at the top of the ridge. ?It looked like some one in the long ago past had dug quite a bit on top of this ridge and I think what I found was just from their tailings piles. ?I plan on going back sometime and doing some serious digging to see if I can find what everyone was after.

I finally quit and headed back to the truck at 2:30pm. ?Here is my haul for the day.

Carnelian

Not the most I could have kept, but the best.

Thanks for joining me and Jerry.

chasfire

3 thoughts on “A good FRIEND gone.”

  1. Nate

    I’m sorry for your loss. I’m sure he was watching over you as you found those carnelians. Thanks for the report.

  3. Woody

    All of us that knew Jerry are very saddened by his passing, and we will miss him.

    Some very promising colour in these finds.

    Woody

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