Dean N. and his son Clay wanted to go rockhounding today, so we headed out to the gravel pit area that I visited in the “Prospecting” field trip report.? I ended up seeing three herds of elk on the way down.? I think there were close to a hundred elk in the three herds.? Here is one of the herds.

We met just outside of Toutle and parked the rigs, unloaded the bikes and started our day.

It didn’t take us long to pedal to a good exploration starting point.? I don’t think I had gone more than 100 yards when Dean called on the radio and said he just found a small piece of petrified wood.? This was good to hear, but when I talked to him two hours later he hadn’t found any more.

This area is quite steep in places, and looked like it had been a huge mud and rock slide sometime in the past.

Clay was above me part of the time and I was able to get this picture of him on the ridge top.

I decided to head over to where I had found the opalized wood on my previous trip. I told Dean that’s where I was headed and he joined me.? We got to the ridge top and started digging and was shortly rewarded with some nice pieces of opalized wood.? This wood has some of the best colors and patterns I have seen.? It didn’t take Dean long to find what I consider the best piece of the day.

Dean also found the largest piece, but I think I did pretty good myself.? I ended up with 14 pounds of nice opalized wood.? Here is some of the best.

We finally decided to call it quits at this spot and do some more exploring.? We hiked back to the road and on our way to the bikes Clay called and said he had found some more material.? We quickly got the bikes and headed to where he was.

Dean went straight to the spot, while I circled around and came down from above.? Before I had gotten to far Dean called me and said that they were finding a lot of grey agate.? It was apparently laying all over the ground.

When I got there Dean showed me some of the pieces he had already found.

We continued to walk around and probe with our shovels.(We had left our probes at the bikes)? Although Clay had his probe and was using it.

Dean and I eventually settled down to digging in one spot and I soon hit the jackpot.? This is a 24 pound piece of agate.

Here is what it looked like after I got it out of the ground.

We continued to dig, and found quite a bit of smaller pieces.? It wasn’t long before we decided to head back to the trucks.? However, before we got started Roy, Randy, and Cody stopped by to see what we were doing.

They had spent the day hiking and had noticed us on the slopes.? We got to talking about agates and rockhounding, and apparently it bored Cody.? He grabbed Dean’s pick and started digging away.? He actually found some pretty nice pieces of agate, when he hit something that sounded big.? Here is what it turned out to be.

It turned out to be 105 pounds.? I was wondering how we were going to get it back to the truck, when Clay said that he could carry it.? I really didn’t believe him, but he managed to get it into his pack and on his back.

It was a couple hundred yards to the bikes where he strapped the pack onto the handle bars of the bike and commenced to walk and ride the bike back to the truck.? He really impressed me.? If I had been alone that agate would still be on the hill side.

We got back to the trucks, loaded up and headed home.

It turned out to be a beautiful day.? Sunny, not to warm, good company, and plenty of agate and opalized wood.

Thanks for joining us.

chasfire