April 20th, 2019 Saddle Mtn Field Trip Report

Field trip reports

Turned out to be a beautiful day up on the Saddle Mountains for this trip. We had 16 vehicles in combination with Puyallup club. About half from CMS. Really nice tumbler material. Some of it just laying around on top of the ground. Much of it just under the surface. Logs are deeper if one wants to put in the effort. The material on top of the ground looked nice and clean, as if it was just washed by a spring rain, so was easy to spot.  After we collected for a few hours, we went to the diatom pits for common opal. Pictures 4 and 6 are from some of the opal I collected. The last pic one would think is a nice piece of petrified wood. But opal from these pits are formed on the bottoms of ancient freshwater lakes from the cell walls/shells of microscopic single celled diatoms, which are alga or plankton like in nature.
Submitted by Roger Danneman CMS Field Trip Guide.

 

Updated: May 21, 2019 — 11:10 am

Presidents Message

  • Digging It!  Thanks to everyone who came to the club camp out at Teanaway campground near Cle Elum last month. After a brief spell of rain the first night, we were blessed with sun, clear skies, and rockhounding the rest of the weekend. And a big thanks to Roger Danneman for doing all of the trip organizing, and keeping us all warm and well fed during the weekend. This month I’ll be giving a talk at our club meeting about how to use Gaia for rockhounding. If you have specific questions, please bring them along or feel free to email …

Meeting Announcements

  • Noelle Barnes will present Using Gaia for Rockhounding, an overview of the features and tricks associated with the app Gaia and how you can use it for GPS, saving waypoints, navigation, photo tagging, trail recording and more. Show and Tell: Bring the rock(s) that have the best “story” – and tell everyone how you found them and where!

  • Club board member Paul Ahnberg will talk to us about the impact of wildfires on our lives – from protecting your home to staying safe while out rockhounding – and what we can do today to help mitigate our risk. Paul will combine his knowledge gained from learning at both the WSU Green School (Master Gardener) and WSU Climate Steward programs. Show and Tell: Bring something you found, from a place that you know has since been impacted by floods or wildfires – or was impacted shortly before you arrived. Tell your story!

  • December’s date and time is coming soon. We will update this page as soon as we know more.

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