July 18th, 2020 Greenwater Field Trip Report

On Sat. July 18th we went up to the Greenwater area for black agate and opal.  It was a gorgeous day for being in the mountains. 30 of us met in Enumclaw, all wearing masks – a sign of the times (I should have gotten a picture of that). 13 vehicles caravan’ed up to the black agate site, deep into the woods off of FR7222. We dug there for 3 hours (again, wish I had gotten some pics of that), all keeping our social distance per Covid-19 rules. It’s a wide area under tree canopy, so no issues with being too close. We had quite a few new members who were on their first trip. At 1:00 9 vehicles caravan’ed up to the Gov Meadows area for the opal and petrified wood. This was by far the largest group I’ve lead during the last 3 years of field trips, but a very pleasant and well mannered group. I’ve posted some pics of material I found on Sat. during the trip (pic 1-2 of scenery, 3rd of black agate, 4-6 of petrified wood 7-9 of opal) and pics 10-14 of agates and jasper found in rock slides on Friday when I checked out the roads and conditions.  My thanks to Roger Pullen for being the caboose of the caravan, as keeping track of 13 vehicles wasn’t always an easy task with all of the turn offs we needed to make.

I don’t have a scheduled trip for August, but if our picnic gets cancelled, I may have to slip one in there.

Submitted by Roger Danneman CMS Field Trip Guide.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Updated: July 19, 2020 — 5:58 pm

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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