President’s Message – March 2026

Presidents Message

Digging It! 

Thanks to everyone who came out for our February club meeting – it was a fun one, with our own Roger Danneman presenting the highlights of our field trips to come for 2026. Several club members brought their impressive best finds from 2025 for show and tell.
Speaking of field trips – our first field trip of the year is in the books, with a mildly snowy day at the Middle Fork of the Nooksack River up by Ol’ One Lane Bridge outside of Acme, Washington. The variety of rocks this year was excellent, thanks in part to the winter floods – the river was low, so there were plenty of pieces of dunite, jasper, and colorful quartz for everyone, plus some smaller pieces of jade.
I hope to see you at our next meeting this month, March 12, when former Burke Museum curator Maureen Carlisle will present A Day on a Dig – this will be a great one for big and little kids like. And of course we have our next club field trip March 21 – odds are we’ll be going to Swift Creek for Baker Blues, but if the water is too high we’ll switch gears and head over to Saddle Mountain for petrified wood.
Happy hunting!

Noelle Barnes, President

Updated: March 12, 2026 — 5:26 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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