Wanting to Rockhound for the first time...safely

[AlwaysBusyJ]

Hello everyone! I've been gold prospecting for a little bit now, and I'm pretty content to spend every free moment I have panning down on the river beds... but recently a fellow I work with has been expressing interest in trying his hand at rock hounding and crystal hunting. Now I'm down for any adventure that involves the great outdoors and a little hard work so I figured I'd take a stab at it. I live in western Washington not far from Tacoma, and so I began researching for places to start my rock hounding adventures, but so far every time I find a place that sounds good like Walker Valley or Cedar Ponds I hear it's now private property or behind locked gates and seem to find lots of conflicting information online as to what's actually open to the public. I'm really hoping to find a safe spot to let my coworker try it out, without having to worry about traveling and hour or two just to find out the place is closed off or worse running into a less than friendly landowner. If anyone here knows of a place or at least a website with current information I'd really appreciate it. I plan on spending a good amount of time in the book store doing research until I find a spot to start. Thanks for the help!

 

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[Brian T. Booth]

Hello everyone! I've been gold prospecting for a little bit now, and I'm pretty content to spend every free moment I have panning down on the river beds... but recently a fellow I work with has been expressing interest in trying his hand at rock hounding and crystal hunting. Now I'm down for any adventure that involves the great outdoors and a little hard work so I figured I'd take a stab at it. I live in western Washington not far from Tacoma, and so I began researching for places to start my rock hounding adventures, but so far every time I find a place that sounds good like Walker Valley or Cedar Ponds I hear it's now private property or behind locked gates and seem to find lots of conflicting information online as to what's actually open to the public. I'm really hoping to find a safe spot to let my coworker try it out, without having to worry about traveling and hour or two just to find out the place is closed off or worse running into a less than friendly landowner. If anyone here knows of a place or at least a website with current information I'd really appreciate it. I plan on spending a good amount of time in the book store doing research until I find a spot to start. Thanks for the help!

The streams and creeks in which you gold prospect are a great place to possibly find corundum var. ruby and or sapphire, garnets, topaz, beryl var. aquamarine and or emerald, microcline var. amazonite, quartz and and many other minerals. I like mindat.org it's a great website. You can look up localities and other mineral info. Books and maps of the local area is a great starting point. Another site I love is site where you can purchase a gem and gold folio for your state. It will show you what was found and where it was found including gold. http://www.mayhillpress.com/bookstor.html Awesome website. Hope this helped. If you have any questions just ask.

Good Luck and Happy Hunting

Brian T. Booth

 

[phishisgroovin]

head east on I-90, take the Tinkham road exit and go over the river to the right.

Follow tinkham road (dirt road) for around 2 miles, you will go over a bridge.
Get a map, look up 5510 road.
Follow 5510 about a mile, you will cometo a sharp uphill corner to the right, you will see vehicles parked here.
This is the start of the trail. Go up to where people are and you will find crystals.

happy digging.

 

[AlwaysBusyJ]

Thanks for the replies! Checked out the links and found some great info, and I'll definitely get around to checking out that spot. I'm planning on taking a quick trip to explore a few areas tomorow, I'll let you know how it goes.

 

[AlwaysBusyJ]

Just got back from my first quick trip to scout out an area, everything went pretty well, although I quickly discovered how amazingly sharp some of the rocks on the scree slope can be! Here's a sample of what I found, I guess I did okay for my first try, at least I found something. Hoping to do better next time out.



My wife stole the good camera and my macro lens for the day so the pictures are a bit iffy, but I might dig through my finds and take better pictures when she gets back.