Rockhounding for Pink Opal in the Washington Scablands

how's it going everybody welcome back to the channel i think that's going to be a good one here today there is another youtuber by the name of the rock hugger and he is a super nice guy and he shared one of his spots with me so uh i'm gonna take you along i'll show you what we are looking for out here today we are in beautiful central washington and uh if you want to find out more details about where we're at you should definitely go over to his channel if you want to know exactly where we're at should probably ask him and not me you might be lucky he might share it with you he may not i don't know the dogs all hyped up after a car ride we are looking for this pink opal now color is subjective but i would have to say that this is probably more in the salmon colored what do you think sarah salmon it's kind of a light it's kind of a light salmon color really uh and this is just one of the pieces i found right by where i parked the car so we're going to be walking around this beautiful area um it could not be a more perfect day for this uh maybe you can see there's got some snow out there in the hills it rained last night and uh the sage smells amazing definitely little pieces of opal here kind of in this little dirty old wash take that at the very least i want to be able to fill a little tiny bucket and ideally well have a a piece to cut what the heck is that let me just take that here we go oh that's big what is that or is it quartz i have no idea that is crazy i was not expecting whatever this is i mean that looks like opal it's just like white and clear you know like cool so i was okay i was only expecting like you know uh these that's what i was expecting and that's what we came up with a couple minutes in that's uh i'm i'm pleasantly surprised by that wow good eye good eye hi leica oh here look here's my find oh man that is super super pink opal wow that's pinker than i thought it was gonna be i was expecting something uh more more salmon color and that's oh you're killing me with that shadow um i was expecting something more pink and salmon color not that like vibrant red color there's another piece right here ah i mean it certainly is good to come to a spot right after it's rained i mean everything's so nice and clean here right now i mean even though that's a little tiny piece i'll uh pick it up because i put together these well i'll probably show it but i like to put together these like little eight ounce specimen jars to kind of be a representation of an area um hopefully we find some more little stuff because that big one's not gonna cut it yeah let's see what she so oh hey grab the ones it's more white yeah what's hiding right here ah that's a little bit more white so obviously um i think it goes without saying i know people can be sticklers for i don't know language verbiage whatever you want to call it whoa obviously i'm not talking about precious opal with the the color bands or fire opal or whatever dang sarah um we're really picking up more common opal some stuff with some color um that doesn't lessen how cool it can be obviously we just found that giant chunky wii sarah found that giant chunky piece so so many cute little tiny pieces out here just on the on the on the top of the ground you know ah very nice this road goes pretty far it's really big gotta find a couple of good solid pink ones kind of on to it all the shadows the long the long shadows of winter killing me out here got a pile of basalt here but there is some unique stuff going on with this basalt look at that what the heck a little crystalline bug there interesting i have no clue what the heck is going on with this wow very cool unexpected oh that you just found that awesome where are all these what is this huh oh wow here's kind of somewhere that crusty pieces i'm kind of good on this stuff um you can't do nothing with it so just you know well there you go it just exploded well the pink certainly does stand out when you see it kind of crusty on one side that's very nice i don't know what whoa i don't know what this is oh that's probably spider in there this basalt is very interesting though very interesting stuff a little out of uh my basaltic knowledge but um take a piece of that home it's like every time i find one these little pink ones there's usually like well it's pretty dirty and little there's other pieces right right by it it would seem i mean i'm picking up like four or five pieces right here um within a foot yeah uh i recognize uh this spot thanks buddy look at all these little cute little pieces so much [Music] a couple little decent ones might be solid on the inside so these will probably definitely get cut but you can see uh getting a decent little little selection going right here we have a basalt that has uh filled bugs well they could take this whole thing home sarah yeah you can carry it oh you're gonna allow me to carry this home no that's neat though where's the smaller piece like that interesting yeah it's almost like a druzy so these basalt formations that you see when you're out in a channeled scab lands if you watched the odessa craters video i kind of talked a little bit more about the the floods and why this landscape looks the way it does this basalt will be more resistant to weathering so uh i mean i'm not gonna get into all the chemical makeup of basalt because i feel like i'm gonna forget some stuff but you know it's like silica and like iron oxide titanium dioxide all these different metals essentially that's why um some basalt will be magnetic uh lightly magnetic but you'll also just get salt that will be harder that where when everything erodes away you'll still have this right here there's a piece of basalt you can see almost uh looks uh betrothal but it's not really it's kind of has a petrol appearance at least in that hey there spider you have this little piece with some uh filled bugs don't know uh filled with what though could just be um agate i get filled bugs not uncommon um you know especially out here it happens occasionally we're out here in the land of never ending basalt so i like that dog is such a baby baby back at the car we're done got a decent little number amount of stuff and we will check it out out of the shop like it's thirsty we're back i got a lot of this stuff cleaned up some of it had some calcite on it that i uh dissolved off but let's look at some of these more pink pieces here i've already cleaned and separated a lot of it super super pretty stuff right now i know uh there's not a whole lot you can do with these littler pieces uh some of this you could probably do something with a lot of it is very solid not fractured up at all i have some bigger pieces some pieces i'm gonna put together for a specimen jar and then all that over there is well that's gonna be for something special that you have to find out find out about later uh let's look at the piece that sarah got uh well i poked it out but she found it uh i think um we can do some cutting on this i think what we should do is we should probably clamp this up in the saw and maybe cut we'll cut like that and uh expose what's going on inside you can kind of see some rosiness that salmon color right there uh let's see what happens here we go we've got this cut you can see that face there now maybe it shows but there is a crack running right there however i was able to get some nice pieces out of it and this stuff is uh it's a little wet still but like very translucent and uh very solid i mean i could certainly get a bunch of cabs out of this stuff there's a little scraggly piece that i started cutting and then it did fracture a little bit but these are still good you can make something out of that i think anyways um i hope you enjoyed that little adventure video um i think we're gonna leave it there definitely go and check out the rock huggers channel there will be a link down below to him and uh go over there say hello check out his videos he does some good stuff as always um thank you so much for watching and please uh hit the subscribe button have a good day everyone you

Channel: Currently Rockhounding

Views: 40,453

Keywords: Rockhounding, CurrentlyRockhounding, NW Rockhounding, Northwest Rockhounding, Rockhounding The West, Rockhound, Geology, Rock Hunting, Mineral Collecting, Pink Opal, Washington Opal, Rockhounding Opal, NW Opal, Washington Scablands, Cutting Opal, The Rock Hugger, Currently Rockhounding, Rockhounding Washington, Opal, American Opal, Common Pink Opal

Id: gZuZThoB1kA

Length: 14min 58sec (898 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 23 2020