February 7th dawned clear and cold, and after more than a month and a half of
rainy weather, I was determined to spend a day at a an area close to one of the oldest carnelian
sites in Washington. Salmon Creek is mentioned in "Northwest Gem Trails" by H.C. Dake published in
1956, and I'm sure it was known about long before that.
I arrived at the parking site of a gated logging road on the south side of
Salmon Creek at 9:30am. After loading up my pack with essentials and climbing aboard my trusty
steed.
I headed down the road less traveled. I immediately met up with an employee
(so much for less traveled) of the Forest Company that owned the land who said that a lot
of people find nice agates in the root balls of blow down timber. About 1/2 mile down the road
I found a small drainage that had a nice blow down.
I headed down the road less traveled. I immediately met up with an employee
(so much for less traveled) of the Forest Company that owned the land who said that a lot
of people find nice agates in the root balls of blow down timber. About 1/2 mile down the road
I found a small drainage that had a nice blow down.
So off my steed I go to check out the recent information. Unfortunately this
particular root ball was not productive, so I climbed back on old trusty and headed down the road.
I found another blow down, this one crossing the road, so I maneuvered
around the root ball(no luck again) and continued on down the road. The first nice sized creek I
came to looked real promising
So I parked old trusty, removed my pack and started down the creek. It didn't
take me long to locate my first piece of agate.
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It was quite small, but gave me the desire to find more. As I went down the
creek I was finding it harder and harder to find gravel bars to search, so after about a half
hour I finally headed back to the road and mounted up for another ride to the next creek.
At the next creek I noticed right away that I probably wouldn't find much in
the creek.
So I headed up through a recent logged off area. Once again I found a small
fortification agate fairly quickly, but nothing after that. I spent about an hour hiking around
this clear cut and then headed back to the road, where I ate a small snack before heading on down
the road.
I took a side road that the map showed connecting with another road that made a
loop back to the truck, so down it I went. Arriving at another creek (the lower portion of the
first one I stopped at), I dropped my pack again and bushwacked my way down to the gravel bars.
Heading down this creek I found a small number of small agate and jasper on the numerous gravel
bars. Nothing real big, and most of which I would have left if I had found any thing else worth
taking, but since I wasn't particularly loaded down with great material I kept almost all of it.
I spent about an hour on this creek, and then hiked back to old trusty, and headed out to the
truck.
Arriving back at the truck at about 2:15pm, I looked over my finds
.
I loaded up my gear and headed home
Some would say that this was not a very productive day, but who can
put a price on spending time outdoors doing what you love.
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