Morning Walk with Excellent Finds

    Went for a shorter than usual walk this Thursday morning, only around an hour... but that hour was fantastic! Set out around 6:30 am, just as the sun was peeking over the mountain. The sky was very pretty and the temperature around 60 degrees, no wind so it was just right to feel very refreshing. Heard a single coyote howling, and that was in response to an emergency vehicle's siren. Other than that no wildlife to mention.

    I was on a ridgeline I have been to before, but not that particular portion and I took a new path to get there. Almost immediately on the new route there I found a fairly large rock that looked like it could be incredible. It was very dirty however and I couldn't tell how nice it really is, at the time of writing it is currently soaking so I can clean it up. Aside from that I found quite a lot of rocks, a few decent sized but most were on the smaller size. Many are similar to those I have found in the past as most of my rockhounding has been in a relatively small area. That said, there were some unique or otherwise uncommon pieces today!

    I'm still not particularly knowledgeable in petrology or mineralogy, so identifying what I have is a bit difficult (Its been under 2 months that I have started learning). I am really interested in the green rocks that until this point I have been calling epidote, and I do believe many of them are. I found 3 rocks today that seem like a form of unakite, which definitely supports the assumption. I've been paying more attention the to the textures of the green stones, and there appears to be two main kinds. One has a smoother, waxier texture... while the other feels more akin to sandstone. Its unclear to me if its an innate property of the rocks or if its due to different weathering processes, though the waxier ones tend to have a richer color. Of course they all vary widely in quality as well.

    I'll continue to do my best to label my finds, but take them with a grain of salt (or a grain of sand!)

Plenty more epidote of varying quality. The top left one has a large portion of semi-transparent quartz

The three pieces of unakite as mentioned earlier. They are fairly weathered and have lots of pitting on the surface, but I have hope with enough tumbling they will be quite nice.

More of the fairly common (for me) pinkish-reddish quartzite clasts, these are usually rounded out but finding them intact is rare. They seem to be very prone to fragmenting and cracking, and I have found very few that were larger than a pebble and still a full rounded clast without major fractures.

The top left appears to be jasper, and while the top right is similar it feels a little different and I suspect is banded iron formation. The middle two are clearly quartz but I dont know if its fair to label them as smoky quartz with how poorly translucent they are. Finally the bottom two seem like quartzite with presumed k-feldspar (the same mineral that is pink in unakite) inclusion causing the pale pink color.

By far the cutest little rock I have seen, the top left appears to be a quartzite clast with a teensy little jasper hat! The top right probably contains iron giving it that rusty look but I couldn't say what it is. The next 5 rocks are all quartz. Similar to the grey quartzes in the previous image, I'm unsure if calling them citrine is appropriate but they certainly have good yellow-orangey hues. As for the last one I'm again unable to identify.

These two are larger than most of the rocks I usually bring home but are both stunning. They may both be unakite but just a little unconventional however I'm too inexperience to tell. The pinkish tinge (possibly k-feldspar but it might also just be iron oxide staining) on the leftmost vein on the righthand rock is what leads me to suspect that one is unakite, aside from of course the deep green color. The left rock just seems to epidote heavy but no obvious (to me) feldspar.

This rock has been wetted to display it better, the quartz in the middle has decent translucency and a light can be shined through from the other side. There are very few defects so I believe this stone will be absolutely SUPERB to tumble, it should be stunning!

This was taken at about 6:30 am before the sun was above the mountain, gorgeous gradient in the sky!

    Another lengthy post today, hopefully not too much reading and still cohesive. There is a public comments section on all of these posts if you ever wish to leave feedback for me, or just comment on the rocks you are more than welcome!