Diggin' Oregon Sunstones!

Out where the sagebrush hugs the sky

and the antelope roam nearby, 

sunbeams in stones are there for the taking.

Mike Stahlberg, The Seattle Times

Hi Blog!

We are enjoying our time here in south-central Oregon. After hiking and paddling, we were looking for something a little different.  When we visited the Lakeview Ranger District Office, we had picked up a brochure on the Oregon BLM Sunstone Public Collection Area. Those that follow this blog know that we cannot resist picking up pretty rocks. Well, they don't come much prettier than Oregon Sunstone.

Sunstones are feldspar crystals that form in lava. Fourteen million years ago, a volcano in the Steens Mountains erupted, pouring out massive amounts of lava. The lava flow was subsequently covered by a vast lake and remained underwater for thousands of years. As the lake gradually dried up, the exposure to weather caused the lava to decompose and reveal loose sunstones - or crystals of feldspar. Oregon sunstone, also known as heliolite, is transparent with colors ranging from water-clear through pale yellow, soft pink, and blood red to (extremely rare) deep blue and green. And, they are ours for the taking. All we need do it get there.

Sunday, May 28, 2017, our last full day in the Lakeview area, we packed up the Jeep with water, lunch, shovels, rock hammer, knee pads, strainer and bags and headed off into the back of the beyond. We were not the only ones driving the 19 miles of gravel road in hopes of finding pretty rocks. The picnic area was full of weekend RVers hoping to bag some booty.

The directions to the Oregon Sunstone Public Collection Area were well marked. They had signs pointing the way.

There are several large mining claims surrounding the public area. Many of these sites let you collect from their tailing piles for a small fee. One commercial operation will let you collect from their highest-grade ore, selected for commercial processing, for a mere $200 an hour! No thanks, we like finding our rocks for free!

Since we'd never heard of sunstones before, we weren't exactly sure what we were looking for. Last night, we did a little internet searching and watched a helpful YouTube Video on collecting Oregon Sunstones. Apparently, there are two ways to collect. One is to dig a a hole a couple feet down and find the wet crumbly lava rocks and pull out the stones. Here is our attempt at digging a hole.

The second method is to walk around and look for shiny rocks. The second method proved much more fruitful than the first.  This was the result of an hour or so of surface scanning:

We filled our fruitless hole and went in search of greener pastures. The information kiosk suggested that visitors try the northwest sections of the collection area, and we theorized that drainages or washes might have more sunstones if the water had had more time to erode the lava.  We dug one more hole in a wash at the far corner of the BLM area, but realized we are really not set up for hard rock mining.  We really should have had bigger shovels and picks in order to dig deeper through the wash sediment and then punch through the top layer of rock.

We went back to the surface scanning method and doubled our findings. In order to avoid the crowds, we drove out to the furtherest boundary of the collecting area. Have Jeep will travel.

We finished up around 2:00 p.m. and drove back across the Warner Valley toward Lakeview. We stopped a couple times to watch the pronghorn play. Pronghorn antelope are the fastest ungulates in North America and can reach speeds of up to 40 miles an hour which makes them really hard to photograph. Here is our best shot.

Back in camp, we took stock of our rocks. In the photo below, our biggest sunstone find poses on Kathy's hand beside the stone in her ring for size comparison.  Not too shabby!  Any suggestions on what to do with all the sunstones we collected?

Tomorrow, we will be heading toward Bend, Oregon to visit with family. It may be a couple days before we get a chance to blog again. Until then, stay thirsty my friends.