West Texas Rock Hunt Trip Report - many images
Mar 28, 2019 13:08:47 GMT -5
Fossilman, quartz, and 16 more like this
Post by Bluesky78987 on Mar 28, 2019 13:08:47 GMT -5
I'm back!!!! What a fantastic vacation.
Y'all know I live in CA so I flew to Texas to go rock hunting with Teri Smith. Can't say enough great things about Teri. She definitely provided crucial information that helped me get much better material, not to mention her access to private ranches. She's also extremely friendly and great company.
The overall impression: Depending on where you come from and what access you have at home to the incredible "secret stashes" or claims that are out there (Hello, Holt Canyon!), TOTALLY worth it. Coming from California, where I mostly get to hound out at Lavic and other heavily trafficked sites, I was really impressed with the material I found in Texas. The rocks to be found in West Texas (still) are fancier than I'm used to with Lavic. The moss is nicer moss, the agate is nicer agate, and there is Pet Wood and fossils all over the place. It's not a "high volume" collecting site though - you have to walk and search for the rocks, so I usually ended up with a half a bucket after a solid full day of hunting, field-high-grading and tailgate-high-grading. And then I tossed about another 25% after final high grading back at the hotel.
Flew to El Paso, rented an "all wheel drive" SUV (with lowish clearance and street tires) and drove out to Alpine. That vehicle worked out fine, although I would have been happier in my 4runner or an actual truck. The main issue was desert pinstriping and clearance. Mostly Teri took us to a parking area at each site that was accessible by most cars, and then I would ride with people in trucks to get further away from the main road. There were pretty good rocks near the main parking areas, but most of the time I ended up walking 1/4 to 1/2 a mile from the car to get to the "better stuff".
Timing: I wouldn't go much later in the year than when I went (March 20-27). A couple of the days it was HOT out there. Not 100 degrees hot, but "I really need to find some shade and take a minute" hot.
So here are the pictures and report! (I got the pictures all mixed up so they're not really divided by collecting site other than a few, sorry.)
Thursday: Stillwell Ranch. Stillwell Ranch is at the Junction of TX 385 and FM 2627. About an hour and a half southeast of Alpine. It's a working ranch, but they have a store, dry camping spots, showers, etc. They allow the public to come rock hunt - here's their website: stillwellstore.com/ You just check in when you arrive in the morning (they keep track of how many rockhounds are out wandering around at any given time, I guess in case they need to rescue you), and at the end of the day, you stop back at the store and pay 50 cents a pound for the rocks you're keeping. The first day, after ruthless high-grading, I ended up with 13 pounds of rock. A wonderful couple from Florida that I met (Hi Lynn and Ed!) and I went out to Stillwell again after Teri's trips were over and that time, we drove further from the "main" road in their truck and I knew what I was looking for better, so I got 32 lbs.
At Stillwell, you're searching the gravel bars laid down by the Rio Grande bajillions of years ago, back when the river was HUGE. Now, these gravel bars are at the tops of the hills closest to the road, and extend further down the hills the farther you get from the road. So the ground is like a huge rockpile with nasty vicious prickly weeds growing all up in there. After our first day there, I traded in my rubber/fabric gardening gloves for some heavy leather gloves. You want thick pants, heavy shoes and thick leather gloves there. The other sites you can wear less armor. Also, my knee pads provided excellent thorn protection. I still managed to get stuck by a hole variety of very sharp things though! Even the tiny little low growing plants have thorns, so care is required in squatting or sitting! Bring one of those gardening kneeling pads if you like to sit down and take breaks.
But oodles of rocks. So many rocks to look at! The rocks at Stillwell also average a larger size than the rocks I found at the other areas, but the other areas do have plenty of cuttable sized rocks. Plenty of grapefruit size rocks, although I was mostly picking up fist size rocks for my 10" saw. I reluctantly left behind some stunning football sized rocks at all sites too.
Here's my second favorite rock from that day: Sagenite. We'll see how solid the interior of the rock is (cross your fingers!). There is a lot of "half-baked" agate in Texas, just like anywhere. Also, almost all of the agate is either oxidezed (clear agate areas turn yellowish white) or desert varnished (hematite coating). For some of the plumed/patterned agates, you need to read the outside of the rock to tell there's anything good inside, unless you want to cut a lot of duds. So you need to carry a rock hammer or at least closely inspect each before putting it in your bag.
And my favorite rock from Stillwell: agate spheroids cemented together with more agate (Teri's ID). Pictures not so great. The other side of the rock is broken in a way that makes it appear to be solidly cemented and cuttable.
There are all sorts of little cool features in West Texas. Chalcedony roses/blobs everywhere, druzy plates, botryoidal plates, crystal bunches, etc. Here's a quartz geode in a huge block of basalt:
Petrified Palm:
Wood:
Hole Seam Agate:
As far as agate, we dug in an existing hole at the top of a hil, where there is a seam of wonderful brecciated jasp agate. Easy digging - the agate is broken into appropriate sized hunks already, and was surrounded by soft dirt. About 2 feet down, so easy to get to, but having multiple people helped. Note that the bits that look grey are actually clear agate. Supposedly it cuts really well, but I tossed a fair amount of un-solid ones.
The kids found quartz crystals and other cool stuff like that, so they liked the site. Not brushy. This is also a working ranch, but no sign of cattle other than some poop.
Overall, I ended up with great rocks from Ritchie, but if the seam agate in the hole hadn't been there, I would have been disappointed.
The pretty thing about this area was that the Ocotillos were in bloom. Gorgeous. And the prickly pear.
I found the seam that the pompom agate can come from (or a little tributary of it at least), and a piece of half-baked (I think - there's an off chance it's solid inside) pompom, but no luck with the real thing.
I ended up finding a nice colorful piece of wood there, and a petrified bone of some sort - not sure what type. It is a leg bone of something horse-sized though. Can tell if it's fully agatized yet.
Wood:
Bone:
South Larremore Ranch:
On the last day, Teri took us to the south end of Larremore Ranch. It is about 40 miles south of Alpine, halfway to Terlingua. Nice flat cattle ranch.
This might have been my favorite, although it would be a tossup with Stillwell. Larremore has the benefit of being flat though, so I might lean this way. At Larremore, the rocks are alluvial deposits, and the ground looks a lot like Lavic - paved with desert varnished rocks. Unlike Lavic, however, there are many cool treasures hiding there if you look. Fortified banded agates, colorful mosses, wood, fossils . . . Teri found a petrified Sand Dollar while we were there.
Also, Larremore has a (currently dry) creek (Calamity Creek?). Apparently Larremore is downstream from Woodward and Walker ranches, so theoretically Woodward style biscuits are findable there. I picked up a few candidates, but I don't have my hopes up. Mainly I found colorful moss pieces there, as well as some obvious plume and sagenite pieces, as well as some I can't tell.
In the wash:
Here it's a matter of getting away from the picked-over areas. A quick google search will show you that this place is popular with clubs. Teri parked us in a remote location away from where the clubs go, and as I walked around it was easy to tell where the clubs had been by the footprints. So I headed away from the footprints and found a bunch of really neat stuff, both in the alluvial deposits and in the tributaries of the creek. If I went again, I would find a more remote area of the creek to search - the bigger rocks were in the creek and its branches.
I could have spent another couple of days here though. Easily. And, as I said before, no hills. Rocks are heavy, I'm against hills!
I found a nice piece of solid white agate with red plumes not 20 feet from my car. Small, but cabbable. Unfortunately I didn't get it's picture. Fingers crossed it's solid!
Overall I ended up with 12 medium flat rate boxes. Thanks to everybody who chimed in with advice on packing them! I think they're pretty sturdy with all the tape I put on them. I will update that thread with my findings. The post office in Alpine was very friendly and didn't give me any problem with the boxes, and the local True Value hardware has all the tape/gloves/etc you could need.
Finally, what you came for - pictures of rocks:
Texas has beautiful mosses.
Misc cutters:
Odds and ends, as souvenirs and some possible cutters - this kind of stuff is ALL OVER THE PLACE at all the sites.
Probably a mudball on the inside:
Only the saw will tell what mystery is inside a lot of the ones I picked up:
Reading the outside of the rock:
Sagenite? Plumes?
Sagenite:
Needles:
Plumes:
Check out the upper right corner:
My finges are crossed really hard for this one, but Teri said not to get my hopes up (those are indentations, not that black ferny stuff that sometimes grows on the surface). Anyone seen this before?
Conglomerates - some are long shots but I couldn't leave them! I don't think any of these are the famous "peanut agate".
This one could be leaverite, but it was covered in so many botryoidal bits, on all sides, that I couldn't bear to leave it:
Y'all know I live in CA so I flew to Texas to go rock hunting with Teri Smith. Can't say enough great things about Teri. She definitely provided crucial information that helped me get much better material, not to mention her access to private ranches. She's also extremely friendly and great company.
The overall impression: Depending on where you come from and what access you have at home to the incredible "secret stashes" or claims that are out there (Hello, Holt Canyon!), TOTALLY worth it. Coming from California, where I mostly get to hound out at Lavic and other heavily trafficked sites, I was really impressed with the material I found in Texas. The rocks to be found in West Texas (still) are fancier than I'm used to with Lavic. The moss is nicer moss, the agate is nicer agate, and there is Pet Wood and fossils all over the place. It's not a "high volume" collecting site though - you have to walk and search for the rocks, so I usually ended up with a half a bucket after a solid full day of hunting, field-high-grading and tailgate-high-grading. And then I tossed about another 25% after final high grading back at the hotel.
Flew to El Paso, rented an "all wheel drive" SUV (with lowish clearance and street tires) and drove out to Alpine. That vehicle worked out fine, although I would have been happier in my 4runner or an actual truck. The main issue was desert pinstriping and clearance. Mostly Teri took us to a parking area at each site that was accessible by most cars, and then I would ride with people in trucks to get further away from the main road. There were pretty good rocks near the main parking areas, but most of the time I ended up walking 1/4 to 1/2 a mile from the car to get to the "better stuff".
Timing: I wouldn't go much later in the year than when I went (March 20-27). A couple of the days it was HOT out there. Not 100 degrees hot, but "I really need to find some shade and take a minute" hot.
So here are the pictures and report! (I got the pictures all mixed up so they're not really divided by collecting site other than a few, sorry.)
Thursday: Stillwell Ranch. Stillwell Ranch is at the Junction of TX 385 and FM 2627. About an hour and a half southeast of Alpine. It's a working ranch, but they have a store, dry camping spots, showers, etc. They allow the public to come rock hunt - here's their website: stillwellstore.com/ You just check in when you arrive in the morning (they keep track of how many rockhounds are out wandering around at any given time, I guess in case they need to rescue you), and at the end of the day, you stop back at the store and pay 50 cents a pound for the rocks you're keeping. The first day, after ruthless high-grading, I ended up with 13 pounds of rock. A wonderful couple from Florida that I met (Hi Lynn and Ed!) and I went out to Stillwell again after Teri's trips were over and that time, we drove further from the "main" road in their truck and I knew what I was looking for better, so I got 32 lbs.
Stillwell is BEAUTIFUL. And this year they were having a superbloom - the most wildflowers they'd had in 20 years apparently. I didn't take very many pictures of it, and didn't capture the wall to wall wildflowers very well - too many distracting rocks everywhere! The view stretches to the horizon in every direction - no development. I loved this about the ranches - barely any roads, powerlines or buildings to mar the landscape.
At Stillwell, you're searching the gravel bars laid down by the Rio Grande bajillions of years ago, back when the river was HUGE. Now, these gravel bars are at the tops of the hills closest to the road, and extend further down the hills the farther you get from the road. So the ground is like a huge rockpile with nasty vicious prickly weeds growing all up in there. After our first day there, I traded in my rubber/fabric gardening gloves for some heavy leather gloves. You want thick pants, heavy shoes and thick leather gloves there. The other sites you can wear less armor. Also, my knee pads provided excellent thorn protection. I still managed to get stuck by a hole variety of very sharp things though! Even the tiny little low growing plants have thorns, so care is required in squatting or sitting! Bring one of those gardening kneeling pads if you like to sit down and take breaks.
But oodles of rocks. So many rocks to look at! The rocks at Stillwell also average a larger size than the rocks I found at the other areas, but the other areas do have plenty of cuttable sized rocks. Plenty of grapefruit size rocks, although I was mostly picking up fist size rocks for my 10" saw. I reluctantly left behind some stunning football sized rocks at all sites too.
Here's my second favorite rock from that day: Sagenite. We'll see how solid the interior of the rock is (cross your fingers!). There is a lot of "half-baked" agate in Texas, just like anywhere. Also, almost all of the agate is either oxidezed (clear agate areas turn yellowish white) or desert varnished (hematite coating). For some of the plumed/patterned agates, you need to read the outside of the rock to tell there's anything good inside, unless you want to cut a lot of duds. So you need to carry a rock hammer or at least closely inspect each before putting it in your bag.
And my favorite rock from Stillwell: agate spheroids cemented together with more agate (Teri's ID). Pictures not so great. The other side of the rock is broken in a way that makes it appear to be solidly cemented and cuttable.
There are all sorts of little cool features in West Texas. Chalcedony roses/blobs everywhere, druzy plates, botryoidal plates, crystal bunches, etc. Here's a quartz geode in a huge block of basalt:
Petrified Palm:
Wood:
Ritchie Ranch:
Ritchie Ranch is right next to the town of Alpine. Like literally, a 5 minute drive. So it's good for kids, and there were quite a few kids there. This was a native american site, and it was fascinating to see some of the features. I found a yellow moss hide scraper there. Pretty cool! But forgot to take a picture, dang.
Hole Seam Agate:
As far as agate, we dug in an existing hole at the top of a hil, where there is a seam of wonderful brecciated jasp agate. Easy digging - the agate is broken into appropriate sized hunks already, and was surrounded by soft dirt. About 2 feet down, so easy to get to, but having multiple people helped. Note that the bits that look grey are actually clear agate. Supposedly it cuts really well, but I tossed a fair amount of un-solid ones.
The kids found quartz crystals and other cool stuff like that, so they liked the site. Not brushy. This is also a working ranch, but no sign of cattle other than some poop.
Overall, I ended up with great rocks from Ritchie, but if the seam agate in the hole hadn't been there, I would have been disappointed.
East Needle Peak:
Next day Teri took us to some private land near Needle Peak, very near Terlingua. You could see Mexico from this hounding site. This place was more of a badlands, and it was HOT. I didn't get a good overview picture, but it's a large (dry) wash surrounded by bentonite clay (etc) hills with volcanic intrusions. This is the home of the famed pompom agate. Teri told me where to look for it, which involved scrambling up some steep, cactus strewn slopes.
The pretty thing about this area was that the Ocotillos were in bloom. Gorgeous. And the prickly pear.
I found the seam that the pompom agate can come from (or a little tributary of it at least), and a piece of half-baked (I think - there's an off chance it's solid inside) pompom, but no luck with the real thing.
For this site Teri actually gave us a topo map marked with where to find what. There are lots of fossils there, and sharks's teeth. After striking out on pompom, I went to a less hilly area in search of agate. That area was an alluvial area at the base of the bentonite hills, and was accessed by walking up a wash. There were all sorts of bits and bobs in the wash - chalcendony, little seam agate slices, some agate pieces. I ended up hiking all the way up the wash to the hills, (about 1/3 mile), around the side of the hills, up another wash. I was getting pretty frustrated by the lack of fully silicated agate until I came upon a rockslide of really good and solid looking dark brown volcanic rock. Like lava almost. Thinking this looked promising, I scrambled up, and came upon plentiful blobs of agate, including some wierd translucent green agate a lot like the super gemmy Mtorolite (but it was interspersed with yucky stuff and not cabbable so I gave it away).
I ended up finding a nice colorful piece of wood there, and a petrified bone of some sort - not sure what type. It is a leg bone of something horse-sized though. Can tell if it's fully agatized yet.
Wood:
Bone:
South Larremore Ranch:
On the last day, Teri took us to the south end of Larremore Ranch. It is about 40 miles south of Alpine, halfway to Terlingua. Nice flat cattle ranch.
This might have been my favorite, although it would be a tossup with Stillwell. Larremore has the benefit of being flat though, so I might lean this way. At Larremore, the rocks are alluvial deposits, and the ground looks a lot like Lavic - paved with desert varnished rocks. Unlike Lavic, however, there are many cool treasures hiding there if you look. Fortified banded agates, colorful mosses, wood, fossils . . . Teri found a petrified Sand Dollar while we were there.
Also, Larremore has a (currently dry) creek (Calamity Creek?). Apparently Larremore is downstream from Woodward and Walker ranches, so theoretically Woodward style biscuits are findable there. I picked up a few candidates, but I don't have my hopes up. Mainly I found colorful moss pieces there, as well as some obvious plume and sagenite pieces, as well as some I can't tell.
In the wash:
Here it's a matter of getting away from the picked-over areas. A quick google search will show you that this place is popular with clubs. Teri parked us in a remote location away from where the clubs go, and as I walked around it was easy to tell where the clubs had been by the footprints. So I headed away from the footprints and found a bunch of really neat stuff, both in the alluvial deposits and in the tributaries of the creek. If I went again, I would find a more remote area of the creek to search - the bigger rocks were in the creek and its branches.
I could have spent another couple of days here though. Easily. And, as I said before, no hills. Rocks are heavy, I'm against hills!
I found a nice piece of solid white agate with red plumes not 20 feet from my car. Small, but cabbable. Unfortunately I didn't get it's picture. Fingers crossed it's solid!
Overall I ended up with 12 medium flat rate boxes. Thanks to everybody who chimed in with advice on packing them! I think they're pretty sturdy with all the tape I put on them. I will update that thread with my findings. The post office in Alpine was very friendly and didn't give me any problem with the boxes, and the local True Value hardware has all the tape/gloves/etc you could need.
Finally, what you came for - pictures of rocks:
Texas has beautiful mosses.
Misc cutters:
Odds and ends, as souvenirs and some possible cutters - this kind of stuff is ALL OVER THE PLACE at all the sites.
Probably a mudball on the inside:
Only the saw will tell what mystery is inside a lot of the ones I picked up:
Reading the outside of the rock:
Sagenite? Plumes?
Sagenite:
Needles:
Plumes:
Check out the upper right corner:
My finges are crossed really hard for this one, but Teri said not to get my hopes up (those are indentations, not that black ferny stuff that sometimes grows on the surface). Anyone seen this before?
Conglomerates - some are long shots but I couldn't leave them! I don't think any of these are the famous "peanut agate".
This one could be leaverite, but it was covered in so many botryoidal bits, on all sides, that I couldn't bear to leave it:
