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Deer Creek 7/03/09 (JG Page 8)
| Jade Gallery Page 8 Deer Creek 07/03/09 Rise of the Botryoidals |
When it comes to the stuff on Deer Creek, I no longer draw a line between the hydrogrossular garnet (HGG) and the jade as they seem to comprise a series within the metasomatic/serpentinization reaction zone (rodingization),and are very similar in appearance, so whatever I note is just an "educated" guess. Chances are that both are represented in the stones.
Always Under Construction
but done until cuts are added
but done until cuts are added
Pictures link to slide-show albums of the stones on Photobucket See note on pg1
 DeerBot1 | This is what you want to find. Nicely formed "bubbles" on a botryoidal jade. This will make a nice display piece, and is worth some money despite not being an awesome jade green color. I was finding all these botryoidal pieces at the creeks edge amongst the muck covered rocks recently exposed by the falling water level. |
 DeerBot2 | This is the same material as above, but with out nicely formed bubbles. This one might cut interesting patterns of the "bubbles" in matrix though. |
 DeerBot5 | This one is the same kind of botryoidal fragment as above, but with more sever weathering. It doesn't look like much, but may, as above, hold treasures inside. |
 DeerBotBrain3 | A typical "brain" shaped botryoidal jade, worth some dough as a display piece. As always with these pieces, the darkish areas around the "bubbles" are soft serpentinite. Some folks cut these up for the beautiful patterns inside, but I think that's a sin. |
 DeerBotBlack4 | Barley botryoidal, but it is none-the-less. Compare this one with the black rinds on page 7 or (BlackRind1 and BlackRind2). The black is a little soft in areas, as is the green, but as a whole it is not serpentinite at all, and is hard enough to be jade. The softness is likely just a weathering affect. No magnet attraction is evident, but the black on the fracture looks a little schisty(?). A lot of botryoidals are a bit soft on the rind, and that should be taken as normal...they're habit clearly identifying them as jade. And you would be a fool to break into one of these just to check the hardness on a fresh surface! |
 aBeauty 'Jade Cyclops' | Translucent greys, whites and perfect green! A real beauty whose size has allowed a bit of a polish from the elements. How much of the larger boulders contain green like this is unknown, but one can hope! |
 BlackJade | I picked this one up last as I was leaving for the day, on the off chance it was jade...and it is. In some of the dry shots on the slide-show you can see scratch marks, but the marks are metallic, leavings from the softer knife blade. Notice the potch marked surface. I guess this isn't technically black, just very dark green. |
 CreamAndGreen | This one should be compared with the botryoidal jades, in particular, with the coloring on the one from Pilchuck Creek on page 6 or here...that is the spotted green white bubbles. |
 RonnyJade | Similar to above, reminds me of rodingites a little. Cuts added to top of slide-show, |
 2Sided | The two sides of this piece look very different. The other side is classic Deer Creek HGG transitioning to more translucent white/grey on this side with spots of the green. |
 TheBlock | This is a small cobble of some of the best material, exhibiting an eye of translucent grey, with beautiful greens mixed with whites. |
 TheChip | This is a small "river" polished chip off a cobble just like the one shown above, but a little less translucency. This one is going to be a pendant as is. |
 TheChipAndBlock | ...see above. Chip off the ol' block. These two pieces should help you see how weathering patterns affect the look of jade in the field. |
 LighterGreen | Mostly white, with a lighter green color than most of the cobbles I found, but similar otherwise. |
 aPeb | A pebble of jade or HGG... |
 AnHGG | Fairly sure this represents a HGG not jade, seeing as how it is mostly a white crystal with rodingite like habits. Thank God the Deer Creek jade look-a-like is great material as well! |
 2Pebbles | Just two interesting pebbles of whatnot. |
 LastShotRock | Not much to see here. This one is just suspiciously similar (but all white) to other known jades. It may be a white or light brown jade with a rind (compare with the "whites" from Pilchuck Page 6 or {W1, W2, and W3}), or it's just a chunk of rodingite. There's a nice sample of "white" rind jade coming up on page 10 that gives some hope for these unassuming rocks. |
 aDeerStoneToCut | Cuts added to top of slide-show |
 AndThisStuff2 | Probably the last sample of this stuff I bring back...too light to be anything valuable, but I really want to know what it is. The other sample is here. or go to page 7 |
 BlackBandCobble | This is a fairly decent cobble of jade and/or HGG. The 'Black Band' is likely serpentinite and/or the black stuff on rodingites (the band is hard to see, but it's the low area in the middle of the rock). The whites on this rock are weathered brownish ick on the surface, and there is both evident translucency and opaqueness. 8 lbs |
 ChertCobble | I'm 99% sure this is chert (notice the bedding) and very evident cochoidal fractures. But you have to compare this one with "35 Pounder" on page 7. The bottom third of which seems to be of similar material. The rest of it is jade, so this chert cobble may represent the country rock that particular variety of jade was is contact with during uplift. Or not. 35Pounder may still be entirely jade. |
 CreamWithGreen1 | Pretty opaque pebble, I lean jade for this one, but HGG probably makes more sense. |
 CreamWithGreen2 | Kind of a rodingite look to this one. |
 DeerOpaque | Nice example of the opaque stuff with the 'metasomatic' look and feel to it. |
 DeerStuffSeam | Typical Deer Creek HGG or jade with a seam of superior material running through it. There are a lot of examples of this stuff on previous pages. |
 GWOpaque | The really beautiful opaque jade on Deer Creek. This one has veins of white (quartz?) running through it. Also "metasomatic" look and feel to it (which is something you learn about by picking up rodingites). Cuts added to top of slide-show, very nice stuff, jady. |
 LeafCobble | More Deer Stuff. This one kind of looks like a leaf with those veins of the superior material running through it. I'll think I'll weigh these cobbles for you all soon. 13 lbs |
 MixedUpCobble | Ok, let me go get this one so I can describe it...Most of this cobble is soft, even the odd grey material. No magnetic attraction is evident. In this photo the white area in the middle of the grey and the green just above it are HGG or jade. The vein runs through the rock and can be seen more clearly on the other side, being typical Deer Creek stuff. You'll have to look at the slide-show. The bulk of the rock is too soft to be rodingite, but may be a talc or serpentinite based material. Finding a specimen like this one may be very uncommon on a creek as the soft stone would weather away relatively quickly, leaving only the jade/HGG. |
 NotJade1 | Having drug this home I felt I should share. Had I taken the time to run a field test, this would not have made it into my bucket. it currently resides in Junkite Creek. The slide-show has shots of where I broke into it to reveal it's junkite status. |
 NotJade2 | See above. This one is metasomatic. The slide-show has shots of where I broke into this one too. |