Crystal Clear There May Not Be Gold In Them Thar Hills Around North Bend But There’s Plenty Of Quartz

It’s early morning in the woods behind North Bend, Wash., and crystal hunter Bob Jackson is explaining local geology to an eager band of rockhounds. They’ve already driven 10 miles along a rutted, boulder-strewn logging road and now Jackson has them peering through the trees at three backlit, jagged peaks.

“I know you can’t see it too well with the sun in your eyes, but there’s white stripes up there, guys,” Jackson says. “Those white stripes are quartz veins. Around the turn of the century, miners from California came up here looking for gold.

“In California, quartz means gold. So when they came up this valley, they got really excited. Unfortunately, in Washington,” Jackson continues, “quartz means quartz.”

And so, Jackson has introduced another group to one of the richest quartz mining areas in the world. It is unique because the quartz veins are so dense. As Jackson claims, clusters of crystal the size of your fist lie strewn across the ground. A half hour’s work can pry loose a slab of rock the size of a dinner plate that’s studded with crystal spears nearly thick as a finger.

Jackson has been taking people out to work his mine for more than a decade, but his fascination with crystals goes back much further than that.

He started collecting crystals when he was a boy. While in college studying geology, he read a report that early copper miners outside North Bend shipped a carload of ore that ran 80 per cent pyrite crystals. So he came to check it out.

That was nearly 20 years ago and he’s been working the claim ever since … first with a partner, then alone and now with his wife.

For years, he’s peeled the face of his claim methodically, using a rock drill like a probe to find vugs (crystal-lined cavities), chipping out the museum-quality pieces that account for more than half his income, then bringing rockhounds to scramble through the rest before blasting away the exhausted layer and starting again.

On this day, the cycle has returned to its visitor phase and Jackson stands ready to take his flock to the backwoods. His visitors pile into their cars and continue along a series of logging roads that get progressively more narrow, more winding and more rocky until, some 26 miles into the forest, they stop at a wide spot.

“OK, let’s go,” Jackson says, sliding out of his truck and ducking into an unmarked bush. This is Jackson’s private trail and from here, it goes virtually straight up, gaining 1,200 feet in half a mile.

It isn’t a hike but, rather a scramble up roots and rocks and - in one place - a matter of inching across the face of a 10-foot boulder via a finger-width ridge. There’s a lot of pulling and wriggling and downright crawling.

After an hour or so, the group comes over a knoll and makes its way up the final trail. The loose earth is sprinkled with small, shiny chips that resemble thick fish scales. They’re small bits of crystal, scattered about like so much rock candy.

And within sight of this is Jackson’s claim. It looks like a waterfall but instead of liquid, it’s filled with rocks. Along the sides, the loose, fine dirt is studded with small clumps of crystal and blindingly bright silver pyrite. In the middle, among the pebbles and two-foot slabs, there are plates of rock lined with crystal.

Jackson hands out hardhats, safety glasses, chisels and hammers, plus chopsticks for the finer work. And for those who haven’t done this before, there’s a quick lesson in how to find vugs and successfully chop out crystals.

“If you’re digging in an earth bank, follow the channels taken by the roots. The vugs collect water and so the trees anchor in them,” Jackson explains. Or, he adds, a person can search through the area recently uncovered by blasting. “Bang with the hammer and listen for a hollow spot. That’s a vug.”

When you find a likely plate, he continues, the trick is to draw a line with the chisel, hammering carefully until the plate just cracks off. Care is the byword of the day. A $500 museum-quality plate can become a $50 curiosity by simply knocking the edge off a prime crystal.

After 30 minutes of work grubbing among some dripping tree roots, one woman has a half dozen crystal clumps in her lap. Another has just opened a fist-size, pyrite-lined vug whose walls glisten gold, silver and copper in the sunlight.

Jackson’s Spruce Claim is considered by mining companies to be one of the world’s best for quartz and pyrite. The two minerals can combine together in stunning clusters of translucent spears studded with silver blocks. There’s a chunk like this in the University of Washington’s Burke Museum, another in the University of British Columbia Museum in Vancouver and a $12,000 mass of pyrite blocks perched atop crystal scepters in a museum in Austria.

During a break, Jackson tries to explain how special this area is. “There are 19 breccias (broken rocks loaded with crystals) between this ridge and the valley. Nineteen in two square miles, which is the densest known population of breccias on Earth.”

To illustrate, he tells some nifty stories. Like how he found a specimen called Louie The Lump. He and his original partner had lain on their backs in a vug for six days, chiseling away at nothing in particular. All the while, they used a nondescript boulder for storing their tools until finally, it got in their way.

So they pried out the lump, rolled it to the mouth of the tunnel and kicked it out.

When it hit the ground, it split, exposing a unique combination of quartz and pyrite. They sold Louie to the University of British Columbia Museum, where it sits to this day.

Though Jackson is heavily involved with crystals, he sidesteps the spiritual aspects by diplomatically saying, “I don’t feel the energy of quartz crystals, but that’s not to say it’s not there.”

He does, however, understand the appeal of crystal power. “Our bodies are surrounded by an electrical field and if you squeeze a quartz crystal, you generate a micro-electrical current, so who’s to say they can’t interact?” In fact, Jackson adds, half the people who go on his crystal trips believe in crystal power. “We’ve had people go up there, take off their clothes and lie among the crystals. And we’ve had people climb into a vug and just sit there, going ‘Uhmmmmm.’ “

As for this day, it’s been more than fruitful for Jackson’s 13 crystal hunters. By midafternoon, there’s a pile of chunks so large that people are having to start making choices. But it could be worse. A couple of years ago, one Australian insisted on keeping a 90-pound specimen, which he lugged down on his back.

He eventually sent Jackson a picture of the thing , sitting on his fireplace mantle in Australia. Jackson still has the photo - a memento, of sorts, of his own.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: IF YOU GO Trips to Spruce Claim run every weekend from June through late September and cost $60 per person. For more information, contact Bob Jackson Minerals, P.O. Box 2652, Renton, WA 98056; call (206) 255-6635. Children are not permitted on these trips, but less strenuous trips to collect crystals, amber and fossils are open to children over 6 through the parks departments of Bellevue (206-45l-4106), Redmond (206-556-2356) and Issaquah (206-391-1008) and cost $15 to $20 per person. If you’re planning to make the Spruce trip, you don’t have to be an Olympic athlete, but you should be in halfway decent shape (able, say, to run a mile). Once you’ve got your booty home, you’ll have to clean it. That means muriatic (swimming pool) acid. The idea is to first soak the crystals in acid, then in a baking soda/water solution. Though an occasional clump of crystals emerges from the ground in spotless condition, much of the time it emerges as a rusty lump which then requires at least two days of soaking.

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