South Baldy

We went out to South Baldy, north of Usk, Washington, to investigate historic reports of smoky quartz crystals near South Baldy Mountain.

As we were driving and inspecting the roadside, we noticed some obvious diggings. We went in for a closer look and found a number of dug out holes that looked like they hadn’t been worked in several years. There was a variety of material: quartz, smoky quartz, decaying granite, mica and black tourmaline. The presence of those materials generally means that quartz crystals could be present, however in our short time looking through the tailing of the holes we did not see anything resembling a crystal. There was some very clear, small pieces of quartz, but not in crystal form. With more time, it may be possible to find quartz crystals here at this dig site, or somewhere else on South Baldy.