Nephrite jade
Dense, waxy, dull green to near black. Rings when struck, refuses to scratch with steel, and feels far heavier than a rock that size should.
Serpentinite belts — Fraser Canyon bars, Bridge River, Cassiar float.
Field Guide
Read the ground before you break it
Everything you need to walk a British Columbia gravel bar and know what you're holding — plus the ethics that keep these places open for whoever shows up after you.
Know it in the hand
Agate & chalcedony
Translucent when wet or backlit; conchoidal, glassy fracture; often a pitted grey rind hiding banding underneath.
Volcanic gravels, river bars, storm beaches after high water.
Jasper
Opaque, hard, brick red to mustard and green. Takes a slick polish on beach cobbles, breaks with a smooth curved face.
Fraser and Thompson river gravels, coastal beaches.
Garnet
Dodecahedral crystals, deep wine to rust brown, often sitting proud of a mica schist face.
Metamorphic roadcuts and schist exposures in the Coast Belt.
Zeolites
Delicate white to peach sprays and sheaves in basalt vesicles — soft, fragile, wrap them alone.
Basalt quarries and roadcut vesicles.
Pyrite & sulphides
Brassy metallic cubes with striated faces; brittle, not malleable — that's how you know it isn't gold.
Old mine dumps, mineralised roadcuts.
What rides in the trunk
- Rock hammer + cold chisel
- Never a carpenter's hammer — chips fly like shrapnel.
- Safety glasses
- Non-negotiable. One flake ends a hobby.
- Hand lens (10x)
- Half of identification is just looking closer.
- Spray bottle
- Water makes agate and jasper announce themselves.
- Newspaper + tins
- Zeolites and fragile crystals crumble loose in a bucket.
- Paper map + offline GPS
- Logging roads eat cell signal for breakfast.
- Field notebook
- Coordinates, date, matrix, what else was in the gravel.
- Loud clothing + spare tire
- Active haul roads are not scenic drives.
The code
Take less than you find
A pocketful you'll actually study beats a trunk you'll dump.
Leave the exposure intact
Work float and talus before you break fresh rock.
Fill your holes
Especially on riverbank and trailside ground.
No parks, no claims
Provincial and national parks are closed to collecting; claims belong to someone.
Yield to industry
Loaded logging trucks always have right of way; call channels where posted.
Share the location, not the destruction
If a spot is fragile, post the mineral — not the pin.
Before you go
Check BC Mineral Titles Online for live claims, check DriveBC and the local forest district for road status and active hauling, tell someone your route, and remember that rivers rise fast. Nothing in this atlas replaces your own judgement on the day.