Rockhounding Idaho: A Guide To 99 Of The State's Best Rockhounding Sites Paperback – May 4, 2010

This lifelong rock hound can not recommend this book. Maybe it's okay for beginners, but as a guide to good collecting spots in Idaho, I found the Idaho edition of the Falcon Rockhounding series to be a grave disappointment. Problems specific to the kindle version: on a small screen, the maps are unreadable. One a large screen, they are barely readable.General critiqueGood: The geodetic coordinates I have checked or used have been accurate. The "when to visit" listings are mostly accurate.Not Good: Yes, it's cheaper and more profitable to print in greyscale. Personally, I'd pay more just to get better colored maps and colored photos. Especially in places where the rocks are really colorful like Idaho. The maps: They are too general. I like a guide book to be grab-and-go, with decent enough directions and maps that I don't have to spend the day before downloading topos. In these days of openstreetmap.org, the Idaho Digital atlas, digital geology sites at ISU, and lots of free GIS, there's little excuse not to produce maps with hill shade and good road detail. Also, it's easy to obtain and display public vs. private land boundaries, which can save a collector from violating rock hounding etiquette by trespassing. Make the maps with type big enough to be read on a tablet screen. Mentioning the name of the topo quad for a locale would be a big plus, by the way, since topos are free for the downloading. The text reads like a travelogue, not like a guide book to collecting rocks. The author did a little too much driving around and not enough real time looking for rocks and minerals. There's an overall feel of "I drove here, I looked around, I noticed some stuff, and here's what some locals said..." Frankly, that ruined this book for me. There are frequent mentions of sites the author didn't bother to visit.FOR EXAMPLE: in the Mackay section, the author mentions the Chilly calcite that obviously some local told him about. But he didn't go there, even though it was just 30 minutes up the road. He would have found one of the easiest places to see great cubic-habit calcite, both white and hemetite-red that you can drive right up to without being exposed to the hazards of a roadside outcrop. That's annoying especially since it's such an easy site to access. I've been taking newbie collectors there for years.FOR EXAMPLE: the author mentions the obsidian site at Big Southern Butte but didn't bother to do the hike, so he couldn't report on what a punishing hike it is and that there's not a lot of obsidian left to collect. It's not your grandma's collecting site. It's brutal to get to and not very rewarding for the effort - but he was in too much of a hurry to drive by all the sites on his shopping list to bother. I consider this sort of thing crucial info that is missing throughout this book. Yes, the author has a section titled "Big Southern Butte" but didn't actually check out the only rock worth collecting there. He did survey the North Robbers cinder cone in the same section, but that's not actually Big Southern Butte... He also completely neglected the cool alkaline volcanics almost next door at Cedar Butte and the lovely 1/2 to 1 cm by 2 mm to 4 mm plagioclase crystals almost next door at Table Legs Butte. Both these collecting spots are known to locals and are on the road he took to get to North Robbers.FOR EXAMPLE : in the Little Flat article, he tosses off that "Ream mentions a fluorescent rhyolite locale up at China Cap." What the foop? He fails to note that China Cap is around 30 miles of driving away, in the next valley over. Why even mention a site more than an hour away that wasn't even visited? It would have been better to put these annoying "I didn't go there" spots in an appendix of other potential places to check out that he didn't have room to include. Next, why even bother to include non-collecting sites, no matter how geologically interesting? Rock hounding is collecting. I bought the book to investigate new collecting spots. So stick with the primary purpose that the book title is selling the reader - rock hounding. If it's not a site to collect at, then it's filler. If I wanted a book on geo-site seeing, I would have bought one on that instead. About the directions: better descriptions and consistent reporting of trip odometer readings would be an improvement. Let's pick on Mackay again, since it's a good example of how this book let me down. First, there is no place in text that the author says "zero your odometer here" in Mackay - even though he mentions an intersection 4.4 miles up the road from Mackay. So is that 4.4 miles from US 93? The beginning of Smelter Road? The big sign for the Mackay Mine Road tour sign and parking lot? Now at that interection at 4.4 miles, the author doesn't mention the guidepost signs with numbers that correspond to a map put out jointly by BLM and the City of Mackay for the mine access road. If he had bothered to include them, it would make it easier to know which left turn to take, since there are more than one left turn four to five miles up the road. Next, the author notes an out crop around a mile up that left turn with a green outcrop. First, it's not really an out crop - it's an open cut at a sharp left turn in the road, and there's one of those sign posts there with a number nine on it. None of this was mentioned by the author. And he got the mineralogy wrong too. There's very little malachite but a lot of cornwallite, some melanterite and heaps and heaps of crysocolla that he didn't property identify. I'm also wondering how he missed all the massive to gemmy garnet in the skarn at this location, because it's all over the tailings pile... And there is also really lovely tumble-worthy and polished-slab worthy leucocitic porphyry all over that stop. And If he had done his research, he might have mentioned the two adits there in the cut into the old Copper Bullion workings that you shouldn't enter because they are caved and unsafe. The author also misses minerals. At Mackay, he didn't spot the quartz druse, the garnets, the galena, the sphaelerite, the magnetite, and the cuprite which I picked up out of the tailings piles plus the HUGE orthoclase inclusions in the dikes cut by the road up to the big open cut above Cliff Creek. I spent three hours at Mackay and it was my first visit. How much time did the author spend to miss what I spotted so easily in my short afternoon there? It's not just Mackay where minerals get missed. For example, the author missed the lovely cubic thoriatites just up the hill from the Sacagawea momument at the top of Lemhi Pass and he didn't bother to check out the other rare earth element veins that are all over the place along the ridge crest along the ID-MT border line. And I'm rather flattened that all he found at Gilmore was quartz since I've brought home all kinds of fun stuff off the tailings there.

Let's be honest, a book that was published 5+ years ago for all to read means I'm not the first to read it and go rock hounding at these sites. So far, the places I've been are pretty well picked over. You'd have to do some more serious mining, more than a shovel and pick to get to anything really worth keeping. Don't get me wrong, just the going and time with my boys is the fun part, my boys still find plenty they want to keep, I have to secretly throw them back when they aren't looking. The book presents the areas well with good maps and information on what time of year is best to visit the site, what kind of clothing/equipment/vehicle is needed. Pictures are black and white, seriously? for a book that explains gems, which are all about color... not sure why they wouldn't have done the pictures in color, I would have paid more for color as it would greatly improve this book.

While this book is started to get a little dated, it still applies 90% of the time. My sons and I have started rockhounding this summer (total newbies), and we've already visited four of the places outlined in these pages. We've had a pretty easy time finding the spots (via GPS coordinates). And we've had fun collecting rocks at every location. You will be able to tell that the areas have been extensively dug since this book was published. But that didn't stop us from finding plenty of rocks to keep my kids (and me) happy. Romaine's narrated directions are sometimes baffling/confusing. But if you have a smartphone with the lat/long coordinates punched into the map app, you'll be fine. Definately worth the money.

I love this book and it stays with me on every adventure...i didnt realize it was black & white so it is pretty tough to use the pictures in the book without color and when I ak out of service so i cant google them for reference

My husband bought this for me as a surprise and it was a nice one. I liked that the maps were clear and detailed enough to use and the book wasn't filled with unneeded information. It is nicely formatted and is easy to use. I do wish the rocks pictured were in color, but then the price would have to be higher.I recommend it for beginners (because I'm one) who need tips on where to look and what to look for. I can't speak about how the more advanced people would like it.

Got to love Falcon Guides. ;-)Garret Romaine has written several books and there's a reason Falcon picked him to write for them. Easy to read and great locations he's actually been to. Not just a regurgitation of someone else' books. 2010 edition is still fairly accurate as to road conditions and public lands maps/directions.

Thorough book but was annoyed photos are black and white. As a beginner Rock hounder it was hard to know what the Rick's looked like without color.

color pics would have been nice

super handy