First of all, I need to tell you something important. I broke 3 chisels on the trip. This rock is very hard. I would suggest a four to six pound hammer, and star drills. Then use your chisels.
This was a very interesting field trip for me. I needed to be in Everett Washington for business, and I scheduled some vacation time after. I contacted a local collector who knew the area, and we met up, and went collecting. He came to my hotel early on a Saturday morning, and we then drove directly to Washington Pass. The view was magnificent! The weather was perfect (August). We stopped high on an overlook, and he pointed certain places where some of the minerals were found. We went to a campground and found it full. We looked, and found another likely place to set up to stay that night. We headed next to Liberty bell mountain. We hiked up a talus slope about 600 feet (just above us we saw a couple of hikers climbing up the face of the cliff!). We started to look around the boulders for minerals, but did not find much. He had worked the area previously pretty hard, and even then, the vugs ar few, and these are micro minerals we are looking for, so unless you know waht you are looking for, it is difficult to find them. Plus, as I mentioned, this is super hard rock!. After searching for several hours, we hiked back down, and crossed over the road to the “Okanoganite Boulder” (found off the road at Washington milepost 166 on State Route 20). I chipped and hammered as much as I could on this horribly hard rock. I did find some items (micros). We then went to the “Sogdianite Boulder” nearby, again, hard hard rock. I have heard there are a couple of other good boulders nearby, with rare micros. In the morning, me collected at the road cut by the Silver Star Mountain sign. The road commission cleans the area out each spring, which brings new material down. The old is dumped over the low side of the road. Zeksterite has been found there. I was able to find a very cute Galena cube which is uncommon for this area. Later in the day, we traded, and I received some amazing Washington minerals.
Ref: www.minsocam.org/ammin/AM65/AM65_1138.pdf