That weird place in Oregon where the rocks are made of glass

[PaxNurgle]

Has anyone heard of that weird place out in Oregon where all of the rocks are actually made of glass?
It's supposed to be somewhere out east of Bend somewhere, some big hill or outcrop out in the central Oregon desert somewhere. I guess there are all these rocks that look like rocks on the outside but when you break them open they are actually just chunks of red and black glass. Has anyone ever been there or heard about this place? This guy told me about it once.

 

[jaF0]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_Buttes

 

[jaF0]

Caution. Obsidian is extremely SHARP. Sharp glass splinters can fly trough the air when cleaving or working an obsidian pit. To avoid severe eye damage, use safety glasses with side protection. Wear protective gloves. Also, tire fixing kit and\or spare tire might be a good idea in case you drive over an exceptionally sharp piece of mineral.

https://oregondiscovery.com/glass-butte

 

[Dribble]

You can follow any drainage waterway from the buttes and find obsidian. Scalpel sharp. Cool as fuck

 

[suestevenson143]

Very cool

 

[Dribble]

The place i am thinking of is east of LaPine

 

[Comshaw]

Eastern Oregon is full of volcanic detritus. Obsidian, while not common, isn't rare either. The lava fields stretch for miles. I've ridden through them several times. The state highway that runs through it is 100 miles of this:

https://www.pictorem.com/collection/900_2413639HighRes.jpg

Flint and Obsidian were the two materials prevalent in the making of spear and arrow points before metals were used. Many of the Clovis points found were made from Obsidian. I saw an article one time where the author was advocating the use of obsidian for medical scalpels. They had a magnified image of the edge of a metal scalpel and one of an obsidian edge. The metal one looked like a saw compared to the obsidian one.

Comshaw

 

[Philthy_Phil]

Nice buttes!

 

[PaxNurgle]

Glass Buttes sounds like the place. I've seen some of those glass rocks. They're pretty strange, and yeah, the stuff is beyond razor sharp. Down by Jackpot, Nevada (just north of the Idaho/Nevada border) they have rocks made out of glass, too.

 

[pecksniff]

And watch out for the Obsidian Order!

 

[Goldenfinger]

Yep, glass butte. But be careful them obsidian is sharp as hell.

 

[oneblueye]

hey...

Eastern Oregon is full of volcanic detritus. Obsidian, while not common, isn't rare either. The lava fields stretch for miles. I've ridden through them several times. The state highway that runs through it is 100 miles of this:

https://www.pictorem.com/collection/900_2413639HighRes.jpg

Flint and Obsidian were the two materials prevalent in the making of spear and arrow points before metals were used. Many of the Clovis points found were made from Obsidian. I saw an article one time where the author was advocating the use of obsidian for medical scalpels. They had a magnified image of the edge of a metal scalpel and one of an obsidian edge. The metal one looked like a saw compared to the obsidian one.

Comshaw

some eye surgeons here in the USA still use obsidian chips scalpels for ocular surgeries of various types...

 

[oneblueye]

hey...

And watch out for the Obsidian Order!

no longer exist...

 

[Mello_SixtyNine]

There are some surgeons that use obsidian scalpels because studies say that cuts made using these blades get healed much faster than the ones made by steel blades because obsidian blades can make extremely narrow cuts between the cells, and not tear the cells apart.

https://i.imgur.com/cnDtF4D.jpg

 

[Unattached77]

You can also try Glass Mountain in the Lava Beds National Monument. Its just south of Tule Lake Ca. The Lava Beds is a very cool place.

 

[oddity83]

Well worth a visit if you can. There is some nice camping by lake Paulina with some flows close by.

 

[PaxNurgle]

That part of Oregon isn't that well traveled. I've been all over the Owyhee Mountains in the far eastern corner of the state, close in to Idaho, but most of the country west of Ontario, Vale, and Juntura (and East of Bend, Klamath Falls and Redmond) is a big, wide open void of uncharted and untravelled territory. I've driven through Burns on the way to visit Bend, and once you get a ways west of Juntura and drop out of the mountains, it's... very flat and dry.