Wednesday morning we drove out to the Silver Crater Mine to hunt for apatite,
biotite, hornblende and betafite. We stopped by the the owner's house and left the one dollar per
person fee in a jar on the porch. How's that for a bargain price?! The 1-1/2 mile two-track road
from the house to the mine is quite rugged in places that generally require a high-clearance
four-wheel drive vehicle. Our Dodge pickup made it with no problem, but the drive would have been
problematic later in the week after we had gotten loaded down with more rocks. We were accompanied
on our drive by a swarm of deer flies that were attracted to the truck - or maybe what was inside
the truck - us! We were expecting to be eaten alive when we got out at the mine, but the deer flies
didn't seem particularly interested in human flesh and pretty much cleared out before long.
We scratched around the spoil piles below an open cut for a while. We found
some very nice, dark and very large biotite crystals, some in a calcite matrix. Some of the spoil
pile specimens contained somewhat weathered apatite crystals scattered amidst the calcite and
biotite matrix. The dark color of the biotite makes a striking contrast with the white and pink
calcite. I could see incredibly large hornblende and biotite crystals in the side of the
open cut, but that would have taken dynamite to recover.
Biotite In Situ
Hornblende In Situ
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By mid-afternoon, I was pretty much ready to pull out when Chrissy asked me to come over
to where she had been scratching around to look at something "interesting" that she had found.
There was a time when I used to roll my eyes at one of these requests as it seemed that, more often
than not, what she had found was generally not anything to write home about - and that's being
diplomatic. But, Chrissy is either getting much better at finding stuff or I am getting
more patient (don't laugh), so I walked over to see what it was she had found. Yep, she has gotten
much better at finding stuff! Chrissy discovered an area where someone had high-graded what
appeared to be perfectly good apatite crystals in calcite. Before long, I had discovered where
the material had been collected and began breaking rock and finding excellent apatite in
calcite specimens. Not only was the apatite plentiful but it appeared to be much gemmier than
the Bear Lake material. I worked for several hours and recovered some excellent specimens,
including a couple betafites in matrix.
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In the spirit of "bigger is always better" when it comes to my rockhounding, I
managed to pull out the following monster specimen!
