My plans for an ambitious Lake Powell hiking/canyoning/packrafting loop were canceled fairly last minute when we realized that pretty much all the roads in the area will be washed out for quite some time as a result of the over-active monsoon season the southwest has been having this year. Fortunately, I was able to pivot pretty quickly to a trip to Cedar City for mineral collecting and fall colors with Ryan. As a bonus I would finally get to meet his UV light friend Bill and partner Rachel. Quite unusually I had rain much of the way across Nevada. As I drove through its gorge, the Virgin River was a chocolatey mess that had me wishing I brought a packraft. Eventually I arrived in late afternoon, giving us a chance to head out for some afternoon scouting at the Desert Mound pit (aka the toilet bowl) and tailings piles where we did not find too much of interest. We then drove further on to check out a few roadside tailings at Iron Mountain (more promising with some magnetite and apatite) and then drove to the top for a stellar view of the surrounding desert. We poked around at some of the summit diggings before being chased away by rain. We had a nice social evening.
The next day we started around midday with a wildcard option of driving south to check out some old mines at Silver Reef near Hurricane. Somewhere here (10 mile radius...) there was supposed to be an occurrence of hydrozincite and calcite that made very showy UV specimens but the geology did not really seem to match this type of mineralization and we did not see much more than some copper stains. A day and a half in, I had surprisingly few rocks to show for all the looking. We drove back towards Iron Mountain to check out a hillside quarry we were interested in. This proved to be one of the most interesting sites we visited with an enormous 150 ft high cut face exposing some breccia filled in with magnetite veins and pockets. We found interesting calcite crystals, magnetite crystals, lilac/pink fluorescing apatite, and Ryan found several stellar gemmy apatite crystals to 1.5" loose on the scree slopes. We had fun collecting here but never returned at night which I am sure would be the real reveal. Dinner at the Chinese buffet in town and then more UV mineral collecting at the "saddle" locality of the Armstrong Mine tailings. This surprised us with fantastic multicolor specimens.
Coming off a particularly late night with a UV mineral collecting hangover, our plans for the third day materialized slowly but eventually settled on a big day of an 8.5 hour trip into a deep mine, then more post-dark UV collecting. I packed and organized as efficiently as I could. This was my second time into this mine, this time going deeper down to the 850' level. The shattered timbers, collapsed shafts, vertical ladders with missing rungs held together with nails and occasionally paracord, dizzying downward views of hundreds of feet, and boxes of dynamite still left a strong impression, even if some of the first-time fear and adrenaline was quieter this time. As before I was thoroughly impressed by the complexity of the mine, sketchy chaos, well-preserved mining artifacts, and dazzling ore minerals. A highlight for me was exploring the attic area at the 350' level that had some of the most incredible multi-colored and multi-patterned rock I have ever seen. This time around it took us nearly 3 hours to carefully climb back up the network of ladders, the mid-ladder squeezes being much more notable obstacles on the way out. Really just an incredible place overall.
After exiting the mine under the stars, we walked back to the car and drove on to check out two more UV mineral locales. A little north of the Harrington-Hickory Mine, we scoured hillsides and tailings for bright blue fluorescing hydrozincite, sometimes with bright orange calcite and neon green chalcedony. We then checked out the Rebel Mine, which had some incredible day-glo orange calcite and calcite-aragonite brecciated crystal pockets. The collecting was great but I easily lost enthusiasm around 2am. We stopped in at a remote 24 hour diner, clearly disappointing the bleary-eyed employee working the graveyard shift. After a meal it was more driving, a shower to remove the thick layer of dust and grim, and then a hard crash into bed.
The last day we had another slow start owing to our previous big day and night. We sorted out our rocks and pressure washed them clean on the driveway. 285 lbs ended up being my final tally to bring back home. In the late afternoon all four of us piled into Bill's truck and drove through Cedar City, up Cedar Canyon, and up onto the 10000' elevation Markagunt Plateau for some fall color leaf peeping. We stopped at the roadside Duck Lake for some fiery reflections (frontispiece), then onto the west side of Navajo Lake where Ryan and I flew our drones over the colorful aspens. With the light nearly played out here, we drove on to the east side of the lake for another flight over the aspens interspersed with conifers and lava. I had been wanting to see a good fall color show for some time and this happily scratched that itch.
In the morning we loaded up and said our goodbyes, everyone headed out three different directions. I huge thanks to Ryan for hosting a few fun days of fossicking, Rachel for hospitality, and Bill for driving us around. For Plan B it was a great and sorely needed getaway before I plunge into the meat of the academic quarter.
