We climbed about 600 feet, not counting the down and back up parts, to nearly 7000ft at the top. In between we crawled (part of it was crawling) into the Galena King Mine. I went on this trip last fall, too, but this time I got better interior pictures of the crystal bands above our heads. The pretty blue is Fluorite. I'd been asked by someone to look for Wulfenite and the bright orange *might* be, but it was too far above my head to see for certain. The only minerals of interest to our class (and to long ago miners) were the Fluorite, Galena, and Barite.
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| looking up... men could stand on those logs, and did. |
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| The blue is fluorite, but what is bright orange and pink? |
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| Pretty darn good for a phone camera. |
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| Inside. |
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| Outside, 7000 feet up. "Nellie Mine" shaft in the middle distance. They dug up a lot of nothing and left a hole. Mt. Taylor in the far distance. |
7 comments:
That looks like huge fun. I'm jealous.
Nice post Synova. Thanks.
I'm kinda jealous of geology's simple way of naming things--everything ends in "ite", It's a bit like enzymology in which everything ends in "ase."
Chemistry has the suffix "ite" but it designates something which is not quite an "ate" e.g., nitrite vs. nitrate or sulfite vs. sulfate.
Wulfenite's my favorite mineral. I have a small specimen, and of the same color as in your picture. So it could be wulfenite you saw, but if it was in the mine, I would guess it would have long ago been "harvested".
I'm finishing a project on Mt. Taylor now.
Pretty sure your "bright orange" mineral is wulfenite. I'm looking at a sample on my desk right now and it has the same orange hue as the crystals in your pictures.
Color is always a bit iffy for mineral identification. It *looked* like it might have had those pretty little flat crystals but it was just too far away to see.
I'm glad everyone liked the pictures.
Great post.
Now can you do one about the rocks in Obama's head
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