Iron Cap Mine, 2021, 2022

My highly competent collecting friend Chris Rayburn and I visited the Iron Cap Mine during 2021 and 2022. We enjoyed our first trip there in 2021 and thought we'd give it another go. This "Recent activity" is a composite of both trips. Not so recent but I hope you will find it interesting.

The road(s) to and from the Iron Cap Mine, to me, is half the reason for going. There are always mountain vistas to admire and, depending on the time of year, often beautiful flora to enjoy.

Actually, we had to travel on a series of roads that start out great but deteriorate into four-wheel drive roads the last number of miles. Takes a couple of hours to reach the Iron Cap from I-10.

We have not gone underground at the Iron Cap, since the workings that we have checked out look just too darn dangerous! As a result we have collected on surface. I have thought that we were dump collecting at the Iron Cap Mine but as it turns out, much of the "dumps are really the residual much in the "Glory Hole". The orebody outcropped to surface and was blasted into the underground workings and excavated from the underground workings to be moved to the ore bins.

On the first trip, I took apart a large boulder with crack hammer and chisel and managed to recover some decent sphalerite, quartz and galena crystals.

We managed to find some excellent johansennite and quartz specimens on both trips. On the first trip, we recovered some very nice green sphalerite and sharp galena crystals. I was also keen to collect some Axinite-Mn and Manganbabingtonite. I did find some good axinite-Mn but have still not found the Manganbabingtonite.

Here are some of the specimens recovered during the trips.

So, it was a successful trip in many ways. I did not detect any manganbabingtonite and that, alone, is a good reason to return. Hopefully we will head back there again and upgrade our sphalerite, galena and quartz specimens, as well!

The parting shot is of Antelope. First time that I'd seen antelope playing on the open range.

I hope that you found this not-so-recent Recent Activity interesting!?