Pink Topaz & The Excavator - My Entry For SMASh Round 331

I have to admit, I have a hard time finding shadow photos worth sharing, but I got one I liked recently. I'll get to it later in this post. First the story behind it.

I was up in Utah and Nevada digging topaz and garnets, among other precious minerals, this past weekend. A friend had given me the ok to go dig on one of his claims, the Solar Wind Claim, which is famous for rare, pink topaz, as well as large bixbyite cubes.

I was camping about 40 miles south, around the mountain range and got up early one morning to head over to the claim.

The route to the claim is located on the historic Pony Express road. I had no idea this was out here so I was happy to be able to travel on it and experience some US history.

The Pony Express was a mail route from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California in the 1860's. It could get mail across the country in 10 days using a network of horses and stations about every 10 miles. Here is a map of the route from the library of Congress.

You can see the Black Rock station I passed by just below and to the left of the great Salt Lake.

I could not imagine traveling this desolate, rocky and sandy road back in those days, even on a fast horse. The Pony Express went bankrupt after 18months because of the introduction of the telegraph.

A few miles past the Black Rock station marker I reached my destination, Solar Wind Claim.

The road up to the mine is a 4WD, high clearance road so I had to park here and hike up.

When I got up however it was well worth it. There was topaz everywhere as the owners had just moved a bunch of material and brought the crystals out to piles around the excavator.

I also noticed an opportunity for a shadow shot with the excavator.

This is my entry for SMASh Round 331.

Now to the topaz.

The topaz is unique here to all the topaz in the mountain range. It's the only location where the crystals are pink or will bleach out to pink, whereas normal brown topaz found in the area bleaches out clear.

I do have some pink topaz for sale in our American Etsy shop if you would like to own some for yourself. https://rt395minerals.etsy.com/listing/1751312628/5-pink-topaz-specimens-from-topaz

Despite the weather reaching 100 degrees I dug around for about 6 hours. There was a nice breeze and shade from the excavator so it wasn't so bad digging.

Here is a black bixbyite specimen I dug. Sorry for the dirty fingernail. The bixbyites that come from this mine are the best specimens in the world. While I didn't find the monster crystals, I did find a bunch of smaller ones like this.

I'm also in the process of letting these topaz crystals bath in the sun until they turn a good pink color.

And that was the story of the Solar Wind claim, but not the end of the adventure...

Thanks for reading!