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Topaz
Mountain
Millard County, Utah
Topaz mountain is located
in the Thomas Range about 40 miles west of Lynndyl. The best way to get
there is to turn right off highway 6 a few miles past Lynndyl onto the
IPP power plant road. It's paved all the way until the turnoff. I would
recommend a high clearance vehicle if you want to drive any distance into
the canyon, but any car could make it far enough that it wouldn't be much
of a hike.
We went to Topaz Mountain
with a few tools (hammers, screwdriver, crobar) not knowing what we were
doing. The BLM has set up an area specifically for rockhounding. We started
out in one of the areas that looked like it had recently been blasted,
but we were only able to find small clear pieces of topaz on the ground
by watching for sparkles from the sunlight.
After about an hour we decided to try something new. We hiked up the mountain to an area that didn't look as picked-over. We noticed a large white rock that was fairly brittle and easy to break apart. We were able to pry off a huge piece and then break it by throwing it on other rocks. In that one rock we found several small pieces of yellow topaz. We then hiked further up the hill and noticed what looked like topaz just sticking out of holes in the rock. It pulled out quite easily, but the only part that looked like topaz was the end that was sticking out. I thought that by scraping off the cement-like substance around the rest of each piece that I'd find topaz underneath, but it ended up being the same material all the way through.
After arriving home I read that topaz is yellow until it is exposed to sunlight for long periods of time. The yellow topaz is more valuable, but more difficult to find. We were able to find a little of both through trial and error, but nothing of significant size. If we were able to have some success in only a few hours, there must be quite a bit of topaz to go around.
While we were breaking a rock apart, I noticed a gigantic black thing with orange wings flying toward me. Since I'm highly allergic to stinging insects I ran away, so it turned around and headed for Chistopher. He was able to swat it with his hat. It turned out to be a 2 inch long tarantula hawk (a type of wasp that lays it's eggs on tarantulas that it kills). It was one of the nastiest looking creatures I've ever seen and it looked like it could do some major damage.
House
in Leamington
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