Thomas Range Adventure

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This exciting adventure begins at the early hour of 5:00 AM. At 5:00 AM I got up after a long night, very excited to be going to the Thomas Range to do some collecting with newly found friend John Holfert. John Holfert in my opinion is the leading authority on the Thomas Range, no comparison. Around 5:30 AM I started to drive the 33 mile trek to Bountiful, where John lives. When I got there John was excited and ready to drive to our first stop Maynards.

After a seemingly long trip, we arrived at Maynards. We decided to go through a virgin blast to see what we could come up with. For luck no high graders suspected the newly blasted area, and it was untouched. As I worked patiently for around two hours, I struck luck. As I was mucking out an area of rhyolite, I decided to probe around with my screwdriver (which I soon buried). As I probed around with my screwdriver out fell a flawless 2" beautiful sherry crystal (see picture below). The first great crystal I pulled out of the Thomas Range. I was in total shock! Never before had I the opportunity to collect topaz of the kind. Now, we started to get a little bit serious, as we mucked out the area in which I collected my prize, we uncovered a few large clunkers and that was about it. John and I also buried his chisel and hammer in the process, and we never uncovered the hammer and chisel again.

We worked that area lazily because of the heat for almost the whole day, nothing greater than my 2" topaz was found, although we found some great topaz-bixbyite combinations. John also found a nice water clear Topaz (see picture below). I figured I had a great day plus I was getting tired, so I decided to get some rest. That night we tried to spotlight some minerals, but nothing worthy was found.

That night was an overcast night and rain was in the picture. Good thing we were underneath some shelter, as though I thought. As it rained and rained, little did I know that the shelter (an abandoned camper) was slightly tilted in my direction. As the rain came down on the camper, it also came down on me in a miniature water fall. I finally had enough and went into the truck and "slept" for about two hours, and that was it. When we got up in the morning, John kidding said, "You were a wimp to be scared of the weather". Then he saw the waterfall and took the comment back.

That day we decided to go see one of his other claims near Topaz Mountain. As we drove past areas in the Range, John pointed out some of his more popular spots. When we arrived at the area, John showed me some strange minerals, such as garnet replaced by topaz, etc. Then we went to a serious topaz-bixbite(red beryl) area, I found a spectacular specimen of red beryl. And we also broke into an awesome cavity where we pulled out some 200+ small topaz clusters. After I got all of that topaz and beryl wrapped it was about time to start the trek home. This was definitely my best trip to the Thomas Range, and I hope there will be many more. I thank John Holfert for all the knowledge he has given me on the Thomas Range.

Maynards and other claims of John Holfert and Utah Mineral and Fossil Company require permission from the claimant. Going upon the claim without permission is considered TRESPASSING, and can be prosecuted by law. Please gain permission before going upon these and other claims.

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