Sophia mine, Wittichen

General

The Sophia mine (name means Sophy mine) has been the most important one in the district. Of the 5.8 tons of (native!) silver mined in the district, the most came from the Sophia mine, followed by Gnade Gottes and Alt St. Joseph mines, whereas the other mines in the district were almost pure cobalt mines with minor silver production.

The old stockpiles of the lower adit of the Sophia mine are easy to access from the parking lot next to the convent church by hiking a trail. But they're heavily dug through. Finding any silver specimens about micro size is nearly impossible, difficult at least even with a metal detector.

Uraninite with some secondaries can be found more easily (but also with some difficulties todays), using a Geiger counter. 

History

Mineralisation

The Sophia mine has mined the Sophia vein.

The vein, often splitting up in a bundle of smaller veins, mainly consists of baryte with minor quartz, calcite and ankerite/dolomite/siderite. In the lower levels, fluorite becomes more common and a host mineral to ore mineralisations.

Native silver has been the most important ore mineral. The Sophia vein is the richest one in silver in the district. It can be moss-like, platy, dendritic. Curls and hair-like silvers are rare and mostly of a secondary generation. Silver often occurs as small impregnations in altered granite.

Decomposed skutterudite is the most common ore mineral, and second in importance after silver. The black cobalt ore ("schwarzer Erdkobalt" in German) is consisting of rests of skutterudite with arsenolite and erythrite. Fresh skutterudite (glance cobalt) and safflorite have been other economically important minerals.

Bismuth is relatively common, mostly  as native bismuth, while bismuthinite has more rarely been found.

Uraninite is occurring as pitchblende, often very ugly as grayish black earthy masses in baryte or in the granite matrix.

Mineral list