The Felbertal scheelite deposit in the Eastern Alps is one of the biggest producing tungsten deposits outside China. Wolfram Bergbau- und Hütten AG (WBH) operates the Felbertal scheelite mine since 1975. Current annual production from the underground mine is about 500,000 tonnes of ore grading 0.3 wt.% WO3; in total about 16 million tonnes of ore have been produced so far.

The deposit is best described as stockwork mineralisation and diffuse dissemination of scheelite in polymetamorphic Early Palaeozoic rocks (mainly metabasites) intruded by Cambrian and Early Carboniferous granitoids. More continuous quartz-rich layers with fine-grained “sheeted” mineralisation parallel to the foliation were also mined in the past. Initially, Felbertal was classified as syngenetic exhalative-sedimentary tungsten deposit genetically related to mafic volcanism but nowadays epigenetic magmatic-hydrothermal models are favoured relating ore formation to Variscan granites. The Felbertal deposit is best interpreted as a poly-metamorphosed granite-related stockwork type tungsten deposit. There is accumulating evidence supporting a genetic relation of tungsten mineralisation with evolved Lower Carboniferous granites.

Key features of the ore deposit will be visited on this field trip. This guide is based on an older field guide (Raith and Schmidt, 2010) and a summary (in German) on Felbertal tungsten deposit available online on the IRIS data base (Weber and al., 2015). New results obtained during a recent project are also integrated (Kozlik, 2015).