[meteorite-list] My Meteorite hunt in Nevada end of June 1st of July

From: ontheroad at usairborne.com <ontheroad_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2010 06:14:30 -0700
Message-ID: <C43C3DCA4EE548879CBA193E953F32FD_at_UserPC>

 
Hi Meteorite gang, I'm new to the list & fairly new to meteorite hunting.
Last winter in So Cal deserts my wife & I found a few in our spare time
while we roamed to desert in our 4x4 side by side. I haven't done much
hunting since then. I make my living teaching folks to fly light sport
aircraft, paragliding & Paramotoring and import one of the best microlights
from the land down under. I also do documentary films .

Monday June 21st I was working in the office doing e-mails and the meteorite
men were on Sci channel. Well, I spent all day watching the adventures of
Steve & Jeff and I was totally blown away, all I wanted to do was go hunt &
find some more space rocks. I ordered up some 1 inch x 1 inch magnets on
e-bay the very next day. Then I found a nice deal on a new X terra 70 by
minelab. By that next weekend I found myself with 6 days off around the end
of June & 1st of July. I let my wife know I had to head out to Nevada to go
hunt meteorites. By the way my wife thinks I lost my mind but she backs me
in every thing I do in life. She wanted to go with me but had to stay home
with the bird, dog and Airpark. I had done my research for meteorite
hunting locations and I was wanting to go down south on a few remote dry
lake beds in Nevada. I also had some help from a very nice meteorite
hunter out of Southern Idaho, John Harrison on a new location that I wanted
to find. With a few good locations to check out, I decided to go for it by
myself. I took off the lance camper we use on our Dodge 4x4 for airshows
because I would be driving out on some unknown lakebeds and did not want the
extra wt of the camper to possibly get me stuck in soft sandy soil. I
packed my bags and loaded up my truck with all the goodies I needed for 5 to
6 day road trip. I headed out on the long 750 mile drive southeast. Our
airpark the Eagles Nest is in the southeastern corner of WA, State and I had
to drive through Idaho and 1/2 of Nevada to get to location #1. On my way
through southern Idaho I stopped into see my new Meteorite friend John and
he gave me 4 throw downs to use as a guide at location 1.
 I made it just at dark and drove onto the lake bed looking for my starting
point. I hit some real soft soil and was sinking so I had to ram it into 4x4
to stay moving. I was really in the middle of nowhere and did not want to
get stuck out here, so I kept my speeds near 40 mph to stay on top of the
soft soil. All of a sudden I hit hard pan soil and I hit the brakes hard
stopping in a skid before getting into more soft stuff again. Lucky that I
didn't bring the camper or I would have been big stuck, big time. The next
A.M. I was at it early. It was Monday the 28th of June, 1 week from the time
I had watched the Meteorite marathon show with Jeff & Steve, the 21st of
June. By noon I had over 25 meteorites and a few meteor wrongs. My biggest
was a 194 1/2 gram rock. I was totally excited. The noon heat was kicking in
so I rested under my truck in the shade and breeze. About 3 o'clock I headed
out and hunted till sunset. The clouds were building and virga was falling
from the bottoms, with rays of sun coming through them. Wow, what a sunset
it was. I felt alive with excitement and could barely sleep.
The next day I was up at 5 A.M. and hunting again by 5:30. The winds were
blowing up dust and the clouds looked like pending rain. I hunted hard till
about noon. By then the blowing dust and possible rain had me packing up my
gear and getting ready to run off the lake bed before it rained. I counted
my space booty and had 99 meteorites and some meter wrongs. Mother nature
was in charge here and I formed my next plan to drive all afternoon 280 plus
miles to my hunting location 2. I was hoping the weather was better over
there. The drive was windy and every dry lake bed I saw along my route was a
rage of dust. I stopped in a old NV mining town and had a few Whisky 7 with
the local boys before heading into the huge # 2 lake bed location. I got
there just at dark and found this lake bed was all hard pan and not the soft
broken up stuff I had just left. This was one huge mother. I woke up early
at 5:30 and drove to the northern end of the massive lake bed. I hunted the
shores by truck as I drove to where I wanted to start my hunt by foot. I was
getting a lot of Meteor wrongs or stuff I felt was not what I wanted so the
good stuff went into my left cargo pocket and the other went into my right
side. Well my meteor wrong side filled up much faster then the other side. I
hunted for 14 hrs that day and really wore my butt down. I had a huge pile
of rocks (Meteor wrongs) & 4 that I felt for sure were meteorites. I packed
up my gear at dark driving north for home. I would get home the next day by
noon. Here are a few pics of my goodies. Since I got home I have found 3
more good sized meteorites in my Meteor wrong pile. So at location 1 I got
99 space rocks and location 2 I have 7 of them fellas, they are 3 different
types. I have been floating on cloud nine for days and now my wife is
excited to go with me on my next hunting expedition. We are both trying to
get time off to head over to Beaverhead and look for some shatter cones in
the next few weeks

I live in WA. State where there have been very few finds. Right now I am
hunting the 2008 winter meteor fall.
http://www.kndu.com/global/story.asp?s=7892965

 I also have other exciting news . My Airpark is on the wheat farm I grew up
on as a kid .And I have researched information from some old timers in the
area that there is a rumored meteorite crater not far from me. They say it
was formed long ago and the impact crater is filled with water now. I guess
there is a spring under it that keeps it filled year around with water.
Anyways it's on private property and the land owner will meet me there
tomorrow . Terri (my wife) and I will get a chance to look over this
possible impact site to see if we can spot any tell, tell signs of a real
impact. I am not a pro, but will get lots of pics. It would really be
exciting if I found that it is really an impact crater. I flew over it a few
days back taking some pics of it. My Dad cleaned it out with his D-8 for the
owners back in the 80s and shoved some of the rocks out of the bottom of it
then. I could see huge rocks all over the place when I flew over it. But
this is rock country and rocks grow here in this part of the state. I grew
up picking rocks from all of our wheat fields. So I will be taking my
x-terra 70 out to hunt all of the rock piles on all the local farms in the
area.


The 99 meteorites I got from lake bed hunt spot 1 are classified as a H4 S2
W3 Fa18.5?0.2 (n=7) low-Ca pyx Fs16.3Wo2.2 (n=2) provisional name pending.

 The 7 meteorites from my Lake bed #2 are possibly H-4, H-5, H-6 L-6 CV3
h3.8 h4/5 As that is what has been found at this location before.

I do have a lot of Meteor wrongs that are possibly rites. I have one big
boy that's a funny one. Its got a reddish rusty crust on part of it and warn
off on a lot of it. I will add a pic of it also.


We have lived and played on dry lake beds for years and years teaching
flight on there smooth surfaces & playing in the skies around them. So over
this next 10 years I will be using my light sport aircraft & paramotor as a
tool to locate & fly into remote un roaded areas to hunt meteorites. I love
to now have a new passion for something other then flying . So mixing the
two passions will be a joyous adventure in life.
 I doubt if there are to many WA, State meteorite hunters but If any of my
fellow meteorite hunters from across the globe are in my area stop in at
Eagles nest and say Hi.

We spend our winters in Southwestern deserts teaching flying . So we will
for sure be out hunting all winter long in CA, AZ & NV. So hope to see and
meet y'all.


Here is location of a few of the pictues I took on club space rock web site
http://meteorites.ning.com/forum/topics/my-meteorite-hunt-in-nevada




Best Regards
Scott Johnson

U.S. AirBorne Sport Aviation LLC

Eagles Nest Airpark

Sport Pilot C.F.I WSC-L WSC-S

www.usairborne.com
info at usairborne.com
Office 509-780-0554
Cell 509-780-8377


Scott Johnson
U.S. AirBorne Sport Aviation LLC
Eagles Nest Airpark
Sport Pilot C.F.I WSC-L WSC-S
www.usairborne.com
info at usairborne.com
Office 509-780-0554
Cell 509-780-8377
 
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Received on Sat 17 Jul 2010 09:14:30 AM PDT