[meteorite-list] First Meteorite Hunt

From: Guenther <abe.guenther_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2010 18:26:07 -0500
Message-ID: <01ad01cb8841$2498b330$6dca1990$_at_guenther@mnsi.net>

Here is a short story about a first time meteorite hunting experience.

I live in an area of Canada that has not yielded any meteorites to speak of
so I knew I needed to look at hotter, dryer areas for the best chance at a
successful first trip. I did over a year of research and planning before I
finally made my decision where to go. I read countless success stories and
watched a lot of meteorite hunting shows and videos on YouTube before
narrowing my search. Almost overwhelmed at all the places I could try, a few
weeks before the much awaited trip I decided on Nevada. Besides the cheap
airfare to Vegas, there were lots of success stories near Vegas. I had a few
places mapped out in Nevada, Arizona and California that I wanted to hunt
over the 9 day trip. After finding nothing in 5 days of my lone journey it
was time to pick up my son who flew in to join me for the final 4 days.
Considering this was his first time too, I am sure he wasn't too confident
since his dad hadn't found anything yet. But he and I both knew we were
saving the best place for last! This was the part of the trip we were both
anticipating because our destination several hours away would be to a dry
lake bed that we knew had yielded some meteorites just recently. Since it
was supposed to be a secret location, we were confident that if there were
still any meteorites left, we would find some.

It rained a lot on the way so we were concerned about how bad it might be on
the lake bed. We arrived at the dry lake area near dark so all we wanted to
do the first day was figure out how to get to the lake since there were no
clear roads to access it. We could hardly wait to get out there the next
morning bright and early. We finally made it to the lake bed at about 9:00am
after a muddy trek and nearly 2 hours travel from the motel. The rain had
definitely made it slippery but we were surprises that it wasn't actually
too bad on the lake bed itself. The first day didn't yield anything special
except a really fun time. My son found a complete dried out coyote skull
that he kept and an arrow head. We also found a several rocks that drew our
magnets but they were obviously not meteorites because of deep, sharp
cavities and what we would soon discover over the next couple of days, this
was a common rock in the area. We usually parked and then walked for a few
hours at a time and when we started to get tired, we would just drive the
truck during our rests. It was during one of these drives that I happen to
look to my left and noticed what I thought was another cow patty. I stopped
and the first thing I did when I got out was kick it. It didn't move. I
don't remember what I said but my son knew that I was excited about
something. I picked it up and it felt like 5 pounds. It was unusually heavy
compared to the other rocks. I had no doubt it would draw the magnet but it
was surprising to see it stick so hard. This was the last hour of the last
day of the trip and all we could think is how lucky we had been to find our
first meteorite and to top it off, one so big!

When we got home I still thought that we had been on the right lake bed. I
just couldn't wait to tell everyone about our success! I looked up someone
who has excellent knowledge of meteorites and emailed him the pictures. He
wasn't quite convinced and so he had me take some more pictures. To my
delight, he emailed me back a "congratulations". It was only after doing
some more research about the lake bed that I realized we were 100 miles away
from the lake bed we had researched. In a way I am sort of glad we went to
the wrong lake bed but I'm happy we didn't know at the time. I don't know if
we discovered a new meteorite fall but it is fun to think we did. Ignorance
is bliss.

A few pictures: http://aguenthe.mnsi.net/NM1.jpg,
http://aguenthe.mnsi.net/NM2.jpg, http://aguenthe.mnsi.net/NM3.jpg,
http://aguenthe.mnsi.net/NM4.jpg.

Abe Guenther
Received on Fri 19 Nov 2010 06:26:07 PM PST