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Nevada dry lake meteorite hunt, 21-22 May 2023


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Posted (edited)

My friend Fred from Michigan flew out for the weekend and we made the loooooooong trek up to the middle of nowhere, Nevada, to hunt a dense collection area on one of the dry lake beds we had been to before.  Unfortunately, due to the crazy winter and abundant snow pack (still), the playa was mostly covered in standing water still and we couldn't get out to the area where most of the finds were made.

This put a bit of a damper on our plans, but after the collective thousands of miles traveled, we weren't going to let that stop us.  We hunted the periphery of the water day 1, I found two small fragments and Fred found a micro sub-gram piece.  Not the typical 10-30 finds in a day we've made here before, but at least it wasn't a skunk!

Day 2 I piloted us to another part of the playa that had some historical finds from when the DCA was first discovered and we had much better luck.  I found 9 fragments that day from 1g to 7g, plus one micro cluster of 3 sub-gram pieces (I thought they were flecks of iron, but under the loupe realized they were meteorite pieces).  Fred managed 3 sizeable finds ranging from 1g to 5g.

I gathered rocks and made small piles to mark each of our finds, and also to give future hunters hope that yes, in fact, fragments can still be found out this far from the main collection area.  I know those little piles often give me hope when I'm wandering around aimlessly for hours, not finding anything.  While gathering rocks to mark Fred's 5g find, I actually found another fragment, so that was fortuitous.  The meteorite gods were thanking me for making the markings, I think.

It will probably take more than one summer for the lake to dry, so we'll be watching the winter storms and planning another trip in the coming summers.  Hopefully all this weather has uncovered many more fragments for us to grab next time!

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Edited by Mikestang
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Great finds! I was wondering how the meteorite hunting would be for you guys this year here in Nv. Dang near every dry lake around me now has standing water on it.

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Congrats Mike! Those are some awesome finds. 

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Nicely done Mike and Fred.  Your perserverance kept you from being skunked.  Same story here in Arizona.  The dry lakes and strewnfield hunting areas all had record rains/snows and either have standing water in the low spots, or substantial erosion from flooding.  Was out first week of May, and only found small ones.

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