Meteorite Hunting in Mojave Desert (UPDATED)

[BOWSER]

i spent some time at echo bay ,i know the snakes you speak of,i wouldn't detct there for any amont of money.good luck to you fella's.

[pulltabsteve]

Great pictures John! Sounds like a real fun time.....except for the snakes!

[Nitro 54]

Looks like a fun time wandering around the desert thumbsup01 8) 8)

[Beefcake]

Beautiful looking place John... I've never been to the desert... One of these days I'll make it out there to do a hunt with you two! Thanks for sharing the neat pics!

[SeabeeRon]

Glad this thread popped back up! Beautiful pics buddy!!

Don't recall if I ever told you, but our first son was born up in Fallon when I was stationed at the Naval Air Station there. Used to love the drives out into the desert. One of my jobs as an Equip Oper was to grade out the bomb holes out in the practice ranges. Was always afraid one of those Jet Jockies would mistake my grader for a bombing target!!

[starman2]

, A perfect 30 on your story, and pics. The MM, are what got me started with metal detectors in the first place . My other hobby is Astrophotography, and astronomy. I started watching MM. And I thought. I've been taking photos of the stars long enough. It would be cool to be able to find one myself Course, until I started digging up coins. The meteorite hunting was kind of put on hold. But I still intend on doing some searching. If I can ever get out of the parks. Again, Great story and photos. Good luck in your new venture!

[Herb]

Thanks much Bruce!!!

I did my research yesterday. The Gold Basin is just east of Temple Bar Road. I drove out there to check the area for a weekend adventure with Dana.

The one thing I've noticed is that meteorite hunters are pretty closed-lip about locations. (Imagine that.) However, they can't hide from Google Earth and some good research. I found the Lat/Long of several meteorite strikes and plotted them on Google Earth to locate the strewn field.

After all that effort, I found the following map of the same data in an obscure USGS data base. (County Hwy 143 is Temple Bar Road.)

When I was younger I drove jeeps all over the Mohave desert and never stopped to look for meteorites. I feel I know the desert intimately. Now my granddaughter is interested in rocks so I am going to take her camping in the desert. What I read, many scatter fields are related to dry lakes because they are easy to find. However, most of the desert is a likely candidate to be a scatter field. Meteors have been falling every where for millions of years. I am assuming many flat planes with rocks scattered on top of the sand/soil are untouched and unknown scatter fields. I suspect it will be easier to find good specimens there because they have not been searched by thousands of hunters. I assume looking in proven scatter fields has a lower probability of finding good meteorites.
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