3-day Franconia Hunt

[Lunk]

Looking to get my annual meteorite fix, I recently embarked on a 3-day detecting trip to the famous Franconia meteorite strewn field in the beautiful Mohave desert of sunny Arizona. I arrived at my destination late afternoon and set up camp, which basically just consisted of parking my truck. Following a typical gorgeous desert sunset, the stillness of the night under the sky's star-filled canopy lent itself to the other-worldly ambience of camping in the midst of rocks from space.

The following morning found me hiking into the heart of the strewn field, swinging the mighty Zed across a seemingly endless landscape of ridges and washes infested with basalt hot rocks. Undeterred after an half-hour with no targets, I finally received a signal at the base of a ridge that turned out to be a small 4 gram stony meteorite fragment. Slowly working my way upslope proved unsuccessful; that is until I topped the ridge and began hunting the wide, nearly level surface that stretched out before me. As I was skirting around a creosote bush with the detector coil, the GPZ 7000 sounded off with a sharp response. Pinpointing with the edge of the search coil revealed a sizable meteorite looking up at me - a sweet 68 gram beauty!

Careful grid searching of the area soon produced another nice stone, this one weighing in at a hefty 53 grams. A few small irons were also unearthed, rounding out a perfect day in the strewn field.

Detecting the surrounding area during the next two days netted a nice 13 gram stone, several irons, including a spectacular 8 gram piece (my second largest from Franconia), and numerous small stones and fragments.

As always, a thoroughly enjoyable and productive Franconia trip. The total take is pictured below, with 156 grams of stony meteorites (above scale cube} and 14 grams of irons.

[Hardtimehermit]

Way to go Lunk, you did well and looks like fun. Do you always swing your big gun when gunning for meteorites? Thanks for sharing looks beautiful out there. ht 👍

[Lunk]

Thanks Ht, It depends on the type of meteorite I'm going after, as well as the type of ground they're in. The Zed is superb at finding irons and the H and L type chondrites in difficult ground. VLF detectors are the go when trying to locate LL type stones, and are perfectly capable of detecting all of the above in benign ground.

[mn90403]

Franconia is a very special place in the strewn field.  You can tell some areas have baked and baked under the hot sun for thousands of years undisturbed.  That is what you get by just walking around the place.

When you want to get the meteorites it has been depleted by many numerous detectorists.  I've know of some that have gridded very large areas and placed all of their finds on GPS with some of them shared for the master map and many, many including my finds that were not shared.

We'll never get them all so it is right up there with Gold Basin for me if I want to find a meteorite.

Thanks Lunk for the memories.

[GotAU?]

4 hours ago, Lunk said:

Thanks Ht, It depends on the type of meteorite I'm going after, as well as the type of ground they're in. The Zed is superb at finding irons and the H and L type chondrites in difficult ground. VLF detectors are the go when trying to locate LL type stones, and are perfectly capable of detecting all of the above in benign ground.

I was planning to go back there soon, glad to see you found such nice pieces.

I was considering just taking a Gold Monster for the long hikes though, but maybe the Zed would be better?  I don’t mind swinging it on long hikes at all, just thought the VLF would do better there. Was most of the area requiring difficult ground setting?

[Lunk]

GotAU, the south side of I-40 is relatively mild ground, but the north side is very difficult ground with lots of hot rocks. The PI & ZVT tech excel in that environment, but I have used the Gold Monster successfully, as detailed here:

https://www.detectorprospector.com/forums/topic/3604-a-monster-month/

[Johnny Crunch]

Thanks for putting this up! The text and the pictures are entertaining and informative. Looks like quite a variety of rock types on the surface. Are they predominantly of volcanic/igneous origin in that area?

[GotAU?]

1 hour ago, Lunk said:

GotAU, the south side of I-40 is relatively mild ground, but the north side is very difficult ground with lots of hot rocks. The PI & ZVT tech excel in that environment, but I have used the Gold Monster successfully, as detailed here:

https://www.detectorprospector.com/forums/topic/3604-a-monster-month/

Hi Lunk,

Wow, I didn’t realize you had so much previous experience, and written posts, about using the gold monster for detecting meteorites.  That was one of the primary reasons why I bought the machine, besides using it for gold, when I was searching for a first detector.  I appreciate your input,  and effort in those previous posts, those are great articles.  Thank you!

[nebulanoodle]

Whoa! Love that bad fish looking iron!!

[Steve Herschbach]

Very, VERY nice hunt!!