Having missed the annual outing to Holbrook in July, I was excited to meet up with Fred and hunt Holbrook in the winter. The weather is always mild there during the summer, but it would be interesting to see the strewn field in a different season. Winter was in full swing and a storm system had recently passed by; Flagstaff looked and felt more like Colorado than it did Arizona as I drove through.
The winter sun was much lower on the horizon than during the summer months, and long shadows greeted us on our first afternoon hunting.
A stunning sunset ended our first few hours of hunting. We were empty handed, but full of high hopes for the morrow.
As we arrived at the strewn field the following morning Fred had a feeling we would find a meteorite within the first hour. Not being one to disappoint, I managed to find a 0.8g partial individual after about 45 minutes looking.
Below, Fred walks the strewn field with eyes glued to the ground.
A short while later Fred called me over to take a look at a potential find. Sure enough it was the real deal, a Holbrook meteorite and Fred's first from this locale. As I stood there studying its broken faces I told him I bet there's more of it laying around, and no sooner did I look down at my feet did I find another piece. I encouraged Fred to look around as well, and he quickly found a 3rd fragment mere feet away. Below our gloves mark the first 3 finds of this cluster, each meteorite fragment is visible to the right of the respective glove.
Fred went on to find two more fragments to add to the two he already recovered. I was able to fit two of the pieces we had found so far together, but it seemed the rest of the stone was either previously picked up or still buried in the sediment. We spent about 40 minutes combing the area to make sure we got them all, then just as we decided to move on I found one final fragment. I insisted that Fred keep the pieces I found as it was obvious they were all parts of his initial find. Below is my final find from the cluster.
We hunted the rest of the day until the sun was low but didn't find any others. Below Fred studies our finds on the hood of my truck at the end of the day.
Our finds from the trip. My first find is solo at far right, and the rest are the cluster we found after Fred's first find (the largest of the fragments).