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(H5, S3, W0) Meteoritical Bulletin #95
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A meteorite fall occurred near Ouarzazate on December 20th, 2008, specifically around the villages of Tamdakht and Tiguert, located in the mountains northwest of the city. We decide to go there to gather more information on this fall and, eventually, to find some pieces.
Departure for Morocco on Wednesday, February 11th in the afternoon. The road is long, but we arrive in the south of the country on 12 at night, exhausted. Here, a few days of rest are necessary to recover the route and also to enjoy the sun that is so much lacking to us at home. Almost 30 ° C difference ... a pure happiness! We leave for Ouarzazate on Monday, February 16th early in the morning. Our Moroccan friend accompanies us, he has toured a lot in the zone of the fall and knows many nomads who live in these mountains. We arrive at the entrance of Ouarzazate in early afternoon and we stop in the first Total gas station to find someone who is waiting for us to guide us to places where stones were found. Our two guides getting into our car and we start. The track which leads in mountains start at the end of a residential area. We see that it is a very used track, it is wide, flat (a real highway) and we can ride rather fast especially in 4x4! |
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After several miles we arrived near the mountains and the track is becoming bad, it becomes increasingly narrow and tortuous and we meet many passages of wadis, more and more difficult and deep. We pass numerous herds of goats and sheeps which graze the grass, thin but exceptionally thick, which grows between rocks. Our guide shows us the places where some stones were found, our friend do the interpreter and we stop often to take photos. It has been much more than an hour since we took the track when our guide make us follow a fairly wide wadi and made us stop in the middle. Impossible to go further by car, we will have to walk! Time to wear sweaters and jackets (we are about 1500 m of height and it is not warm outside), to catch the GPS and we went. The ground is covered with stones round as pebbles rolling under our feet, there is many wadi passages, forcing us to go up and down constantly, the relief becomes more marked. We do not walk for a very long time (about 30 minutes) but the landscape changes ceaselessly, passing of rocky in dusty and greenish then becoming again rocky … |
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Track between Ouarzazate and the strewnfield © P. Thomas |
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Herd near the mountain © P. Thomas |
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View in the direction of the larger mass of the fall © P. Thomas |
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Wadi leading to the point of impact of the 15 kg stone © P. Thomas |
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We arrive on the impact from which becomes the 2.6 kg of fragments that we had in early January. From what we understand, they come from a stone broken in a multitude of fragments whose total mass would be about 14 kilos. Our guide shows us the evidence of impact at the angle of two stones. It is impressive! The shock seems to us to have been of a phenomenal violence. Above all, we take GPS coordinates, and then we try to see under which angle the meteorite struck the ground rocks. In view of the surrounding terrain (we're in a wadi bed surrounded by "cliffs" of 20 to 30 meters high) and the print left, we quickly succeed in finding the trajectory of the stone. The ground is littered with small fragments of meteorite over a distance of about ten meters before the impact. I make photos of the area and Lea climbs on top of the wall on the trajectory of the meteorite to see the relief. It is a plateau strewed with wadis every 50 meters, the ones just as deep as the others. The vegetation is rare but existing, there are many dark or black stones, it's like being in a field of weathered chondrites! The time we were occupied in our small investigation, our friends collected a rather important quantity of fragments weighing on average between 0.5 and 3 / 4 grams. We join them and begin to search in the sand bed of wadi around the impact point. The found fragments are weathered, it is astonishing to see how the loss of freshness may have been important in less than two months in a relatively dry region. Near 5:30 pm, we decide to leave, planning to return the next day equipped with a magnet. There are so many fragments that it seems to be the easiest way to pick them up. We return to the car weighed down with a bag containing about 300 grams of small pieces, among which some contain a magnificent fusion crust. The wind got up and the weather turns to rain. |
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It is time to leave, especially since it is useless to dwell on the night being about to fall. Our guide propose us to go back to Ouarzazate by pursuing the track we took to come and makes a loop through Tiguert and Tamdakht and what we accept with enjoyment. As to arrive in the wadi was relatively easy, as the continuation of the track becomes complicated. We are in the mountains and the slopes are very strong, and the passages of wadis frequent. Even by paying attention the car rubs the ground by places. Just after the passage of a summit the track continues in border of a cliff of more than 30 meters. The right wheels are 20 cm from the edge, those on the left are as closest as possible to the wall. To complicate everything the track is tilted toward the void. The effect is stunning in the evening falls.
It is at night that we arrive at the village of Tiguert, tucked into a small oasis deep in the arid mountains.. The headlights shows an almost lunar landscape, a light beige ground on which are placed very large stones of the same color. There is very little lighting and few people in the streets we follow. Tamdakht is not far away as the crow flies, but we are obliged to make the complete tour of the valley by the trail to gain access to the other side. The road rises and falls constantly, we cross Wadis in water, and it is with pleasure that we finally see the first houses of Tamdakht. The track is slowly improving, workers are currently working on its expansion in big machines of construction, digging in the rock, the work is tremendous. We take contact with the tar out at the exit of Tamdakht in the direction of Ourzazate and decide to eat something in town before settling for the night on the outskirts of the great track we have taken at noon, in order to be in ideal position to explore the next morning. The Moroccan food is really very good and we fill our greed in a small snack bar near the bus station. Impossible to stay up late tonight, the rain is falling!. Just the time to take the sleeping bags from the trunk and we are wet. We can only hope that this does not last. |
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The following morning, the weather is beautiful. We start before 7 am, the sky is clear and the wind fell. Arrived on the spot, we start with breakfast. A little bread with mackerel in oil, a real pleasure when you're hungry, even if it is not very conventional! As we do not attempt to search the sand with a small magnet to the hand because there are lots of thorns, we fix it on a belt buckle. The magnet just plunged into the sand at feet of the impact appears immediately fully covered with an impressive amount of small fragments and meteorite dust. Our Moroccan friend and Lea deal to pick up the crumbs - the one who searches the sand, the other who cleans the magnetabove a plastic bag - while I make the tour of the zone by trying to find the most distant fragments. It is about 10 meters of the impact point that I find the biggest fragments, ranging from 8 to 10 grams. These are either on the ground, dug into the sand bed of the wadi, or placed on the heights surroundings. All the walls in an arc of a circle of about 90 ° contain fragments in their interstices. |
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In falling, the meteorite struck two stones simultaneously. One, presenting the biggest tracks of the shock, is an enormous block about 1m3, untransportable intact and not possible to cut with the tools we have. The other is a rather crumbly stone that broke into a corner under the impact, throwing fragments from the same distance as the meteorite. After collecting the meteorite, we start to pick up the broken fragments of the terrestrial stone. A trace of shock is visible on this stone, which fortunately is slightly cracked in its thickness. Some well placed knocks of stone allow us to separate it in two along the crack, and we decide to return to France the half of the stone with traces of impacts. It is almost noon when we return to the car. As the road to walk to get to the place of the fall is easy to do as to make it with a stone of about thirty kilos in arms under the sun from mid-day is much less funny, but we succeed however, with many breaks. To recover from this effort, there is nothing like a good meal and we are going back in our little snack for a lunch just as delicious as our dinner the night before. |
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We enter the coordinates of the impacts which we know in our GPS and decide to return on the side of Tiguert to see the area where were found the smaller stones. Unfortunately, the time to arrive, the weather has again decided to grieve and it is under rain that we arrive the closest to our destination. We do not have the courage to make more than one km of mountain walking in the flood and return back. It's not too late but the physical efforts of the day catch us up and we plan that the next day will not be easier because we plan to walk to explore the area. Just the time to chat a little and we settle down for sleep. The night is very cold and sleeping bags are welcome! |
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Same time awakening the next morning and the desire to return is so strong that we just take the time to drink a tea in a small bar grocer’s shop in Ait Ben Haddou and buy some bread before we start. We return to where we stop the day before, so we think that the villagers had certainly searched the area thoroughly, and that we have a very little hope to find anything. We decide to visit an area just upstream of two finds of approximately 15 kg. We stop often on the track to scan the side of the mountains around with our binoculars, but in vain. Léa is going to see what is on top of a small mountain: it’s a large plateau with a magnificent view over the whole strewnfield. We follow her to take some photos and see if, by the greatest chance, a meteorite would not have chosen to end his run at higher altitudes. We are more than 2 km of where we want to go and we return to the car to continue the track. Our Moroccan friend chooses to go down of the plateau by the other side and question the nomads he sees in the surroundings. This region of mountain is effectively very frequented by an important quantity of shepherds, dogs, goats and sheep. We do the tour of this small mountain to fetch him on the other side and then find a car on the horizon which comes in our direction. Our friend tells what nomads said him: Most of them were awakened by the extremely strong explosion and have not seen anything. It was already dark in the mountains at the time of the fall and the occupation of a shepherd is in the light of day. Furthermore, there was some snow and an icy wind and the animals were parked for the night in small enclosures of stone covered with plastic covers to prevent them from taking cold. The detonation completely terrified the animals which have tried by all means to go out from their enclosure to run away. Some animals were slightly injured in the wave of panic that followed, but the nomads believe that if they had not been locked at the time of the event, they might be still running after them! |
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Ait Ben Haddou © P. Thomas |
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When our friend gets into the car, he tells us to recognize the other vehicle that belongs to people of Erfoud he knows very well. We are thus going to join them. These people, nomads who have settled in Erfoud, found, shortly before, a nice piece of 3.8 kg.. They also indicate to us a point of impact they have discovered empty. They show us a beautiful hole in a wadi bed ... Indeed, there is nothing more here, but it is always some new coordinates. As we are not far from the place where we wanted to go and as the track moves now in the wrong direction, we decide to continue on foot. 1.3 km to go, it is not so difficult, even if the terrain is very rugged. Stones are rolling under our feet and we seem not to move as it rises and falls constantly. We are even sometimes obliged to by-pass more steep hills than the others and we do not progress fast. A lot of black stones in the area often give us false hopes. |
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Area between 5 kg and 15 kg stones © P. Thomas |
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After more than three quarters of an hour's walk, we are still over 600 meters away from our goal. Another great climb during which we hope that the continuation will be more clement with our legs. Arrived at the top, we make a great discovery: a track crosses the bottom of the other hillside and, worst of all, is the same as that the one on which we stopped much earlier. The error was to draw sometimes with a GPS, sometimes with the other one... It did not allow us to us realize that the point we wanted to reach was about 200 meters from the track we had taken the first day and which crosses the entire region. I go back to the car by cutting through the mountains while others are going to wait for me on the track. A little of lost time, but at least we know that in these small mountains there is nothing. Once arrived on the impact point which we wanted to see, we see immediately that there is no trace of anything. The rain has washed everything.
We turn back to find the nomads of Erfoud who are waiting for us for the tea. They take the opportunity to bring us on the place of their find where we collect GPS information and the stone that the meteorite broke in his fall, and some very small fragments of the meteorite that are still in the hole. The weather was again uncertain and we drink tea in a few drops of rain accompanied by strong squalls of wind. The night falls quickly in the mountains and we decide to return in Ait Ben Haddou. We often stop to ask the people we meet on the track in order to glean some information, often in vain, even if someone shows us a small fragment found, a little weathered and not weighing more than fifteen grams. |
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This evening, we decided to stay at the hotel since we need to take the boat the next day. To explore this ellipse falls, it would take weeks as the terrain is really difficult to cross. Unfortunately, we do not have this time, but it was important for us to identify reliable coordinates of as many points of impact as possible. We don't come back empty-handed because the quantity of small fragments that we managed to recover is about a kilo! |
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