A Swell Weekend

The lower of two large rock art panels in Short Canyon

I went on a campout this weekend with the scouts. We had the 12-13 year-old group (the scouts) and the 14-15 year-old group (the varsity scouts) with a total of 16 people.

We drove down Friday night to the Moore cutoff road and stopped at Dry Wash to see the petroglyphs and dinosaur tracks.

From there we drove around the edge of the Molen Reef to the mouth of Short Canyon. We had two 4WD pickups and a minivan. There were a few spots that were a bit iffy for the minivan, but we made it with no damage. The campsite was dry so we relied on the water we brought. After setting up camp four of us, Ryan Allen, Scott Preston, Brian Wheelhouse and I headed up the canyon to a spot where some pictographs had been geotagged on Flickr. By the time we got there it was getting dark and we wandered around looking for signs of rock art. Eventually, Scott and Brian found a small panel with two figures. One had wavy arms, so I am calling it the Wavy Arms panel.

An incredibly handsome guy next to the Wavy Arms panel.

We moved further up canyon along the ledge where we found these figures and then ran into a huge double panel. By the time we got there it was too dark to get good photos even with the flash, so we decided to revisit the site the next morning with the whole group.

I slept in the bed of my truck on Friday night. It was less lumpy than the ground and there was a bit of a canyon wind, so it was better than sleeping on a tarp as I had planned. I got up early enough to see the sunrise and enjoy it. After that we roused everyone up and headed back up the canyon.

I got some good photos of the double panel and we also found another small panel further upstream with a pair of figure, which I am calling the Bug-Eye panel because the larger of the two has big bug-eyes.

Scott shows monumental disrespect for the figures at the Bug-Eye panel

We explored further downstream along the same ledge and found some very faint petroglyphs that we would never have seen from the bottom of the canyon.

Scott also pointed out several other figures on the walls futher downstream that we had missed while hiking in. I got some telephoto shots of those, but there is not much detail.

I've posted all the photos from Short Canyon at the following URL - http://kerk.pomosa.com/myphotos/Rock%20Art/shortcanyon.htm

After Short Canyon we drove over to the entrance to Eagle Canyon just west of Forgotten Canyon. Our intent was to hike down into the canyon from here and then up Forgotten Canyon. However, a certain scout leader who shall remain unnamed, marked an incorrect waypoint and we ended up trying to enter through the wrong side canyon. In all fairness to the aforementioned scout leader, the descriptions of the entry were rather vague and there are at least three side canyons in the area. We tried the middle one first, right on the waypoint as marked and discovered that there was a cliff and pouroff that made it impossible to pass. We tried climbing out of the gully to the left and found a larger side canyon with somewhat manageable slopes in the upper reaches, but it has several cliffs and pouroffs further down that made it impassable too. The correct entry was to the right of our first obstacle, not the left, but I did not discover this until after we got back and I went over the terrain carefully using Google Earth. I'm still not sure how gradual the descent is. The first route looks easier, but you can't see vertical dropoffs very easily from satellite photos.

The second wrong way into Eagle Canyon

We decided to head home at this point because we were running out of time even if we had found the right entrance. We stopped at the Rocheseter Creek petroglyphs on the way back and made it home by 5:00 p.m.