Post from My Rock Art Blog

Most Barrier Canyon Style (BCS) rock art examples are pictographs that have been painted on the rock using a red/orange/pink or white pigment.  The Great Gallery in Horseshoe Canyon, the Buckhorn Draw and Head of Sinbad pictographs are classic examples.

However, I did run into a small example of a BCS petroglyph in Short Canyon.  Petroglyphs were chipped or pecking into the stone using a harder stone as a chisel.  The example below was very faint and only eight or ten inches small.  But is certainly looks BCS to me.

Report on Muddy Creek

I got back from hiking the Chute of Muddy Creek last night a little after midnight.  I left on Friday afternoon with three students from my Econ 581 class at BYU: T.J. Canann, Chase Coleman, and Huang Ruidi.  Ruidi and I drove our 4WDs down.  We went via I-15, through Scipio to Salina and then along I-70 to the Temple Mountain Road turnoff at milepost 131.  We camped that night at the Hidden Splendor Airfield which was the end of our hike on Saturday.  We had several hundred people for company as the Utah Wilderness Alliance was having a "Roundup" there this weekend.

Off to Muddy Creek

I am off to hike the Chute of Muddy Creek this weekend with two of my BYU students.  This is a long day hike that Rick Evans did about 18 months ago during a lull in the water flow in early April.  The water flow was 15-20 cubic feet per second up at the gauge in Emery then.  It's running at about seven right now, so the hike shouldn't be overly deep and wet.

We'll be leaving on Friday afternoon, dropping a shuttle car at the Hidden Splendor airfield, camping at Tomsich Butte and hiking down the Chute on Saturday.  Hope to be home late Saturday evening.  Rick says it's a gorgeous hike.

Here's a preview - http://climb-utah.com/SRS/thechute.htm.

Crack Canyon 2011

I'm in Korea now teaching and in my spare time I'm trying to catch up on my blogging.

This last April and May I made two trips to Crack Canyon in the San Rafael Reef.  The first was on April 14th with my family: Yeongmi, Alan, Joan and Joan's friend, Sophie.  The second trip was with the ventures in our ward on May 6th and 7th.

Camping and Hiking at Muddy Creek, April 2010

Last April during Spring Break I took a group of friends and family down to Muddy Creek in the San Rafael Swell. We drove down on Thursday, April 8th after my classes were over at BYU. The group was myself, Evan, Lynn, Jarom, Alan, Joan, Sophie White, her brother Zack, and my colleague, Mark Showalter. We took my truck and Yeongmi's CRV. We met Sophie's dad, Johnny, in Salina on the way down.

Off to Muddy Creek!

Spring is here, sort of. So I am off hiking and camping for the first time this season (not counting my cold, cold escapade with the scouts last weekend which lasted much less than 24 hours).

The week after Easter is spring break for the Alpine School District, so I am taking my kids (all 4 I believe) to Muddy Creek down in the southern part of the San Rafael Swell. Since BYU does not have a spring break, the plan is to leave on Thursday afternoon once my teaching is done for the week. We'll drive down to the airfield near the Hidden Splendor Mine and camp there on Thursday night. On Friday we will all drive to Tomsich Butte and hike down Muddy Creek through "the Chute" 15 miles or so back to our campsite. There is a nice description of this hike here.

Saturday will entail a hike downstream from the campsite through the San Rafael Reef via Muddy Creek Gorge and then back upstream. This hike is detailed here and here.

So far I have my four children, a colleague from work and his son, one BYU student, a neice, my older daughter's boyfriend, my younger daughter's school friend, and four young men from the ward who have said they're coming along. It should be a fun outing.

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.

Head of Sinbad Pictograph Panel

One of the other sites we hit on Saturday was a Barrier Canyon Style panel near the Head of Sinbad right in the middle of the Swell. The interstate passes within a mile or so of the panel, but historically this part of the Swell has not had a lot of traffic. It differs in this regard from the panels in Buckhorn Draw and Black Dragon Canyon which are both located along rather obvious travel routes. As a result, unlike these panels, the small one at the Head of Sinbad is in close to pristine condition. You can even see the brushstrokcs on some of the figures.

The panel was all in shadow while we were there which made for pretty good photos. Again you can see them at my rock art page. The ones below are some of my favorites.

Detail of a spirit figure? Or a shaman?

Birds or Antelope?

I am convinced beyond all doubt that this figure is supposed to be ET.

Black Dragon Canyon Pictographs

The Black Dragon?

I took a tour with my two youngest children this past Saturday. The Prehistory Museum at the College of Eastern Utah in Price does a regular series of expeditions through the San Rafael Swell, which they call "Saturday on the Swell". This last Saturday's was headed by Dr. Renee Barlow and focused on Native American rock art in the Swell. We visited 4 sites with the group and one of the most fascinating was the one in Black Dragon Canyon.

Black Dragon Canyon is, in fact, named for the pictographs there. There are two panels: one is a Barrier Canyon Style (BCS) panel like those found in Horseshoe Canyon. The other is roughly contemporaneous, meaning it is also three to five thousand years old. It is a completely different style, however. Being in a better overhang these pictographs are in better condition than the BCS panel which is more exposed to the elements and has faded a bit. Dr. Barlow informed us that the closest match to these pictographs comes from Southern Mexico.

Black Dragon Wash is easy enough to access. You need to exit the westbound lane of I-70 about 3/4 a mile after it crosses the San Rafael River. There is gate in the fence. Follow the dirt road north for just over a mile and you will come to a sign pointing up the wash to your left. If you don't have a four-wheel drive, park here and walk up the wash. You can drive (slowly) up the wash if you have four-wheel drive. From the sign to the panel is .65 miles. The canyon narrows and turns to the right and the panels are on the northeast side of the canyon as it loops back to the left again. The BCS panel is located on the cliffs above the rubble pile. The second panel is located to the left of this, lower down, under a slight overhang.

I have posted all the photos I took here, as ususal, on my rock art page. These are reduced resolution shots. Anyone interested can email me and I'll send you the full-resolution originals. The light was not ideal for the BCS panel, but shots of the second panel, which was in shade, turned out quite well.

One interesting thing I noticed after I got back is that someo of the figures in both panels have been outlined in what looks like white chalk. This seems to indicate that the outlining was done sometime after both sets of figures were drawn. How long, I can't begin to guess. Black Canyon Wash was a well-used route through the San Rafael Swell for many, many years. The chalk outlines could be modern or very old.

8-12 foot figures in the Barrier Canyon Style

Example of non-BCS figures

Learning About Archaeology in the San Rafael Swell

I really like traveling through the San Rafael Swell. I find the geology and history of the place very interesting. An excellent source of information on the archaeology of the Swell can be found at Dr. K Renee Barlow's blog. I highly recommend her entry on ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE SAN RAFAEL for anyone who plans on a visit to the Swell or surrounding areas.

Rochester Creek Rock Art Panel

The rock art panel at Rochester Creek is easily accessible and worth a trip. It is located east of Emery, Utah on a rock face overlooking the confluence of Muddy Creek and Rochester Creek. Take highway 10 and turn onto the road to Moore between mile markers 16 & 17. A half mile from the highway is a graded road headed south, it is an other 4 miles from here to the trailhead parking lot. From the parking lot the trail to the panel is a half mile or so.

Almost all the rock art here is petroglyphs; that is, art made by pecking away the dark surface rock, the "desert varnish", to reveal the lighter rock underneath. It is a mixture of all ages. There are definitely some Fremont glyphs, and some Ute ones, and some that look suspiciously like African animals which were probably carved by non-Indians.

The panel is impressive and there are numerous carvings on other rock faces nearby, so be sure to look around. One that many visitors miss is found inside a rockfall cave behind the main panel.

The Main Panel

A Closer View of the Main Panel

A Fremont-style Figure

Figures inside the Rockfall Cave

Go to this webpage for more of my photos from a visit in the Spring of 2008.

Links with further explanation about this site:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rochester_Rock_Art_Panel

http://net.indra.com/~dheyser/bc/bc_a.html

http://scienceblogs.com/chaoticutopia/2006/06/the_art_of_time_ii_traces_of_t_1.php

Iron Concretion Spheres at Rochester Creek

Last May I visited the Rochester Creek Pictograph Panel just east of Emery, on the edge of the San Rafael Swell. The panel is impressive and I'll try to write up something about it at a later date. While we were there we noticed some odd stains on the rocks near the panel. At first I thought they were bird droppings, but it turns out they were iron concretions in the sandstone.

We mistook these stains for bird droppings

The Fremont sandstone here is very pale and not nearly as red as some other places in Utah. This is due in part to the iron (in the form of hematite) leaching out of the sandstone over the eons as water percolates through it. The iron eventually accretes into small marbles of iron. These are often called "Moki Marbles" or "Moqui Balls." They are frequently found in the lower layers of the Navajo sandstone. In some places on the Colorado Plateau the marbles are almost pure, solid iron. Here they look to be mostly iron oxide and they have formed into shells, with interiors of sandstone. As they weather away they are exposed on the surface of the rock as rings and the weathering stains the rock around them.

A pdf file from the State of Utah, Rainbow of Rocks, explains all this.

A closeup of the exposed and weathered concretions

A closeup of an exposed sphere

A dense concentration along the path to the rock art panel

Here is the location of the rock art panel and these concretions in Google Maps:

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Concretion Spheres in Short Canyon

This past October I drove down to the San Rafael Swell with my two sons and we did a couple hours of exploring/hiking along and near the Moore cutoff road. We stopped at the pictograph boulders near the road just after the road descends through Molen Reef. A few miles beyond this there is a less developed road heading north which takes you to Short Canyon. Here we saw some very interesting geology.

There is a layer of the Mancos shale here where you will find huge spherical boulders. These are concretion spheres that apparently formed by chemical accretion in a warm shallow sea. Many of these boulders are 15 feet or more in diameter. They can be seen very clearly along the north wall of the canyon, but they can also be seen in the south wall if you look closely. As you drive or walk further up the canyon the elevation of the canyon floor rises and the boulders eventually get close enough that you can easily climb up and examime them.

This is a geological oddity that is well worth a side trip if you are in the area.

Wikipedia explains how these form.

Here is a shot of the layer of shale with the boulders

A telephoto view of some of the boulders; these are 10 - 15 feet in diameter

A close-up of a sphere further up the canyon

Another sphere that has extensive weathering - notice how it erodes in layers like an onion

Alan strikes a heroic pose. This photo is mostly to give a sense of scale.

Here is the location of Short Canyon in Google Maps.

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