During the late winter we had the opportunity to return to the “Curious Crack” site. On the first trip we found petroglyphs but this time we peered closely at the nearby cliffs because there are apparently some pictographs in the area that we missed during our first visit.
This entry isn’t named for anything specific to the petroglyphs. Instead it is named after what the trip to see it was like! This is one of the last sites we visited using our little red truck, and no other site came closer to breaking the truck than this one did.
The funny thing is that there are two ways to get to it: the way we approached ( scenic but brutal for a tiny stock truck: down a rocky canyon with a river we had to ford multiple times ) or the way we left ( nice flat graded dirt road! ) Never have I been more thankful to get back to the pavement in one piece – not even that one time we — cough — walked for miles, didn’t find anything and ended up getting stuck in deep sand for an hour ( and we had to dig out with a flat rock because we didn’t expect to get stuck and didn’t have a shovel. )
This site is no secret – the local community knows all about it. Several dirt roads lead up to it and a stone boundary keeps away the vehicles. The ground around the site is scattered with modern debris – shotgun shells, bottles, broken glass – and the petroglyphs themselves have been vandalized by tracing over them and in one case by carving crude additions into the rock. A sign warns rock climbers away from the petroglyphs but the site is nonetheless covered in climbing talc and some of the vandalism is far enough above ground that it was likely done by a climber.
That’s a depressing introduction, isn’t it? Don’t let that scare you away – this site is still really interesting and has some amazing and unique features! For example, the number of cupules and mortars ground into the rock at this site is amazing. How much time did it take to make them all, and what meaning did they have?
The petroglyphs themselves are big and impressive despite the vandalism. Most of them have been filled in with red pigment, an uncommon feature for petroglyphs. There are a few other sites in the same area where the petroglyphs have also been carefully painted in with red pigment.