This pictograph site is on a ledge partway up a canyon wall. I’ve known about it for many years and visited it twice, but each time I came away with pictures that were less than satisfactory, so I haven’t written about it yet. This past winter I decided it was time to do something about that!

One winter morning we set out bright and early to visit this site and go hunting for some others. I had previously taken a messy route up to this site but today was going to be different – instead of hiking up a soggy stream bed we were going to approach from a different direction and have a fairly easy hike over gentle slopes.

There was one small snag with this plan – I had recently mislaid my GPS. Going overland across relatively featureless, wooded slopes would be a little more challenging, pathfinding-wise, than following a creek. Still, it wasn’t all that far to hike, and we knew the area well.

While driving west up into the mountains towards this site we checked radar maps while still in a spot with reception. A storm had blown through the day before and there was a lingering band of snow north of us, but everything in the prevailing direction for precipitation seemed clear.  Sure, there was a cap of clouds on the nearest peak, but things looked fine and we were going just a ways down a dirt road before our hike started, so off we went.

We found our parking spot without trouble and got out. The ground was damp from the rains the day before, but not soggy. Conditions were almost perfect. It was overcast, which would make taking photos a bit harder, and it was kind of cold, about 45F / 7C or so, but I like hiking in cold weather. I hike very warm, so 45F is basically t-shirt weather for me. I was wearing a loose-weave cotton shirt and jeans, but in my pack I had a winter hat, gloves, a wind jacket, and a ski shell jacket. My companion was bundled up nicely in winter gear. Thus provisioned, we set off. We briefly discussed route finding – our destination was more remarkable than the place where we parked, and without a GPS backtracking precision is compromised – but we could orient easily by the surrounding landmarks, so we decided we would at least be able to strike the dirt road we drove in on with ease, and we could walk up or down it to our vehicle if we didn’t hit the exact spot.

Besides, as my companion pointed out after a few steps, the soft, damp soil was perfect for tracking. We could just follow our footprints back, too.

Reassured, we set off. Besides not having a GPS, I also didn’t have my personal locator beacon with me. This past year was kind of busy and disjointed and though we squeezed in some hurried trips, I realized at some point that the beacon wasn’t with any of my gear. Searching the house for it was tacked on to the to do list, but that list hasn’t been worked through yet, and so we went off without our usual two electronic failsafes – GPS and PLB.

We had a pleasant hike overland, finding our destination without problem. The last little bit was a scramble – first we had to pick our way across a small creek without getting our feet wet, and then we had a small challenge getting up to the shelf where the pictographs were. All routes involved some variation of “scramble up this slippery granite boulder, why not” and made me wish for gecko toes or at the very least granite that wasn’t still damp from the night’s rains. Still, we got up easily enough, grabbing onto little granite ledges and passing the backpack up to each other in a few tight spots.

Once up, I set off along the ledge away from the known elements, looking closely for faded pictographs, while my companion hung out by the more visible pictographs. I came up empty, and as I was finding my way back to my companion, the first flake of snow fell on my head. I didn’t pay it much heed. The radar had shown clear skies but I wasn’t surprised that a few flakes could still find their way out of the overcast skies. It was still pretty bright out – the clouds weren’t thick or menacing – and my attention had been on the rock face, so I hadn’t notice a slight darkening of the skies behind me.

I busied myself with readying the cameras. My companion looked at the thickening precipitation and remarked “This is going to stick.” I glanced at the skies. “No, I don’t think so”, I said, lightly, and started taking pictures. In my ( limited ) experience, snow didn’t really stick this far south, or at this kind of elevation, so I wasn’t worried. The site was awkward to photograph – not a lot of room on the shelf, and the pictos were up overhead. I spent the next ten minutes or so composing shots with my wide-angle lens, making sure I was getting every rock face I thought or knew had something on it, and then bent down and assembled another camera. This task done, I turned around for the first time in a while, and … wow, was I wrong about the snow not sticking! Whoops. The landscape behind me had taken on a rather whitish hue. My companion was sitting quietly on a nearby rock, watching the snow fall. We weren’t really worried – we’ve hiked in winter weather before, enough to not get panicked at the first sign of snow, and this snow was light and dry – but we also agreed that I had best hurry up so we could get moving.

I quickly finished up taking pictures with my second camera, shaking my head at the irony. This site seemed determined to play coy – every time I visited, something happened and I couldn’t spend all the time I wanted to, or get all the pictures I would take during an ideal visit. While working my way down the rock face I discovered the reason I didn’t realize how hard it was snowing – the main site is protected under a lip of rock high up at the top of the cliff, and since the snow was coming straight down in the wind-still conditions, I was protected. Once I moved out from under that lip I had to hunch over the camera to keep it dry, so I made short work of photographing the site.

We quickly bundled the cameras back into the bag and I gave the windshirt I had packed to my companion. He was wearing a synthetic puffy and a wool beanie and I wanted him to keep his clothes dry. The windshirt would do fine keeping the dry snow off during the fairly short hike back to our vehicle. I kept my ski shell in reserve. Like I said, I hike very warm and I was comfortable at the thought of hiking through the snow in my loose-weave cotton shirt. If I did get cold, I would get the shell out and be warm again.

We set off, but almost immediately I had to stop to snap quick pictures of two pictographs a bit further along the ledge that I had forgotten about in my rush once I noticed the snow. That job done, we had to find our way down off the ledge, and here we hit a bit of a snag. The temperature had dropped to below freezing, and the granite that was previously damp … yeah, that granite now had a sheen of ice on it! Shoot. Getting down wouldn’t be quite as easy.

I wasn’t really worried, because I had slid down this granite before in perfectly dry weather. It is slick enough that you can’t really get purchase even in dry conditions. We briefly looked for a nicer route down, but with the sticking snow we didn’t want to spend time, or pick a route we didn’t know, so we went back to the route we knew, and predictably found it iced up. We would just have to slide down carefully.

We went one after the other, my companion first. He managed to hit a little grass tuft in a crack in the granite halfway down to stop his slide, which made the last drop fairly soft. I leaned forward and held the backpack by its haul loop. No way I was going to try sliding down with a backpack on – it would push me away from the granite, and on this steep of a slope you don’t want to be launched into thin air! So I reached the backpack, filled with its expensive cargo, down as far as I could before I let it go. It slid down about eight feet to my companion, who caught it.

Now it was just me who had to get down off this stupid rock. I sat down with my heels jammed in a little crack, but there was not a lot to aim for between me and the ground, twelve or so feet below. I could try a flimsy little bush, or I could try the grass tuft my companion used. There was also the option of a crack shooting off to the side, but that crack was all iced up and ended in a spiky bush, so I decided to aim for the grass tuft. The granite was steep, but not so steep that a 12 foot slide would turn into a 12 feet fall.

Well, that plan went about as well as could be expected. As soon as I started inching down I lost purchase on the rock face, so whereas my companion could stop his slide with the grass tuft, I slid down much faster and my foot slid right over the darn thing! I landed in a crouch on the soft, damp ground. No harm done, but the seat of my jeans were completely soaked through and muddy, and my hands were muddy and freezing from trying to slow my slide. My companion’s hands were wet and muddy too, but his pants was in slightly better shape.

I straightened up and we set to the task of hurrying out of there. I wiped my hands on my jeans as best I could and got my gloves out of my pocket. I donned them as I walked – my hands were freezing cold though my feet and body were warm.

We hopped the creek without fuss and set off. I was planning to visit a very large bedrock mortar station across the creek from the site, but now, with the snow falling and obscuring the ground, there was no point to trying to take photos of mortars! I was also going to take pictures of the numerous obsidian flakes littering the ground, but those were also covered by snow.

Of course, we quickly found that it was a good thing we knew the terrain well enough to navigate by landmarks, because our plan of following our footprints back was also scuttled by the snow settling in and covering any tracks.  Still, we made good time, being careful not to slip on the snow. I was hiking bare-headed, opting to keep my winter hat dry, and at some point I reached up and found that the snow settling into the hair on one side of my head was getting partially melted by the heat rising from my scalp, but then promptly froze again! Fun times!

As we approached our vehicle, the sun broke through the thin clouds here and there, but the snow kept falling. If it was windy, or if the snow was actually wet, I would have worn a waterproof jacket, but as things stood I was perfectly comfortable – except for my butt. The wet, muddy jeans were doing all kinds of uncomfortable things back there, but there was nothing I could do about that right now.

We ended up overshooting our parking spot by a little bit and had to backtrack to the vehicle. Now, this is a dirt road, getting covered with snow, and while it is graded, it is also wet, and now it was getting a bit slippery with snow and with the surface of the wet road beginning to freeze in places. The temperature had dropped below freezing from its relatively balmy starting point, and I was contemplating the ride down as we walked – good thing we had 4WD!

Hence, I was really surprised to find that our pull-out now sported another vehicle – a nondescript silver sedan that had just dispensed a family that headed into the woods to play in the half-inch or so of snow!

We chucked our gear into the back of our vehicle, shaking our heads. We were muddy and cold, so the all-weather mats, waterproof seat covers and robust heater of our vehicle was going to come in handy. We were not worried about getting stuck driving out or slipping on the increasingly icy road, but that was because we have a 4WD vehicle! I’m not so sure that I would be driving a sedan on this dirt road in the snow. Still, they were close enough to civilization and the sun was breaking through a lot more so the snow would probably be gone soon. Therefore we drove off, knowing that they’d also be safe, just with a smaller margin of error than we had.

Well, that’s the story of the adventure we had visiting this site. Now, let’s look at some pictures of it!

I really enjoyed visiting this site, even though it put me in my place, as it does every time. It is a very pleasant hike to get here no matter how you approach it, and the scenery is great. I can see why this site was popular enough to sprout a large bedrock mortar site with countless flecks of obsidian scattered about. The creek provides a year-round source of water, and the high meadows were no doubt good hunting grounds while the slopes provided plentiful harvests of piñon pine nuts.

The pictographs are in an adventurous spot, and some other sites close by are even more improbable, with the pictographs fifteen or more feet above ground in some cases, or in inaccessible crannies in a rock pile in others. I’m amazed at the risks taken to create these. They were special to the people who made them – treat them with respect, and leave them untouched for others to visit.