Here’s the shelter itself. You can see the layers towards the back forming the little ledge I talked about. In the foreground is one of the bee bushes.

A view into the shelter as we first approached it. Notice the cupules on the floor.

A view back at the shelter, standing at the far end. The cupules are concentrated in one area, close to the main pictograph panels.

A wide angle overview of the cupules. They are in front of and below the main panel, and also underneath some naturally eroded holes in the ceiling. Also notice the petroglyph in the lower right of the picture, next to one of the cupules.

Up towards the ceiling. Those holes are natural, but some are smoothed by human touch, as if they were repeatedly reached into. Similar smoothing of the rough rock occurs at the nearby Womb Rock site.

There are some bursts and faded tally lines painted right next to these.

By getting close to the ground we can get better contrast and see how many cupules there really are.

One of the larger cupules.

The delicate petroglyph element. It looks like a circle with a braided tail.

As I’m lying down on the ground taking shots like these, I’m able to see in under that back ledge, and something catches my eye …

It is a very small overhang that a camera doesn’t come close to fitting into, so it takes multiple tries to get a good picture. Finally, a wide angle shot from some distance away captures the pictographs. DStretch to follow.

There they are! Not earth-shattering, but still very interesting. Since my camera is too large to fit under the ledge, I reach for my cell phone instead, and blindly take some pictures.

Here’s one of the elements – looks like an abstract element.

DStretch doesn’t show anything else that is special.

The other element looks vaguely anthropomorphic.

DStretch doesn’t reveal much here either.

At long last, time to rise our heads and look at the mass of pictographs! Here’s an overview of much of the shelter’s back wall and ceiling. Now you can see some of the red pictographs and where they are in the shelter – on the floor or against the back wall. You can also see how tiny that little ledge really is. We’ll look at a DStretch pic next.

There are a lot of elements in this site. Broadly speaking, they are bursts, yoni elements, tally lines, or zig-zag lines.

Since we’re still kind of down low, let’s look at the back wall first, starting on the area we saw in the far lower left just now. This is the portion of the shelter with the most erosion, so the elements are quite faded. We’ll need a good DStretch boost here.

Better! It looks like the upper row of elements contains a cradleboard shape, close to the middle of the picture, with a similar Rectilinear element next to it. The other elements in that area are really faded and tough to make out but we’ll see what we can do with some closer looks.

Here’s a close look at the area. Down below, lower right, you can see some vandalism, scratching that is dated 1939. One of the researchers researching this site for possible solar observatory connections thought that the vandal may have been trying to line out some of the tines of the faded tally element. Let’s have a DStretch look and see if we can tell.

To me it appears that this is someone’s initials ( MT? ), so it has nothing to do with examining the site in good faith. As you can see here, the elements are really faded and very hard or impossible to decipher.

The right-hand side of the preview we looked at. The most distinct symbol is the two concentric semi-circles.

DStretch does not show much else.

Further to the right, the pictographs get really interesting and intricate. Here we can barely see our concentric circles in the lower left. The lower area contains some faded Rectilinear and tally line markings. In the center there are some very detailed elements, including a fan of curved lines that today reminds us of the symbol for WiFi, a beautiful string of finger dots, and at the top, a large oval element with squiggle lines. All of these elements are quite well-preserved.

DStretch lets us look in greater detail. One of these symbols, the Rectilinear element in the low center, forms part of the hypothesis of this site as a solstice observatory. The upper left, better preserved portion of it was taken to be a tally element containing 13 lines. This is the element that suggests a date of A.D. 1600 for this site – during that period, the sunrise rose in an indentation in the horizon around the solstice for 13 days before it moved back north, out of the indentation. However, DStretch definitely suggests that this is in fact just part of a larger element — the other parts of it just happens to be difficult to discern with the naked eye. None of the other elements in this picture figure into the solstice hypothesis.

Somewhat isolated on the ceiling at the far right of the cave is a well-preserved hash-shaped element. This element was also picked to help support the solstice hypothesis.

With DStretch we can take a clear look at the element. It is said to represent an adjustment needed in observing the solstice: around A.D. 1670 the number of days the sun was visible in the skyline notch had shrunk from 13 ( said to be recorded in the upper left part of the large Rectilinear element we looked at ) to 12. The interpretation of this element supposes that the six count lines on the right-hand side, next to the narrow center lines, counts the days the sun rose in the notch before the solstice, and the left-hand side, with the thick bars, the number of days the sun was visible in the notch after the solstice. The 12th day is the solstice day.

Moving on, here’s a wider angle look at the area we glimpsed earlier. This view shows the meander line of finger dots better, as well as some other nearby elements.

DStretch is always a big help. Going left to right in the picture, we can see some large elements we’ll look at in more detail later just at the left edge of the picture. Next to them are two yoni symbols, and above those a second meander line made of finger dots. In the top center we see an intricate geometric design, and then we’re back at the portion of the picture we’ve seen before. In the lower center we see some additional eroded symbols along the lower wall, to the left of the Rectilinear element whose top left was interpreted as a rake with 13 tines.

Just out of view at the top right in the previous picture, we have this grouping of elements.

The turtle-like symbol at left was interpreted as a yoni figure, and the element next to it as a rake element. This combination was said to be an illustration of the Chemehuevi Lone Woman Of The Cave legend – the yoni represents the Lone Woman, and the rake represents the bearded ray of sunlight shining down to her. With a DStretch look I’m not sure that the second element is really a rake shape, though.

There is a second set of pictographs in this cave that could illustrate the Lone Woman legend, visible in this picture.

In the center right, we see another bisected circle ( possible yoni ) and a burst element. These could be the second illustration of the Lone Woman legend. Also in the picture we see the lower wall’s pictographs we’ve seen before, a seven-tined rake with a prominent center tine, and some smudged elements including more bursts and Rectilinear hash-shaped elements.

Let’s look up and to our left, where we can see the complete ceiling panel. There is a lot to see here.

Much of this panel consist of parallel lines, rake elements and bursts. There’s also an interesting grouping of elements in the lower center, bled out by this strong DStretch enhancement, that we will look at soon.

A natural color picture. These elements are well-preserved and still pretty distinct and easy to make out, with the exception of the smudged elements. Were they smudged on purpose ( or perhaps as part of a ritual where water was applied? ). Or is that just specific erosion?

This part of the panel really is beautiful: well-executed, pleasingly proportioned elements. The large burst symbol has been interpreted in two ways. In the first, it is said to represent a comet, possibly itself the manifestation of the Sky Coyote of Chemeheuvi legend. The second interpretation points out that the trailing “comet tail” of the symbol aligns with the direction in which sunrise can be viewed from the shelter – in other words, it points out to the east. It is said to point exactly to the notch in the skyline that the solstice sunrise can be seen through. I haven’t verified for myself how accurate this observation is, but it is plausible that this symbol is indeed purposefully drawn to depict the sunrise and the rays of light that might stab down towards earth. The wavy lines below might be the horizon, and the nearby yoni elements may then again refer back to the Lone Woman legend.

Close-up of the burst / comet. Notice how coarse the rock face is.

With DStretch we can see how detailed the burst is – an inner core of tiny strokes, then a second ring of larger tally marks, and then the large rays and tail.

These two designs also contain white pigment. They were barely visible at the bottom of the previous picture. There are several other sites in the area at large, including close by this site and further south in Joshua Tree National Park, that show this deliberate design where red and white paint alternate.

DStretch detail. These elements are also tied into the solstice hypothesis, said to depict the sun’s movement along the horizon as the solstice approaches.

Semi-isolated on the lip of the shelter, we see these two elements.

The better preserved one is a Rectilinear grid, corners slightly rounded.

Up towards the ceiling we can see the seven-tined symbol again, with a heavily saturated burst element next to it.

Our exploration of the shelter is almost at an end, but let’s return to these two elements. The composition of two elements and a horizontal line reminds me a little bit of the Indian Wells site far northwesterly of here, or possibly the “Shooting Star” site. The two large elements are quite smudged, but DStretch can help clarify them. Let’s look.

One of the elements look like a simplified version of the burst element. Possibly this element, along with the zigzag line and the finger dots, could also represent a figure tallying solstice observation. That is just my speculation though – this element did not form part of the solstice hypothesis around this site. I can’t tell what the second element was, it is much more thoroughly rubbed out than this one was. In the lower area, what looks like a cross shape was also rubbed out.