Before we dive into pictograph photos, let’s quickly establish the site layout. As you can see here, it is an isolated boulder. When we walked up to it, it was after several hours’ intensive scrambling through rough terrain, on a hot spring day, and we were whacked. So we had a pack explosion under the larger of the two boulder overhangs and inhaled some food and fluids before we got into exploring the site. This larger overhang contains a few elements, all faded because the overhang is pretty open to the elements. Around the back, this boulder has a much better protected overhang.

By no means are we the first to visit this site since it was created. It is known to the Park archeologists, and there are also a few historic artifacts, like this can, scattered around.

The overhang we took shelter under has a nice flat bedrock for sitting, and also a few pictograph elements. Here’s a look at the overhang. These elements are faded – wind-blown rain had no issue getting in and troubling the pigment. The white marks in this picture look a bit like pictographs, but I believe they are natural coloring in the rock.

This is the most obvious, cross-like element. There’s also a Rectilinear element just below the cross shape.

This is an interesting element to me, because it reminds me of cross-shaped elements often found in the petroglyphs made by the Mojave. I have previously alluded to a site that has imagery that strongly recalls sites in Mojave territory north of there – suggesting that these tribes were in communication and shared cultural elements. With DStretch we can tell that this element has more of a maze shape, not a true cross. That brings up its own intriguing possibilities – mazes feature in some pictograph and petroglyph sites *south* of this site.

Besides these elements, we can also see some large elements, and what looks like an interesting burst element, tucked into a crook in the overhang and slightly better preserved.

The burst element and its accompanying Rectilinear elements. The white lines to the upper left are actually naturally occurring salt lines, not white pigment.

A bit of DStretch. Nothing hiding from us in this shelter.

The burst element is worth looking at more closely.

However, it is pretty much just what you can see with the naked eye.

Let’s just start off by showing the view, looking straight up at the ceiling of the shelter. Note that this is a wide-angle lens, which flattens the picture a bit and has some problems with contrast between the parts of the shelter lit from the sunlight reflecting in and the more hidden, shadowy parts of the cavity. But do you see that pigment, especially up towards the ceiling? Wow! So vivid.

The ceiling isn’t very tall – I had to take all these pictures lying down. Up at the apex is a portal-like element, seemingly dropping down from a crack. This element was fantastic to discover, since that makes this site part of a group of sites, scattered all over the Park, that contain portal elements like this.

Here is a square-on shot of the portals. Look closely – there is a row of six or seven dots below the crossbar of the top portal.

To the side, another pictograph is tucked into the crack.

A row of six dots point towards the portals.

And right under that, some nasty spider pods! Yikes! I am not an arachnid fan, and I leave those well enough alone.

Let’s switch back to that first overview picture and add some DStretch. The elements lower down in the shelter ( to the left in this picture ) are more weathered than the vibrant ones right up in the ceiling. That Rectilinear grid or net shape seems to be really common in this shelter.

This set of three elements are painted along on side of the shelter, forming a natural grouping.

They are a bit weathered, being lower down in the shelter where the occasional rain or dusty gust of wind could get to them, so let’s look again with DStretch. Looks like there’s nothing more to them that what we saw with the naked eye, though.

To the right of these elements is a Linear element that is also a bit faded, so let’s look at that next.

It, too, isn’t hiding any secrets. Looks a bit like a capital letter K, doesn’t it?

Next we’ll take a close look at each of the Rectilinear grid or net-like elements in the shelter. They’re all very vibrant and well-preserved, so we don’t need DStretch to help us out. We’ll look at them in a bottom-to-top order, relative to the overview picture I showed earlier. This picture shows us a row of five Rectilinear squares, stacked next to each other. The rough texture makes it look like some of the elements are open at the bottom but if you look at the full size picture you’ll see they are all closed rectangles.

The next element is a larger grid shape, with columns of differing size, tapering slightly to the top. It also has jagged edges.

The next two elements are pretty similar. Here’s the most vivid of the two – a simple arrangement of six boxes.

Finally, this element also has six boxes, though the lower ones flare out and aren’t quite closed.

Close to the lip of the overhang there are a couple of Abstract elements. One has a dumbbell shape, the other is hard to make out.

With some DStretch we get a slightly better bead on what the dumbbell shape looks like, but the other element still just looks like a smudge.

Here’s another look at the overhang. You can see several elements we looked at already, plus an alcove towards the back of the shelter where there are some faded elements.

Look closely – I think there’s also an element on that orange-ish part of the alcove, between the dumbbell we looked at and the alcove.

Let’s lean in real close. See anything?

Wow! It is a portal maze! Yes, this element looks a bit like our portal elements up toward the ceiling, but in this case, four of them are stacked atop each other.

How about that alcove? Despite being at the back of the shelter, it is pretty weathered, probably because every bit of debris blowing in, or water running underneath the boulder, has been hitting it. I see some dots, but everything else seems pretty faded. Let’s see what DStretch can do to help.

It can do a lot! We’ve got our grouping of six dots ( maybe eight, if we consider the smudge between the lower dots to be two tiny dots ) bit we also get a nice burst element, and some more dots. Very interesting!

With that, our exploration of this site is at an end. One last look up at some of those beautiful elements on the ceiling, and it is time to wriggle out from under the boulder and resume exploring.