Many of the rock shelters in Joshua Tree National Park are at least partly formed by a natural erosion process called exfoliation. There are different theories as to how exactly this process works. The theory currents in favor is that it is caused by rain breaching the surface of the granite and interacting with the minerals in the rock, causing expansion which over time causes the surface to flake off.
Petroglyphs are less often seen in Joshua Tree National Park than pictographs are but this doesn’t mean they are not there, or are rarer. They’re just harder to find, out in the quiet nooks and crannies of the Park.
This companion site to the more well-known Red Lady or “Lone Woman of the Cave” site in Joshua Tree National Park is located in the same general vicinity.
It is also thought to depict the Chemehuevi legend of Tavapëtsi, the Sun, impregnating a woman with rays of sunlight ( specifically, the fan of light that can be seen shining down from the sun when the atmospheric conditions are just right ). The legend claims that the woman birthed twin sons for Tavapëtsi. In general, the legend is tied to the spring equinox and the period of fertility spring brings to nature.
One of the challenges of backcountry exploration is that you often don’t arrive at your destination during a good time of day for photography. Sometimes, the winter sun is kind of weak and everything appears washed out. Other times, the angle of the sun is such that every surface seems to shimmer with a bright glare , making it very hard to get good photos.
I found this site during a time of day that was certainly not conductive to good photography! Maybe I’ll head back at some point to try and capture better pictures since I think the area probably has more to offer!
I first visited this site about three years ago in the dead of winter. During our first visit we encountered the remnants of a recent cold snap: little drifts of snow and frozen tanks of water. Most people don’t associate Joshua Trees and towering White Tank granite boulders with snow, but if you visit Joshua Tree National Park at the right time you’re in for a surprising treat.
During that visit we crunched our way up the frozen washes. Instead of slogging through soft sand we were walking on top of frozen sand! We made our way past frozen pools of water and carefully scrambled over icy boulders. Granite is slick enough when dry – add a nice layer of ice on top and you risk your tailbone with every scramble.
What if I told you that Joshua Tree National Park has one of the finest car washes I’ve ever been to? You’d think I’d gone a bit funny in the head from all the heat and fresh desert air, wouldn’t you?
Yet it is true. Every word of it.
Below, I submit my evidence for your consideration.
This is one of the earliest pictograph sites I found, right at the beginning of my interest in hunting for these sites. Back then I carried a dinky compact camera in my pocket and very little knowledge of site photography in my head.
Despite their poor quality ( so poor that I’d never actually post them here! ) I enjoy looking at the photos I took of this site back then because they remind me vividly of what it felt like to discover this site for the first time – the excitement of peering up at it in the gathering dusk and realizing that the overhang contained paintings, the hurried scurrying about trying to find a route up, and finally peering into the shelter with a big smile before snapping a few hurried shots and hightailing it out of there before dark traps me in the backcountry. ( Back then I seemingly had a talent for discovering sites at the last possible moment, turning a sweaty day of frustration into a highlight at the last moment. )
This site is also in a very remote part of Joshua Tree National Park. The boulder itself looks very promising – grotesquely hollowed – but the pictographs themselves are rather nondescript. The ceiling of the hollow boulder contains a few red elements as well as evenly distributed splatters of black pigment down the two sides.
These splatters of black pigment form an interesting counterpoint to what is present at the Lone Woman site – at that site the alcove next to the Lone Woman pictograph is splattered in red and there are some black pictographs present. Here, the splatters are black and the pictographs are red.
I am the kind of person who looks at a topo map and thinks “Oooh, look at this lonely spot way over here, far away from anything! I wonder what it’s like over here?” Oddly named meadows and creeks, hidden little valleys and lakes draw me in.
This is why I sometimes end up on some really silly hikes … way off in the sticks. Sometimes I find nothing but solitude and natural beauty, other times I find something interesting. This entry is the result of one such hike.
As you drive the paved roads through Joshua Tree National Park you may have noticed the numerous washes they cross. To the majority of JTNP visitors these washes barely register unless they become active during flash floods and wash out or temporarily close the Park’s roads.
To people who lived here before roads were built the washes provided an easy means of travel. Though slogging through sand is not by itself easy it is more comfortable than winding through thorny plants or scrambling along boulders.