Canyon scramble to search for rock art

It’s a small and beautiful side canyon off Angel Canyon where Kanab Creek flows.  There’s really not an established trail so required a canyon scramble to search for rock art.

Bill parked on a two track off the highway and suggested we scramble down a sandy bank through dense vegetation, cross the creek and back up on the other side.  Not wanting to walk in sand with wet shoes that didn’t look real appealing to me so the other option was to walk across a bridge on the highway and trail blaze, which is what we did.  Actually we followed a semi-trail that could have been made by animals and used by people too.  We still had to cross a dry wash that feeds into the creek to get to the sandstone cliffs where the suspected rock art might be.  Looking across I thought I saw some possible scratching on a patina surface which turned out to be natural.

Many options for kind of trails down appeared and we finally chose one that looked the least steep then slid down the sand to the bottom about 80 feet and walked up the wash looking for the best place to get back up on the other side.  Bill was post-holing in the sand on the way up and I tried to follow his steps but his stride is longer than mine, yet I’m lighter and didn’t sink in as far.  Once on the bench we worked our way to the cliff face and began to look for rock art walking up canyon.

The sandstone formations are so breathtaking it really didn’t matter if we found anything.

There is a fire ring with log seats around it and then we saw this old structure which is accessed through a crack in the rock.  With a tin roof over timbers and a sweet little oil-can stove it looked pretty habitable to me.  Hard to say when the last time it was actually used but there was some rather modern trash around.

We continued ahead just a bit to the head of the canyon where we finally found the rock art, indigenous, historic and contemporary.  Once again, people add their story to the same area of rock, plus a few bullet holes.  Looked like sand deposits had buried some of the petroglyphs.

This sawed out piece of rock was a curiosity.  Wonder if someone cut out a petroglyph.

Of course the natural “rock art” is just as spectacular as the human if not more so.

We followed the cliff face back down the canyon admiring the views.  The truck was parked almost at the foot of the farthest bluff in the center of the above photo.

Princes Plume was everywhere with some sacred datura thrown into the mix.

We went back down, crossed the wash and climbed back up again.  By now, both a little tired so had to stop a couple times along the way but we made it out to explore more the next day in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.  But those stories are for another post.