Long Fingers Canyon | Day 9
Day 9: Long Fingers Canyon
Sunday, April 17, 2011
The last day of our 9 day trip had finally arrived and I was looking forward to getting home and taking a real shower. We wanted to make this a shorter day so that we wouldn’t be getting home too late. We broke down camp, had a quick breakfast and then we crossed over Comb Ridge and headed south along Butler Wash. Then we hiked into Long Fingers Canyon and explored all of the alcoves, ruins and rock art that we could find. It was a nice and easy hike with a lot to see and explore. It’s amazing how many large alcoves this short canyon contains!
Hiking along the ‘now closed’ road towards Comb Ridge and Long Fingers Canyon.
The first large alcove we came to had a set of white handprints on the back wall.
As we neared the Long Fingers Ruins we passed a number of faint petroglyphs and pictographs. I spotted this faint red anthropomorph high above.
This is certainly one of the more unique petroglyphs I have come across. I’ve never seen anything like it before. It was hard to get a good shot of it, but I think this one turned out OK.
Another of the faint petroglyphs on the way to the ruins.
Here’s another stick figure that has a round middle section….my guess would be representing pregnancy.
This boulder has a few interesting petroglyphs and a couple of metate grooves.
Jared exiting the deep alcove below the ruins.
These spirals appear to have legs and feet with three toes.
Here’s another ruin that appears to have had the back wall painted red and black.
Here’s the set of hand petroglyphs with very long fingers from where the canyon gets it’s name.
A couple of bird feet or tracks.
There were plenty of boulders around in the alcoves containing many metate grooves, but this one had more grooves than a lot of the others.
A few small pictographs in another alcove.
A closeup of some spiral design handprints.
This alcove contained a whole bunch of handprints.
An overview of the canyon and the Long Fingers Ruins…..some above and some below.
Up by the higher set of ruins are a few green pictographs. I took this photo from below before we exited the canyon.
After we exited the canyon we climbed up comb Ridge to try and access the higher set of ruins, but the route to reach them was a bit too much for us, so we headed back down to the Jeep and called it a day. Jared and I parted ways and a few hours later I was back home and unloading the Jeep.
We hiked a lot of miles….my legs were tired….I spent some time with good friends….we explored many new places….it was a great trip!
The End.