San Rafael Swell Rock Art IV
Sunday, June 19, 2011
This hiking trip in the San Rafael Swell turned out to be a very unique experience for me. I was tagging along with Phillipe on a hike he had planned for his long Southwest trip. I knew what general area we would be hiking in, but other than that I did no additional research on the route….I left it all up to Philippe. On top of that, I knew we were making a loop, but I didn’t even know how long we would be hiking for (it turned out to be about 12.5 miles round trip)….I just went….and it all worked out great in the end! We were planning to visit four different rock art sites along the way, but unfortunately we only found one of those four. We did, however, stumble across a new site that we were not expecting, which was very exciting!
Our first visit was to the Sunlight & Shadow Panel. This is a very unique Barrier Canyon Style Panel located high up on the canyon wall at the top of a very steep and loose talus pile. We climbed up and spent some time photographing the panels. The day was overcast, so we did not have any issues with one of the panels being in the sun while the other is in the shade.
After visiting the Sunlight & Shadow Panel we went on and searched for the next three panels. Unfortunately, we had no luck finding any of them, and I now beleive we were completely in the wrong location to find them. I’ll have to return to the area when it cools off a bit and continue the search where I think they might be. After searching the canyon walls, climbing up and down steep talus slopes in search of the panels we were both getting a little frustrated and tired…..plus the on and off rain showers didn’t help any. Before heading back towards our vehicles, we decided to head down-canyon a little ways just to see how far we could go before it got too technical for us to continue. Along the way we continued to watch the canyon walls for signs of pictographs or petroglyphs. At one point the wash entered a small canyon where we couldn’t see the main canyon’s walls. Philippe decided he was going to climb up and take a look…at this point I had had enough climbing and decided to stay behind. A minute later he called for me……I almost didn’t go, but finally decided that I would make one final climb out. Once I reached the top of the smaller canyon…I was pleasantly suprised to catch a glimpse of some Barrier Canyon Style pictographs that I was not familiar with. This was not one of the panels we had been searching for…..this was something new. While photographing this site (I really wish I had dragged my long lens with me….I guess I’ll have to go back and revisit this site again in the fall), I did take notice that there was no footpath leading to this site, which are common for most rock art sites. I also noticed that there were no other footprints anywhere to be found, except for ours, which made me realize this was a special find.
I’ve decided to refer to this site The Unexpected Panel for two reasons. First, we were not searching for this panel…we were searching for other panels when we unexpectedly came across this one. Second, because this panel consists of a few different regional styles all in one place which is very unique and also unexpected.
When I arrived home from this weekend trip, I contacted a few of my friends who know a lot more about rock art and sites than I do. I figured they would recognize this panel and tell me what it was named. What I found out is that none of them had ever seen it before. Not even David Sucec, who is in charge of the Barrier Canyon Style Project and who probably knows the location of more Barrier Canyon Style sites than anyone else. While I am sure that we are not the first people to stumble across this beautiful pictograph site, it is pretty cool to find out you have come across something that probably very few people know about!