10 Days in Horseshoe Canyon

One of the reasons Deb and I moved to Grand Junction was to be in the midst of the canyon country of the Colorado Plateau.  When we were thinking of the move from Boulder, where I was a member of the Institute for Behavioral Genetics, I fantasized about getting position at one of the National Parks in the area. (You have your fantasies, I have mine, besides, it's not my only one!) However I thought if successful, I would be charged with the mundane bits that the rangers were uninterested in.  It turned out much better than that. After inquiring at jobs.gov,  I was contacted by Ranger Nicole Loiseau

Nicole

who wondered if I would be interested in spending two to three weeks hiking into Horseshoe Canyon to monitor the Native American rock art in the canyon.  They would provide an isolated campsite outside of the canyon, water,  a propane stove a satellite phone and a radio.  One day of training would also be provided, then I would be on my own. Duhhh! So I became a Faux Ranger.

The Faux Ranger

Horseshoe Canyon has a documented 13,000 year history of human habitation.  It contains remnants of Pleistocene hunting camps, with wooly mammoth and great bison remains,  and native artwork spanning nearly 9000 years.

WilcoTangoFoxtrot

The art work defines the oldest known art style in North America, known as the Barrier Canyon Style.  The pictographs and petroglyphs have been difficult to date, but are at least 3000 years old and may be as old as 5000 years. It is likely that they were inspired by an even earlier culture that left clay figurines in the canyon dated to about 9000 BP (Before Present).

 Horseshoe Canyon opens to the Green River, about 16 miles N.E. of my camp.  The geology of the area created a high water table in the canyon and the canyon is distinctly riparian, though situated in an arid region. Barrier Creek is now an intermittent creek, but in archaic times may have had a perennial flow.

My start at Horseshoe Canyon was delayed by a series of flash floods that damaged the 35 mile dirt road into my campsite (Sheepcamp). When I finally got in, the road was open only to 4WD, high clearance vehicles.  It would be almost a week before the road was in good enough shape for regular passenger cars to to get in.  Nicole left me with instructions on where to find the key to the camp trailer and to expect her the next day for my orientation hike.  Near where the key was supposed to be, I looked over to a rock that was used as a step to get into the trailer and saw that I had a welcoming committee of one:

Crotalus cerastes (aka Samantha Sidewinder)

The snake was small and very still.  My first thought was "right, Nicole, nice fake snake for the rookie".  Soon after that thought, the snake did its rattlesnake thing and I grabbed the camera, after I got off the hood of the car.  I tried tossing pebbles at it which only caused it to act more rattlesnakey. I finally got it to move off the rock step by tossing a few handfuls of sand at it.  Sam reluctantly departed her warm rock for a place under the trailer which I could live with for the time being.  My arrival day would not have been a good one to get bitten on because I didn't have a radio or satellite phone yet.

View From Inside Sheepcamp Trailer

My camp had a trailer, with a propane stove and a solar panel that was enough for lights at night. It was set on a hillside about 1/2 mile from the BLM campground that folks  visiting the canyon use.

The next morning, I was up just before sunrise. At this time of year (September) the sun rises from just behind the Manti La Sal mountains east of Moab, Utah.

My Front Yard

Every sunrise was a wonderful, centering experience.  In September the bird population is low, so there was no morning chorus and most mornings, no wind.  There is no detectable sound except from the blood in your head and the sound of still air.  Of course it helps if you are mostly deaf in one ear and hard of hearing in the other. Now that I think about it, all of my mornings are really quiet.

Nicole met me at Sheepcamp in the morning and filled me in on radio protocol, how to to use the sat-phone, her expectations and how to get help if I couldn't connect to the Hans Flat ranger station by radio or sat-phone. The hike into the canyon begins on an abandoned road built in the 1920's by Phillips Petroleum.  The geology of the canyon that gives rise to the high water table is often associated with oil deposits. Luckily for all, no oil was discovered in this canyon.

Horseshoe Canyon

The photo above was taken from near the top of the trail which drops 850 feet to the canyon bottom.  On our hike in, we met up with a group of 3 canyon visitors.  We all benefited from Nicole's on-trail school, as she pointed out geological formations, dinosaur tracks and where the cache of emergency water, litters and blankets were.  My role was to be the NPS 'presence' in the canyon. To do minor trail maintenance, keep folks on the main trail and help them find the major art panels in the canyon.  Because of the recent storms and the condition of the road we did not expect many visitors until the road improved, so there would be time to rebuild the cairns marking the trails and to keep social trail development to a minimum.

I told Nicole about the snake and could tell that she was skeptical about the identification of the snake, as a sidewinder, made by her Rookie Ranger. But Sam cooperated and was coiled on her rock, my front step, when we returned to camp. After a few handfuls of sand, Sam disappeared into some bushes, with the distinct motion of a sidewinder, disconcertingly close to where I stored my water and  ice chest. Nicole gave me a charming hat, a park service shirt or two, a raincoat and said she would be back in two weeks. Sooner if I needed water, but I'd better not need water because it was expensive to haul up there, and to be careful of the snake.

My first two days in the canyon and the next turned out to be pretty special. I had hiked to the most distant of the panels, the Great Gallery, and had been there with two visitors when a thunderstorm broke over the canyon.  The acoustics in the canyon created a concert of thunder and rain on sandstone mixed with the sound of  waterfalls pouring off the 600 foot cliff faces. It was loud enough that even I could hear it.  I wish that I had thought to record it with my iPhone.  I have been in a lot of storms and this was among the best of them. The two hikers left a bit before me as I tried to get photos with my iPhone, all of which turned out to be pretty marginal due to rain on the lens:

Side Canyon Flow into Barrier Creek

 Thirty minutes before I shot this photo the creek bed was damp with no standing water. I worked my way back down the canyon until I got to a point where the creek was too high and fast to ford.  So, on my first day, I had to radio in that Horseshoe Canyon was flooded again and that I was stuck for a while.   I felt self conscious and a little silly using words like: "copy", "clear", "this is Horseshoe Base, do you copy?".  I stayed put in a comfy place and hoped it would stop raining and that the creek would drop enough for me to cross before dark, which it did.

I got back to the trailer and  didn't see Sam on her usual perch, which was a mixed blessing because I really didn't know where she was hiding. I enjoyed watching the moon rise over the La Sal range while eating dinner and enjoying a Red Stripe, though next time it will be Ranger IPA.

Moonrise

Next morning started with unusual weather, I could see and hear distant thunderstorms.  If we have thunderstorms, and in September they are uncommon, they usually occur in the evening.  However, by the time I finished breakfast the sky was clear and there were just two cars in the parking lot. One belonged to a Dutch group that planned to hike Blue John Canyon, which is where Aron Ralston amputated his arm with a pocket knife.  Ralston was later rescued in Horseshoe Canyon.  Blue John Canyon, as I was to find out, has become a sort of macabre attraction for those who have read his book or seen the movie. I absolutely could not think of a worse time to hike Blue John, given our weird weather. I explained that Blue John wasn't in the National Park, it was on BLM land and that a rescue by the county was very expensive. They were determined to go however, so I radioed the information in and was told to notify the station if they didn't show up within 2 days.  The hike ordinarily takes 8-10 hours, but because of the remote location and the expense of a rescue, time is always allowed for a self rescue or a slow party.

So, warnings given, I headed into the canyon to do some trail work between two of the art sites and to update the trail condition report.  The storm the day before had left a trickle of water in the creek and many pockets of quicksand.  Quicksand is annoying because it indistinguishable from the surrounding mud, until you step in it.  If you aren't quick you can sink deep enough to lose a hiking boot or shoe in just a few seconds. I made a note to remember my hiking poles next time. The weather was bright, clear and a very pleasant 70 degrees.  About mid-day I heard the creek running, which I hadn't noticed before.  Initially I thought it was an acoustical quirk of some kind. I wasn't really thinking about another flood because there had been no storms since early in the morning.  In a little while the sound of the creek was distinctly louder. I wandered down to the creek side and saw that it was rising quickly. I hiked up canyon to find the two hikers I had seen earlier and let them know that it looked like we might have a clear-sky flood starting.  They decided to stay put and see what happened, which turned out to be pretty cool.

A tongue of black water and debris filled the creek bed from bank to bank soon after I talked to them.

Flood 2 Begins

Floodwaters

There were three individual pulses of floodwater, each with a black leading edge.  I think they were from three separate side canyons dumping water from the storms 8 hours earlier. My second flood was as impressive as the first.

Before the Flood

During the Flood

 Fording the creek, which in the morning was merely damp, was out of the question. I radioed in the information that we had another flood, which was met with some skepticism, and then checked on the other two hikers.

The Last of the 3 Crossings

After a few hours the water was still pretty high, but the current had dropped enough that we could cross.  Although the floods were dramatic, there was no real danger. The canyon is wide and it's easy to find high ground. In each case the natural place to retreat to turned out to be places where the early inhabitants had left their art.  Back at camp I made dinner and fretted some about the hikers in Blue John. They returned early the next morning looking like they had had "fun".

As one enters the canyon the first major panel, called the High Gallery, is on the left side of the canyon.  Just before it comes into view there is this most amazing sandstone formation:

Meg Ryan Wall

Shortly after,  the High Gallery comes into view:

The High Gallery

Fittingly, the pictograph depicts (on the left side) a rain cloud (the multi-legged bug-like thing in the left 3rd of the photo) with a stream of water flowing from left to right. It almost looks like the flow of water is knocking a figure off of its feet.

Crossing the stream from the High Gallery, another set of pictographs comes into view, the Shelter Gallery.

Shelter Gallery

Shelter Gallery has several styles of pictographs in addition to the Barrier Canyon Styles, including some made after the bow and arrow were introduced, which occurred several thousand years after the Barrier Canyon art was painted.

Shelter Gallery.  This panel includes several figures of dogs and an out of the way panel of a figure that looks like a map.

Shelter Gallery

It was at this gallery that I met a 20-something guy who had managed to get a Friday off from his job in Nebraska and made the trip to Utah specifically to see these panels. I was impressed with his enthusiasm and, to tell the truth, with his age.  He was about 35 years younger than the average age of the visitors I met. Later in the week a group of 3 hikers, all cousins from Kansas, asked me to walk them through the canyon.  They had grown up together and had gotten together once a year for a trip, this year was an ancient Native American art trip.  One was retired, one owned a sporting goods shop and the third was a hunting guide in Kansas.  The youngest of the three was in his late 50's and loved to rappel down cliffs.  He has managed the rap off of El Capitan (about 3000 ft) several times. I can't imagine the weight of a 3,000 foot rope.  He mentioned a person he knows from the Yosemite Search and Rescue team who turned out to be the son of two of my former Boulder climbing partners, Greg and Sybille.  This seems like a great coincidence, but I've found that outdoor people tend to run the same game paths.

The Canyon in Dry Conditions. On the far bank is a patch of Indian Rice Grass.

 The hike continues past the Alcove site and on to the Great Gallery, which is the usual turn around point for most hikers. The Great Gallery is the archetype for the Barrier Canyon Style. I visited this site 11 times during my stay at the canyon and found something I had missed nearly every time.  This was also a terrific place to visit with the folks who came to this very out of the way place to see the art.  I met an artist from Santa Fe, along with her companion, an 80+ year old retired nuclear physicist.  The artist was in her 70's and looked remarkably like Georgia O'Keefe, which is to say, beautiful.  Her companion was obstreperous to a fault.  He kept feeding the ground squirrels trail mix.  The squirrels at this site are obnoxious beggars and by the end of the trip I was thinking of trying to relocate Sam to their patch.  I asked Robert to stop, he replied "No" and kept feeding them.  I decided, WTF, as long as he doesn't screw with the art I'm not going to force the issue.  More to the point, there was nothing I could do except to ask him to stop. I ended up hiking out with the two of them that day and Robert had no problem with the sandy, 850 foot climb out of the canyon;  however, keeping in character, he refused to stay on the trail. His companion confirmed that this is how he rolls.  While at the Great Gallery I met a retired long haul trucker from Arkansas and his grandson, two quantum physicists from the Intel advanced computing program, a linguist, an impatient male mountain biker who evidently did the hike only to please his wife. It was clear she was finding his attitude unpleasing, and that he probably wouldn't get the sex he was expecting.  He was the only uninteresting person I met during the 11 days I hiked the canyon.

The Great Gallery

Almost the Whole Panel.  Notice how green the plants are, this is really out of character for this time of year.

  

The anthropomorphic figures are characteristic of the Barrier Canyon Style

Bighorn Sheep Petroglyphs and 90 Year Old Graffiti

This enigmatic figure is 8 feet 4 inches tall and my favorite.  I really liked the halo of paint surrounding it and have seen this effect on only a few other figures in the canyon.

 The most consistent question I had was:  "Well what does it mean".  The answer is: "Well, no one knows".  There is no Rosetta Stone to decrypt the paintings and attempts to do so are really just entertainments. However, one series seems likely to be a counter of some sort:

Was this a counter of visits to the canyon?

This series of small figures is over 100 figures wide, I stopped counting at 75 and was only about half-way across the figure. The figures are anthropomorphic and about 8 inches high.  It is unlikely to represent the numbers in a single group, as the nomadic groups or tribes were thought to usually consist of less than 35 members.

The paintings and petroglyphs were created by nomadic hunters and gatherers. These groups are thought to have traveled between 300 and 500 miles per year, moving to new sources of food and water every few months or so.  If food sources were good they probably had to spend less than 4 hours a day "working", leaving time for tool making, painting and probably music. The first North Americans arrived from Eurasia before Europe or Asia had developed agriculture or urban culture. Therefore, they had no history of agriculture or of cities at all.  In North American, they retained a lineage of  hunting and gathering that had been uninterrupted for hundreds of thousand years, backed by a few million years of hominid evolution.  For them, staying in one place would be both unnatural and dangerous. Food would be depleted, water would have no chance to recover from waste produced by inhabitants and, probably just as importantly, it would be boring. From Grand Mesa near Grand Junction you can see the Manti La Sal mountains, from the La Sal's you can see the Henry's and Abajo Mountains.  I would bet that most folks today who stand at Land's End on Grand Mesa, would want to go see what the La Sal range is like and then the Abajo's and Henry's. The urge to experience new places and vistas is pretty strong in humans. Biologically, continual travel by small groups would increase the odds of mating outside of the immediate group. The physical isolation of the group, for large amounts of time, would lessen the chances of disease spread.  Undoubtedly the nomads would meet from time to time. Perhaps they had set meeting places marked by these iconic figures. I have, by no means, visited a majority of the Barrier Canyon Style sites; however, those that I have visited show no figures that represent warfare.  I suspect this may be because resources were abundant at the time and when groups met it was cause for celebration.  Evidence for tribal warfare, slavery and all kinds of nasty stuff, thousands of years later among Native Americans is common.  Perhaps the Americans of the late Paleolithic/Archaic period were spared that.

We Were Here