The Barrier Canyon Chronicles:  I Am Lost.

Storm

A tall, blue eyed, 72 year old hiker with the kind of silver-grey hair that hinted of a youthful blond, wrote those words in a remote trail register a few miles from Horseshoe Canyon. The trailhead where he wrote his note is rarely visited and days can pass without anyone checking the register. It was cold, with snow flurries and wind gusts high enough to physically jar me on the trail. Temperatures, without windchill, were in the low 40's and expected to drop below freezing at night. Jim was 7-8 miles from where he should have been and on the opposite side of the canyon from where his car was parked. He did not know he was on the wrong side of the canyon and was planning to backtrack to the canyon rim and start hiking north until he found his car. This would have been a mistake; he would have been far from any trails and route finding would be complicated by the deep canyons encountered heading north and he would still be on the opposite side of the canyon from his camp and car. 

I met Jim that morning at the NPS trailhead on the west rim of the canyon as I was beginning my patrol for the day. Jim asked me about other places in Canyonland's Maze. I explained that most of the roads he was interested in are high clearance, 4WD roads. Definitely not suitable for his Toyota Corolla. While talking with Jim, his face and responses seemed vague, as if he wasn't taking in all we were discussing. He looked disappointed and I was a little worried that he'd try the roads anyway. He told me he was planning to to the hike to the Great Gallery.  I wasn't really concerned becasue the hike into Horseshoe Canyon is well marked, and with the exception of one panel, the art is easy to find. We talked a little more and I started my hike into the canyon for the day. The hike into Horseshoe follows an old road bed built by Phillips Petroleum in the 1920's. The road descends almost 750 feet in about a mile over steep Navajo sandstone, traversing cliff faces and passing through deep sand before arriving at Barrier Creek. We try to keep it well marked with cairns.

As I was hiking into the canyon I met a group who asked if I would guide them to the Great Gallery and show them the other panels on the way in. This is one of the things the Park Service asks us to do and I always enjoy showing folks the panels and pointing out things that many people miss. The art is beautiful and mysterious in its size, height and obvious spiritual content. Discussions with visitors are usually interesting and entertaining. The morning was windy and cold but the panel sites are sheltered and offered some respite from the weather. 

The Great Gallery from Barrier Creek

We arrived at the Great Gallery and I gave my Great Gallery talk and pointed out some details in the art that are often overlooked. 

Hunter with Atlatl and Dart: Detail from Great Gallery

 Although I have now spent over 50 days in Horseshoe Canyon, I still find details in the art that I've missed. For me the Great Gallery is an inexplicably comforting and tranquil.  The deep spirituality of the original artists is evident, though the message is not. As a non-believer I have experienced a similar effect when visiting the great cathedrals in England and Europe.  I can't quite explain it, perhaps these places are imbued in some way with traces of the faith of the believers or the physical sites themselves are simply so special that they evoke deep-rooted feelings that my conscious side has rejected. Nonetheless,  science has taught me, there is more that I don't know than I do know.

Emergence: Detail from Great Gallery

Surrounded by cottonwoods and with a stream fed by a perennial spring , the Great Gallery is in a sheltered alcove that was not unpleasant even on this cold and very windy day.

 Jim showed up toward the end of my talk and sat on the opposite bank of the creek among the cottonwoods to eat his lunch. I expected him to cross the stream to get a better look at the art work, but he headed south from the Great Gallery, the opposite direction from which he had come. Visitors often hike south; the canyon is beautiful in that direction. The spring that feeds Barrier Creek is not too far south of the Great Gallery and is surrounded by cottonwoods, reeds and tall grasses that create a lush feeling in the desert setting. The canyon opens up a bit here and it would be easy to imagine an encampment among the cottonwoods. The cottonwoods' leaves were just emerging and they had that Crayola crayon "spring green" color that is especially striking in the low angle Spring light. Sitting there with eyes closed I can imagine the Barrier Canyon people going about their daily routines of gathering rice grass, making points and sandals, grinding pigments for their art work, laughing and playing games. With little effort, the low murmur of water in the creek is turned into thousand year old voices and the hours quickly pass. 

Hunters with Atlatls: Detail from Great Gallery

Others hike south looking for more rock art or Blue John Canyon, scene of the movie 127 Hours. The subject of the book and movie, Aaron Ralston, was rescued not far from the Great Gallery. I think the book has increased visitation to the canyon given how often I'm asked about it. One evening, as I was hiking out of the canyon I met a runner going into the canyon just before sunset. I asked about his plans and he said that he was going to run to the place where the “arm” was. He had a strong Eastern European accent and I thought I mis-heard him. But no, that's actually what he said. I told him that Aaron's arm was no longer there, he looked disappointed and said he would still go to see the “plaque”. He was even more disappointed when I told him there was no plaque to mark the spot, nor is there a clear trail to Blue John. Furthermore, the exit from Blue John to Horseshoe Canyon requires a 30 meter rappel, and therefore was likely to require a 30 meter technical climb to enter the canyon. Nothing I said could dissuade him, so I asked if he had food, clothes and a light. He did (the light was his iPhone), he gave me a description of his car and off he went. I saw his light coming back up the trail a little before midnight and was relieved that we wouldn't have to go looking for him.

After the last of the folks at the Great Gallery left, I started hiking south, in part to warm up from the cold (I wasn't as prepared as I should have been) and in hopes of meeting up with Jim to see what he had found. Something about the interaction we had at the trailhead was unsettling and I was a little worried but really didn't think he might be in trouble. Hiking south, I saw boot prints heading up Deadman's Trail. Deadman's is a short, nasty trail requiring moderate sandstone scrambling, it climbs about 850 ft in a mile or so and parts are quite exposed. It does not resemble the trail Jim used to hike into the canyon in any way. The tracks were those of a man, the only other person I saw heading south was a woman and she had returned. I followed the tracks up the trail, thinking that Jim must have felt like extending his hike to have a look from the east side of the canyon. I was impressed that he would consider a 14 mile round trip hike, given the weather, his age and that he was hiking solo. My initial thoughts were "good for you Jim".

Part of Deadman's Trail

As I followed his tracks to the top of the east rim, I was surprised to see that they continued away from the canyon toward a trailhead accessible only by high clearance, 4-WD vehicles.  Hiking the difficult trail to the top for a view of the canyon is one thing, but hiking away from the canyon seemed off to me, given his age and the weather. The wind was hitting in 50mph gusts on the rim and with the 30-40 degree temperatures the windchill was at least 10 degrees lower. The predicted lows for that night were in the mid-20's with continuing high winds. It would not be a good night to spend in the open; and wandering around the cliff tops in the dark would be dicey. So I continued tracking him, luckily his were the only tracks on the trail which made the job easy. As I approached the trailhead I saw someone leaning over the kiosk that holds the trail register. He turned and headed in my direction, it took me a while but I realized that it was Jim. I continued hiking toward him thinking, wow, bold hiking on a day like this!  When we met on the trail his first words were “are you looking for me?” I wasn't sure how to respond, if he was just hiking I didn't want to insult him by saying yes, his next words, however were: “I am lost”. We talked and he told me he had written a help message at the trailhead kiosk. I assumed he was planning to back track to the canyon bottom and return to his car, but he had become so disoriented that he was sure he was on the correct side of the canyon and if he walked north he would eventually find his car. Fortunately I had cell phone service and was able to call into the Hans Flat station to let them know that if any of the rangers were headed to the Deadman's trailhead they could ignore the help message. I had to use my cell phone because some ATV-riding, anti-government assholes partially destroyed the solar panel powering the radio repeater for Horseshoe Canyon.

I told Jim that he was on the opposite side of the canyon from his car and 8 miles or so away. His look told me that he didn't quite believe it, but he was going to trust me to guide him back. He's a good hiker and although I was worried about the descent over the slickrock he was just fine. It was obvious he'd spent more than a few days in the backcountry. We talked as we descended and hiked back toward the main trailhead. He was an English professor for a number of years and then had taught high school English for 25 years in California. His wife had died of cancer sometime earlier, he didn't say how long, and he had a son in Chicago. He was an adventurer who had circled Kangri Rinpoche in the Himalaya, a trek that gives good fortune to those who complete it. He participated in the Native American Church peyote ceremony on the Navajo reservation, at the invitation of a Navajo he had befriended in California. His stories were wonderful and included an account of an ascent of Mt. Whitney under winter conditions, which he did with only a sleeping pad, no sleeping bag and a sharpened stick to help him up the snow slopes.  The longer we hiked, the more he realized how disoriented he was. He clearly wasn't remembering the landmarks he'd passed a few hours before. I had hoped, selfishly, to not witness what was sinking in for Jim. We rested for a bit, really a 14-16 mile hike is a long one, even for someone a lot younger than we are. I asked him, while we were sitting and enjoying a water break, if he had hiking companions. “Not really” he said. “It's hard to find them when you are 72” and although he had plenty of friends none were really into the kind of adventures he was. We finished the hike to the trailhead quietly, making the steep climb out in good time.  The distress in his face as he realized the extent to which  his memory had betrayed him, was painful to see. He acknowledged that a pretty simple hike could have ended badly. 

The meteor or 'shooting star' is often used as a metaphor for a life.  But what we see of a meteor is its end, it is beautiful and bright, its vast history is hidden. With few exceptions this is not our fate and the difficulties we experience at the end of our lives can often obscure the beautiful and bright parts of our lives and how we are remembered by those around us as the end approaches.

Horseshoe Canyon Night Sky with Meteor 

As far as we know, the original inhabitants of Barrier Canyon probably lived no more than 50 years, often dying from injuries or infectious diseases of one kind or another.  They probably never had the experience of having a healthy body with a brain that was wearing out. If current Pueblo Indian beliefs are any indication, their lives were continuous with the world around them and dying did not separate them from it. In fact being fully integrated as part of, not separate from the earth and sky was the highest state of being that could be achieved.  

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