I have organized this story a bit differently than most.
Some of the locations have little or no reporting on the internet and I feel they should remain that way or someone I respect has personally requested that I not share them; as such, locations have been redacted and/or not mentioned, I've used non-official names for local landmarks, and the order of the trip has been randomized.
Please, if you know the locations shown here, I encourage you to enjoy them as much as I did - and follow my lead by not mentioning their names or locations in order to keep them a little less well-known, and special.
For more on my approach, you can read Do you have a GPX for that?.
Having discovered the existence of a few rock art sites in the Greenwater Valley area, I put on my best Sherlock Holmes hat (note: it is strikingly similar to the Cal Poly baseball cap I always wear) to scour the interwebs for clues. Of the three sites, I was able to pinpoint one reasonably quickly, and reached out to a few fellow rock art enthusiasts for hints on another. The third - somewhere on the hike up Funeral Peak - was out of the question on this particular trip, though I'll surely return to find those in the future.
Mostly, I was hoping to find an out-of-the-way cave full of polychromatic pictographs - a rarity in these parts of the Mojave - until I stumbled upon a photo of a rabbit petroglyph that really got my attention.
Probably a more modern pecking, but sooo cute, I just had to see it!
(photo credit Jim ▮▮▮▮ )
Wanting to get an early start to the day - by the time we were done, we would cover more than 15 miles on foot - we decided the best chance for success was to camp somewhere near to the trailhead so we could get a pre-sunrise start in the morning.
Searching for a camp site.
The spot we found was a little closer to the road than we would have preferred, but having seen no other people in Greenwater Valley, we figured our chances of getting dusted overnight were slim to none.
Staged.
A "pro" tip for all of us that use rocks to level our trucks. If you can't find a stack that is the perfect height, drive part way up onto a stack that is too tall, and then cradle the tire by shoving another rock under the opposite side. Using this technique, you can get nearly any height you desire.
Prior to drifting off to sleep, I'd alerted @mrs.turbodb to the fact that I hoped we could get up a little earlier than usual. Our first search of the day was for petroglyphs, and they - really, most rock art - are easier to photograph when there aren't harsh shadows getting in the way. With a little more than a mile of hiking, I hoped we could arrive 30 minutes before the sun crested the eastern horizon, allowing me to scurry around in search of a rabbit in the soft morning light.
Not only was she agreeable, but she also seemed supportive! Lucky me!
The search begins...
My alarm went off 90 minutes before sunrise. It was 5:00am, and it was still dark outside as we climbed down the ladder, bundled up, and grabbed our headlamps. We must have done a few other things as well, but by 5:30am we were headed down the wash and were hoping for the best!
As we approached the site - or what I hoped was the site at the time - I was worried that we might have gotten too early of a start. With no tripod in tow, it was looking like there might not be enough light to hand-hold photos!
A beautiful morning.
I knew the first set of symbols would be both easy to recognize and obviously not the work of those we were mostly here to see. It's common to find relatively recent petroglyphs intermingled with those from Native Americans, and though I'm never quite sure how to feel, those that are done tastefully and without intent to detract from the originals don't tend to bother me all that much.
Dated signatures of mid-century pioneers, names of old mining towns and their inhabitants, and ornate names of militiamen all seem fair game. This particular work seemed right on the edge to me.
From miners searching for copper, silver, or gold? Or from someone much more recent? With this image, it was hard to tell. Still, at least we knew we were in the right place.
Immediately, more of what we were looking for was visible from the wash. Binoculars in hand, my spotter headed down the wash as I climbed into the varnished rocks on the best Easter-egg hunt I could imagine.
When visiting rock art and ruin sites, be respectful.
This is most easily done by following the Leave No Trace principles; leaving the place exactly as you found it and taking with you only photographs and memories. In case that is not clear enough for some reason, here are examples of respectful behaviors:
Behind the bush.
Line after line.
Chain links.
Symbols.
Honeycomb.
Two suns.
Anthropomorphs and their tools.
Basket panel.
Snakes and water.
For nearly an hour - well past sunrise - we scoured the rocks for any sign of the rabbit, the cute little guy evading us no matter where we looked. Hoping that a different perspective would reveal his position, I descended from my position and met @mrs.turbodb on the opposite bank of the narrows. Perhaps there, with two of us alternating use of the binoculars, we'd spot the little guy before he scurried away.
From this angle, we got a great sense of how prolific the rock art really was.
Unable to spot the rascally rabbit, our search did turn up a few more panels we'd missed on our first couple passes through the area, and I dutifully set off to capture them.
I really liked this hooked atlatl and globe that were off by themselves.
Petroglyph sampler.
All in a line for some corn.
Soon, another 45 minutes had passed, and though my companion did her best to highlight how much we'd discovered - and how cool some of the glyphs were - I wasn't satisfied. It's funny how that works - when we have our sights set on a single aspect of a place - but ultimately, we called off the search and started back to camp. We had a much longer hike ahead of us, and though we'd gotten an early start, our extended search left both of us hungrier than we'd have preferred.
Irony at its best. Where's your likeness my friend?
Act two...
After filling our faces - and as a result, our bellies - with our favorite cereals and several servings of milk, I happened to get just enough service on my cell phone to find and load the rabbit photo that'd gotten my knickers in a bunch to begin with. Being able to see it - and the other photos "around" it in the trip report - I was sure I knew where to find it... if only we went back to look again.
Of course, only someone certifiably insane would undertake the same hike twice in the same morning, so @mrs.turbodb settled in with her Kindle while I raced back to the wash.
Once there, I quickly found the position of each photo, paying special attention to the photos immediately before and after the rabbit. Surely, I convinced myself, the rabbit must be between these two points.
It was not. Or, if it was, my eyesight has become even worse than I've feared. After another hour of searching, I tucked tail and headed back to camp. It was time to get on with our day.
Update: As I write this story, I now believe that I have a better sense for where the rabbit is, and it was not where I was looking. Obviously. The key, I believe, is that it was created at a different - more modern - time than the other glyphs, somewhere... a little more convenient for the artist.
Let's find a cave...
The second worst part of not finding the rabbit was my inability to claim success when I got back to the Tacoma. Flush with my failure, but knowing that we had another search to focus on, we loaded up and found our way to our next jumping off point. There, after setting up the solar panels, we once again wandered off into the desert, hoping the afternoon would prove more successful than our morning.
Here we go again! Wish we had some horses.
Not long after we set off, I happened to glance up just as this guy turned on the afterburners.
Our hike to the pictograph cave was significantly longer than our morning hike - or at least, than doing the morning hike one time - and as we walked down the wash, we remarked as to how much elevation we seemed to be dropping. That would all be "up" on the way back, but sometimes up is easier than down - at least on the knees - so we hoped that would be the case this time.
The wash was full of these geometric plants that are extremely difficult to photograph. (perhaps a buckwheat?)
Not the cave we were looking for.
After trapsing a few miles down the main wash, we finally reached the side canyon rumored to hold the cave. To our surprise, it contained a series of potholes that were filled with water. Some of them nearly two feet deep - after more than a week of no rain and warm temperatures - they offered a clue as to why people may have once called this particular side canyon, "home."
We didn't have to climb this fall, but boy was it fun. (left) | Could use a bit more water and pool at the bottom. (right)
Even with a reasonable idea of where the cave was, we didn't find it quickly. The GPS point I'd placed wasn't in quite the right spot, kicking off a search of all the caves in the area. By the time we were done, we found pictographs - and a few petroglyphs - in three additional caves sprinkled around the wash!
High cave.
Red sheep.
Sun and a half.
We weren't sure what the detailed figure on the right was, but we both thought the one on the left looked like a fish!
In addition to pictographs, we also found this bedrock mortero (left), grinding slick, and obsidian flakes (right).
In another cave, faint black bighorn sheep - only a few inches off the ground - were fading from centuries of splashed water.
As we roamed from cave to cave, eliminating one after another as the one we were looking for, I found a little voice in the back of my mind starting to wonder if our fate on this search would mirror that of our petroglyph hunt earlier in the day. I did my best to push it away, sure that we had to be close given the proliferation of evidence we were seeing around us.
On a small bench, circular rock alignment outlined what were once surely habitations.
Sun, moon, and water.
And then, nestled into the walls of the wash, hidden from our initial approach, we spotted the cave!
Found it!
Lots to see in there.
This spot right here.
The Red Man.
Black sheep.
Vivid stripes.
Eyelashes.
Family tree.
We spent quite a while nosing around in the cave, discovering new glyphs and curious figures with every passing minute. Eventually - as always happens - it was time to go, lest we find ourselves in the middle of the desert and miles from camp when the sun dropped below the horizon. It was 3:30pm in the afternoon, and our search had been a success!
Bat Mountain view on the way back from the pictograph cave.
We can make it if we race...
Turns out we made fantastic time back to the Tacoma, and with just under and hour until sunset, we headed north - to position ourselves for another early morning start - toward the pavement of CA-190.
Before reaching the highway, Greenwater Valley Road (aka Furnace Creek Wash Road) joins up with Dante's View Road, and as we slowed to let the train of cars returning from the summit pass in front of us, @mrs.turbodb reminded me that she'd never been to Dante's View.
Having myself visited only once - almost exactly one year earlier - to see Lake Manly at sunrise, we decided that heading up for sunset might be a great way to end the day. It would mean getting to camp - and making dinner - in the dark, but there's no better way to maximize your exploration time than to eek out ever last minute of daylight. Heck, we'd started the morning before the sun rose, we might as well end our evening after it set!
We arrived just as the shadows of the Panamints were set to climb the western flank of the Black Mountains.
I know that Dante's View is a popular destination for the typical Death Valley tourist, but it's never been all that compelling of a destination to me, the views mostly washed out and hazy during daylight hours.
Sunset, it turned out - was a different story. Mostly in shadow, the dusty haze that so often blankets Death Valley was less noticeable, and the bright white of Badwater offset the orange glow and silhouetted skyline spectacularly.
Panamint sunstar.
So small.
We hung out for about half an hour after the sun dropped below the Panamint Mountains, knowing that it wouldn't be until it hit the horizon that colors would play across the sky. Then, it was back down the mountain, both of us ready for dinner and bed.
Go figure, the graceful arc of the railing turned out to be my favorite part of this photo.
To camp we go.
An hour later, we'd find ourselves in a little spot we've called home on several previous adventures. Just outside the park, it's a convenient place for Furnace Creek area attractions, given the lack of dispersed camping in that part of the valley.
Our routine well practiced, we nestled the Tacoma behind a wind break before dinner and our sleeping arrangements were quickly deployed and consumed. The next would be our last day on this adventure, and - we hoped - one where we'd meet a Death Valley Giant.
What do you think?
The Whole Story
I tried to ID that plant, when I was there years ago. I was so charmed by how they looked like fairy trees. DV has many kinds of buckwheat, and that's what I thought too.
Nice! Glad we came to a similar conclusion. Here's one I've positively identified as buckwheat, when it's in its green state (and the trip report: Nemo Slot Canyon | Following Giants #3).
Outa many things I do enjoy, you will be missed the most…. Your documentary’s and effort add to the cost of all you do to record these historic locations very few understand the dedication and cost of this.
Wow, thanks so much. That put a huge smile on my face. So glad you enjoy the photos and trip reports; they are a lot of fun to experience (a couple times, since I get to be there and then do the processing/write-up), and I always love it when others appreciate them as well
Great pictographs, having seen some of DV's petroglyphs these are a real find. Rock art has moves down my list somewhat so I will enjoy your report rather than retracing your steps on this one. Also leaving the buckwheat ID to other members of your brain trust. 😁
Thanks! I know rock art isn’t everyone’s cup of tea (though, frankly, I mostly dislike tea), but for me, the ancient graffiti offers a nice bit of variety as compared to mines and cabins, and I love the hunt as well. (Assuming I find the glyphs by the end, lol.)
Very cool rock art. I found some out in the Mojave years ago, one of which was a barcode that someone added to the mix. It was a little disappointing.
About 20 years ago, I was on a huge ranch in south Texas that had the remains of an ancient indian village. There was a pile of burned yucca in a firepit that had apparently been sitting there for a thousand years or so. I lifted up the layers of yucca to find javelina rib bones with what looked like dry blood on them as well as a tiny, perfect bird point. There was a lot of pictographs all over the cliff walls.
Amazing place.
Wow, that ranch in Texas sound like a cool place to experience! With all the rock art tat is “theoretically accessible” on public land, I always wonder how much amazing stuff is “protected” by being mostly inaccessible on private land.
I’m sure that’s a double edged sword, with a lot of art on private land getting destroyed as landowners exploit their property, but surely there is some that happens to get “completely ignored,” and thus preserved.