Kachina Natural Bridge, Touch Of Fall

Kachina Bridge, from above the southwest buttress. Just a few cottonwood colors starting.

Mid September, and time to pay another visit down in White Canyon to Kachina Bridge at Natural Bridges National Monument in southeast Utah.

Unseasonably warm, after some sweet autumn-like weather the week before. But it’s temporary. The sun continues its arc toward the south, the days grow shorter and shorter, the cooling nights longer.

At the bottom of the trail, 400 feet below the rim, I once again savor the massive stone colossus’ shade. A nice breeze formed by its opening, almost 200 feet wide. I drop my pack to let my sweaty shirt back do some evaporative cooling.

Reflection pool beside Kachina Bridge, White Canyon.

Underneath Kachina Natural Bridge

Walking underneath Kachina Bridge gives you a sense of just how small and temporary you are. About how long it took moving water to carve its way through the massive fin of sandstone until it could go through it rather than around.

White Canyon downstream from Kachina Natural Bridge.

Hiking downstream from Kachina Bridge, pools of water were still left from the last rain. The stream banks are a linear oasis between the solid rock canyon walls.

“Wrong Way” warning sign downstream from Kachina Bridge.

A sign along the stream bank attempts to guide hikers that the trail to Owachomo Bridge is not by bushwacking down White Canyon. Go back partway up toward the rim and look for the sign pointing toward Owachomo.

Somewhere in White Canyon.

Hiking in White Canyon can be a lesson in route finding. Sometimes a trail is marked and obvious. Other times it is not. But exploring the canyon affords many great views of the sandstone walls.

Hikers beneath Kachina Natural Bridge.

People in the photo gives a true sense of scale of the bridge.

Ruin at Kachina Natural Bridge. Note the handprints on the cliff wall and the ghostly pictographs painted inside the low adobe structure.

A short scramble up a steep sand bank allows you to see some Ancestral Puebloan ruins. Handprints painted on the cliff wall (pictographs) and the low adobe structure at its base, with ghostly images painted inside. This would have been made about 800 years ago. Notice how a later (how much later?) debris flow of muddy water occurred that covered over parts of the handprints.

Ghost-like pictographs on the adobe structure.

Ancient inscriptions (petroglyphs) pecked into the sandstone on Kachina Natural Bridge buttress.

On the buttress of Kachina Bridge itself are petroglyphs, the term for figures pecked into the sandstone face. A vulture or maybe a condor, a twin bodied desert bighorn sheep. What else can you guess here? The Hopi can trace their clans, which even have societies within those clans, to the figures left behind at Natural Bridges. Their knowledge is that vast and detailed.

Thankfully, these inscriptions are far out of reach of visitors. The stream has continued its downcutting through the centuries. Or maybe the ancient ones built a ladder to get up there. Don’t laugh; they built and used ladders. The remains of one of them is still in the park. I won’t tell you where. I only share photos of ancient ruins that the Park Rangers are allowed to tell visitors about. As far as all of the other ones I have hiked to in the park, those are top secret as far as I’m concerned. I value and respect them, that I had the privilege to see them in person.

Kachina Natural Bridge approach, in summer.

Finally, autumn leaves turn color and fall to the ground. Days are much shorter already and winter is just around the corner.

Kachina Natural Bridge approach, November.

Single-leaf ash, fall colors.

Single-leaf ash (Fraxinus anomala) is a desert tree. Yes. A small tree, but beautiful during spring, summer and fall. It grows in wet nooks at Natural Bridges.

Single-Leaf Ash in summer. Note the opposite leafing pattern, same as in all ash trees. What a surprise to see a short member of the Fraxinus species in the desert. Most of us are used to ash trees being large beautiful shade trees in towns and cities.

Fall colors and reflection, framed by Kachina Natural Bridge.

© Copyright 2023 Stephen J. Krieg. Photos from 2015.

Step House Ancestral Site, Mesa Verde

Step House site from an overlook, Wetherill Mesa, Mesa Verde National Park.

At Mesa Verde National Park you can only visit the cliff dwellings on-site as part of a Ranger-led tour. To protect them from the high numbers of visitors that want to see them these days. (If you don’t care for such a one or two hour trek, there are nice overlooks to get photos from above).

Paved path down to Step House alcove site, Wetherill Mesa.

The Ranger-led tours only cost $5 per person, per tour. A nominal fee. But you have to buy your tickets in person at the park, or in Cortez, not online. You can buy them locally up to two days in advance, though.

Step House site, looking up at the ancient stone steps hugging the face of the alcove.

There is one notable exception: the Step House site on Wetherill Mesa. You don’t need to buy a ticket, because they station a Ranger down there from 9am to 4pm to both protect the site and to answer questions for visitors.

The cliff dwelling pueblo at Step House, Wetherill Mesa.

Step House is also an easy walk, on a paved path. Not only that, but it has been developed so as to show off two very distinct periods of habitation. Most noticeable is the cliff dwelling pueblo, which was the later period, just before they exited the area around 1300 A.D. But long before that, the pre-puebloans, who had not yet learned how to fire pottery, let alone build habitable stonework pueblos, lived on the same site in pit houses.

Reconstructed pit house dwelling at Step House.

And at Step House a pit house has been reconstructed to give you a much better idea of what that had looked like. It’s a wonderful two-for-one walk, just a stone’s throw from the parking lot.

Step house alcove panorama, Wetherill Mesa.

Photo location: Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado.

© Copyright Stephen J. Krieg

Winter Solstice Time at Canyonlands

Highway 211 through the Indian Creek Recreation Area. La Sal Mountains in the distance.

Winter Solstice occurred on December 21 this year. Supposedly the shortest day and longest night of the year.

However, the day length had been stuck at 9 hours and 32 minutes since December 19, and won’t be a full minute longer until Christmas, Dec. 25, when it will be 9 hrs. 33 min. for four days. Yes, a whole minute longer.

Upper Indian Creek area of Highway 211 east of the Needles.

Just two days after that, on New Years Eve, the daylight will be two minutes longer than on Christmas Day, at a whopping 9 hrs. 35 minutes! You can follow along at sites such as sunrisesunset.com. The days start getting longer faster the further they get past Solstice, but until then it rather creeps along. The dead of winter begins.

Snowy sandstone cliffs above Indian Creek Recreation Area.

The day before Winter Solstice I drove in to the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park. It’s only an hour’s drive from my home, and I hadn’t been there lately. The roads were cleared from a recent snowstorm, so I was sure it would be fun. Sunny and calm.

Sandstone cliffs and snow along Highway 211.

Driving north from Monticello, Utah on U.S. 191 it’s only about 15 minutes to the turnoff onto Utah Route 211, the highway into the Needles District. Route 211 parallels the Indian Creek drainage before it finally empties into the Colorado River inside the park. The easternmost part of the drive was still high enough in elevation to have snow on the cliffs, under a trademark Utah high desert blue sky.

Newspaper Rock site, from the parking lot.

Roughly halfway to the Canyonlands National Park entrance is the famous Newspaper Rock archaeological site. There is a parking lot with restrooms and a very short walk to this amazing petroglyph panel.

In winter the sun’s angle is low enough to keep much of the petroglyph panel in sunlight.

I’m not wild about the name “Newspaper Rock”, because it conjures up a modern image of ink on newsprint. Instead, these are ancient symbols laboriously pecked into rock, some of which could well be 2,000 years old. And they last infinitely longer than ink or paper.

This was the perfect time to visit the site, with the fresh snow, the low angle of the December sun lighting up the panel, and only one other visitor for a few minutes. It would make for photos much different than the typical ones you see over and over of this site.

Newspaper Rock in winter.

The rock panel is perfect: Dark patina (think rock “varnish”) on a smooth sandstone face, with an overhang above to shade the panel for most of the year, which serves to slow the weathering process. Pecking through the patina reveals the much lighter sandstone beneath, making the image pop out visually.

Newspaper Rock petroglyph panel, upper portion. (Click on image for larger).

So many symbols that it is mind boggling. Animals, tracks, imposing horned humanoid figures (shamans in sacred regalia? Alien beings from outer space?).

Newspaper Rock petroglyph panel, lower portion. (Click on image for larger).

Not all these depictions are prehistoric. Anything showing a horse, or a wagon wheel, is after the Spanish first arrived in North America in the 1600s. There are even some fairly modern dates added, something which is strongly discouraged by the steel fence keeping visitors a safe distance away from the panel.

Sun and shadow made for a nice vertical composition of petroglyphs and rock angles. Notice that some footprints that have six toes.

From the highway into the Needles District, a nice view of the snowy summits of the La Sal Mountains to the northeast near Moab, peeking above the red rock layers along the lower Indian Creek Valley.

Highway 211 through the Indian Creek Recreation Area. La Sal Mountains in distance.

At the Needles Visitor Center, all was quiet. The remoteness of Canyonlands National Park means that wintertime is very off season, so there aren’t enough visitors to keep the VC open at this time of year. No entrance fee, just drive on in. The restrooms do remain open, and you can get water and park brochures and maps. The campground is open year round.

Not far past the Visitor Center is a turnout for the Roadside Ruin. Again, not the best of names. I made me expect some rubble of a pueblo foundation. Instead, it’s a very nice and easy walk to a very well preserved granary tucked into a small out of sight alcove.

“Roadside Ruin” ancestral granary site, Needles District, Canyonlands National Park.

The interpretive sign for Roadside Ruin said that stone-and-mortar pueblo dwellings hadn’t been found in this area, indicating that it was intensely farmed (corn, beans, squash) and the dried grains stored in the granaries. So it was used in the growing season, not year around.

“Roadside Ruin” ancestral granary, Needles District, Canyonlands National Park.

The doorway into the granary is through the roof. Otherwise they might have built the walls up until it met the roof of the alcove, and put the door into the side. Sometimes the ancient ones did, sometimes they didn’t.

The Needles District of Canyonlands is a hiker’s and four wheeler’s paradise. But on this day I had elsewhere to go. So I will be back throughout the winter to enjoy the lack of crowds.

© Copyright 2016 Stephen J. Krieg

 

Revisiting the Mysterious Moki Queen

Closeup of the “Moki Queen” pictograph at Hog Spring, Utah.

Driving across the vast upper reaches of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in southeast Utah leaves one to ponder many things.

One of those things is an ancient pictograph that today is called the “Moki (or Moqui) Queen”, a figure painted on the back wall of a sandstone alcove in North Wash, between Hite Crossing and Hanksville, Utah.

How old is she (I mean “it”)? The Barrier Canyon Style is much older than the petroglyphs and pictographs of the Ancestral Puebloans (formerly called Anasazi). The Moki Queen should be at least 1,000 years old. Not bad for not being in a climate controlled museum, huh? Actually, the high desert canyon country of southern Utah is a museum due to its climate. Dry most of the time. Cold winters, too. A north facing stone alcove such as this one has an overhanging cliff that even keeps most of the rain and snow out. And whoever painted this must have know which local pigments would last the longest.

The setting of the Moki Queen and…whatever animal is depicted with her. And what other faces can you see?

The Moki Queen is actually visible from Highway 95 near Hog Spring Rest Area. I’ve driven by “her” a number of times, and with the springtime leaves coming out I decided it was time to pause once again and pay my regards.

A sandstone alcove such as the one housing the Moki Queen.

Since the people that painted her had no written language, no one can say for sure what this obviously carefully depicted image meant to them. A revered matriarch of a tribe or clan? A vision of a shaman?

The Moki Queen panel from another angle.

Walking back into that alcove always gives me a sense of reverence. It’s a very isolated place, despite being near a state highway. So far I’ve always had the privilege of being there alone. The noise of other visitors would seem wrong to me. So I pay my respects, notice what I can that I didn’t last time, and wordlessly retreat to my vehicle back out on the highway not that far away.

But not without spending a bit of time in North Wash itself. The little stream still flowing with clear springtime runoff. The cottonwood trees leafing out with their bright green counterpoint to the red rock layers all around.

North Wash in springtime glory.

Photo location: North Wash, southeast Utah south of Hanksville.

© Copyright 2016 Stephen J. Krieg

It Looks Better Going The Other Way

Hite entrance sign, just off Utah Hwy. 95, Glen Canyon.

In Edward Abbey’s classic Desert Solitaire, about his experiences as a seasonal park ranger in then-Arches National Monument (now National Park) in the 1960s, he replied to visitors incensed at having to drive back out the same way they came in, saying “It looks better going the other way”.

Maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t. But the more time you spend somewhere the more you will notice, that’s for sure.

And soon after my most recent post “Hanksville to Hite”, I got another opportunity to drive the other way. From Hite to Hanksville. As always I enjoyed it.

Convenience store at Hite ranger station, on an overcast spring morning.

Hite is where the Ranger Station is in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. The very upper end of what had been Lake Powell. Now the lake is low enough that the Colorado River at Hite is free flowing again. Maybe always will be.

There is no open Visitor Center at Hite anymore. You might catch the National Park Service law enforcement ranger there, but probably not. He will usually be out patrolling his region of the park.

There is a convenience store there, open in the summer, and gas pumps open year around. If the pump isn’t hung up with no one there to reset it. I have seen that happen.

Hwy. 95 west of HIte, along the Colorado River.

Hite is named for Cass Hite, a legendary explorer, prospector, and mining claims promoter who lived in, loved the area, and died there. The townsite named after him is beneath the waters of Lake Powell, even today. So is his grave, I believe, at Ticaboo.

Speaking of Edward Abbey, if you’ve read his novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, it’s all situated in this area. Smack dab right here, including the climax of the book. When I first read it, so long ago, I had no idea of where this locale was. Not like I do now.

Cross-bedded “petrified” sand dunes of Cedar Mesa Sandstone along the Dirty Devil River, west of Hite, Utah.

I recently had to re-read the book after a visitor came in and asked: “Which site in your campground (in Natural Bridges) did Hayduke stay at?” I had to admit that I didn’t know. The answer: it doesn’t give a site number in the novel. Besides, it wasn’t just George Hayduke, it was all four members of the gang.

So Edward Abbey’s hilarious, violent, shocking, thought provoking, extremist story of eco-saboteurs (I am not a proponent of such) was on my mind even more on this drive.

Utah Hwy. 95 from Hite Overlook.

The Gang was protesting the seemingly unbridled commercial development of the desert wilderness in general, and Glen Canyon in particular. They tried to stop the completion of Highway 95 from Blanding to the Colorado River. They tried to take out two of the three bridges crossing the canyon (at White Canyon, and on the other side of the Colorado River at the Dirty Devil River). But the law was closing in fast and they tried to make their escape up into the Maze district of Canyonlands National Park, one of the most rugged areas of desert canyon country on earth.

Colorado River below Narrow Canyon, from Hite Overlook.

Highway 95 was completed (in reality) to Glen Canyon. A lot of vacationers, especially boaters, enjoyed the new marina facilities at Hite. For some decades. But then the projections of how much water the Colorado River really can provide turned out to be a pipe dream. The lake lowered and lowered. The Hite Marina was removed, and the area became almost as lonely as when Cass Hite lived there in the horse and buggy days. You might say things have come rather full circle. At least significantly so.

Canyon rimrock, Hite Overlook.

Highway 95 is still one of the most lonely areas in the state of Utah. Severe and stark, almost bare landscapes devoid of all but a few low growing shrubs once in a while. Wide open skies. Red rock canyons and deep blue skies. The snow capped peaks of the Henry Mountains to the northwest.

Utah canyon country. Abbey country.

Photo location: Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, southeast Utah.

© Copyright 2016 Stephen J. Krieg