Some Petroglyphs & Ancient Ruins of Comb Ridge, Part 1.

Sunday, 14^th January_Monday, 15^th January, 2018; Butler Wash, near Bluff, Utah.

C1654

“Sunset Skies Study #2”

(Canyonlands National Park, Utah)

Oil Study on Centurian Oil Primed Panel

5” x 7”

Click here to make this Your Own

The second of two sunset skies studies I did while in Canyonlands National Park.

(Take Note: for those of you who have signed up to be notified by email of new postings to this blog, you have been receiving not just a notification, but an actual copy of the new blog posting as the email.  As this does not show the images of the paintings in the best possible light, you should click on the title of the latest blog posting at the top of the post, and not the title of the painting itself; this will open up the actual blog itself, and you may then enjoy the paintings at their best.)

Butler Wash Road extends for 21 miles below the eastern slopes of Comb Ridge about 5 miles west of Bluff, Utah, and I am camped at the trailhead for the Crane Petroglyph Panel, two miles up from the southern entrance.  Thus I have not moved very far today.  The trail to the panel is indistinct across the slabs of rock, there being no cairns that I could see, but the occasional footprints that I found in the sandy spaces all lead towards the left-hand Canyon one sees from the trailhead.  I thought I was on the on another trail, but I met a couple from Grand Junction, CO, that pointed out the petroglyph to me, which I observed through my binoculars high on the cliffs above.  You can scramble up a ledge to get a closer look, but I wanted to find the trail for the Double Stack Ruin.

The Crane Petroglyph.

Oasis on the Slickrock.

That trailhead is a further 1.8 miles north and is marked by cairns across the slabs of rock you encounter, once you have negotiated three deep channels of Butler Wash.  Once across the slabs (about 250 yards), the trail descends into the canyon that eventually leads to the ruin, after meandering through the undergrowth on the canyon floor for a little over half a mile.  On the way the Canyon divides, and the left-hand fork is the one to take.  The Double Stack Ruin lies in an alcove in the north Canyon wall facing to the south.

The Granary, halfway up the cliff,
marked by its tiny triangular shadow.

Overview of Double Stack Ruin;
the Lower Ruin is behind the left two Junipers
and is in the shadow.  Note the triangle shadow
of the Granary at the extreme right.

It gets its name from the fact that one part of it (probably a granary), perches on a shelf of rock about 40 or 50 feet above the Canyon floor, and the main buildings of the ruin lie perhaps 25 yards further on, just above the floor.  There look to be 2 or 3 living spaces, and the others appear to be storage units.  When I think of a granary, I tend to think of a silo filled with grain, but I suspect that these storage spaces were not filled that way, but the foodstuffs stored were in baskets and Pots.  On the other hand it could be conceivable that some were filled with loose cobs of corn.  My thinking of the use of baskets and pottery jars would help to keep the mice at bay.  The granary up on the high shelf is approached along an ascending shelf of rock, which must have been a bit easier to negotiate a thousand years ago.  There might be some climbers today that might be able to scamper along that ledge, but I would have to see it before I would believe it.  I wonder if they sent one or two guys up there and the raised or lowered the storage pots by rope to fill it.

View of the Lower Ruin from below the Granary.

Closer.

When you enter the Lower ruin precinct there is a decent sized tree trunk embedded at each end within the masonry, at about waist high.  I was wondering what that might be for, when I spotted the tops of pilasters forming a circle, and I realized it must be a Kiva, and the tree trunk was the main roof beam, the lower part of the Kiva Being filled with collapsed rubble.

The Lower Ruin, with the Kiva’s Roof Tree.

Another view of the Roof Tree.

More of the Lower Ruin.

The access ledge to the Granary.

I wouldn’t want to try it.

On the trail to the ruin, at two different spots I passed two pole wickiups, of indeterminate age.  They could be anywhere from a few years to perhaps scores of years.  Just the poles remained in teepee like shape, but all the weather proofing materials of grasses and duff had long since disappeared.  Here are a couple of photos of similar structures in Larry Dean Olson’s, “Outdoor Survival Skills.”  It was interesting to see this sort of shelter in the flesh, as I have only seen them in pictures; kind of like finding an old trappers cabin, in the Northwoods, or the mountains.  And so … to camp, which is on a peninsula angling out into the wash, and as I said at the beginning, the trail to the Crane Petroglyph (also known as ‘Big Bird’ panel), begins here.

Wickiup.

The Pigments used in the painting:

Imprimatura: Rublev Ercolano Red;

No Drawing

Pigments: W&N Cerulean, Cobalt & Ultramarine Deep Blues, Cadmiums Yellow Pale and Orange;

Rublev: Ercolano Red, Purple Ochre, Lead White #2.

Found … Recapture Pocket.

Friday, 12^th January_Sunday, 14^th January, 2018; Recapture Pocket, Utah.

C1653

“Sunset Skies Study #1”

(Canyonlands National Park, Utah)

Oil Study on Centurian Oil Primed Panel

5” x 7”

Click here to make this Your Own

The first of two sunset skies studies I did while in Canyonlands National Park, Utah.

(Take Note: for those of you who have signed up to be notified by email of new postings to this blog, you have been receiving not just a notification, but an actual copy of the new blog posting as the email.  As this does not show the images of the paintings in the best possible light, you should click on the title of the latest blog posting at the top of the post, and not the title of the painting itself; this will open up the actual blog itself, and you may then enjoy the paintings at their best.)

Back in October 2013 (the 14^th to be exact), was my first night in the deserts of the Southwest.  I had come down from the San Juan Mountains, in Colorado, where I had been waiting for the government shutdown to end, so I could visit some of the National Parks, on my way back to Oregon, where I had to be by the end of that month for an exhibition.  Time was getting short, so I had to move, and passing by a closed Mesa Verde, and drove into southeastern Utah.  I was close to Recapture Pocket near Bluff, Utah, and although I thought I was in part of it, I was not.  I was about a mile or so to the east of it, on the wrong side of the wash, and though I had a very pleasant night, with a quarter Moon lighting the night.  The painting (seen here), was done the next morning, and as it happens, Recapture Pocket is below the high ground on the horizon.  If only I had known.  As I negotiated the rough and sandy track back out from my campsite, I met a small SUV, coming in.  He was also looking for Recapture Pocket, and was from Reno, Nevada.  I told him it might be further back and up a wash I had seen, but couldn’t be sure … turns out I misdirected him.

In Recapture Pocket.

Armed with a little more information, than last time, I managed to come straight to it yesterday (as I write this), about an hour before sundown.  Today I strolled through mushrooms and goblins of stone taking photographs … all day.  With the changing light, as the Sun crossed the sky, photo-ops kept appearing, even when I’d already been through a section earlier.  It warmed up into the low fifties, feeling even warmer in the Sun, but even at 15:00 there could be found patches of last night’s frost in shady spots.  It’s a lesson in geologic time here as you can see the various stages of the erosion of these fantastic formations, from full fledged dikes, pillars and mushrooms, to the lumped remnant of the softer rock about knee high with the mushroom capstone lying close by, or even still upon it.  There are also formations like several columns in a row, resembling Egyptian columns, rather than Roman Arches, but some of these rows stood like a broken Roman aqueduct, such as I have seen in a painting by Corot, from his time spent in Rome as a young man; but of course with Egyptian columns.

Egyptian Aqueduct?

As I wandered around, I wondered what it is about this place that kept me on an all day photo-recon in what is, after all, a quite limited area.  And at first glance it is reminiscent of an old abandoned quarry, or a stony gravel pit, albeit with weird formations.  It does not have the grandeur of the fins of Arches NP, or the Needles of Canyonlands NP, but that is just it; Recapture Pocket is a more personal space … a more human scale, and for all that, more accessible.  By the way, I still haven’t found out why it is called Recapture Pocket.

Mushroom Remnant.

The vegetation is sparse, but there is life here; rabbits … I saw their tracks; probably coyotes, and the odd Raven and birds of prey … no doubt rodents as well.  I came across a possible rabbit snatch, or maybe an attempt.  There were two claw marks in the sand, and a rabbit track just in front.  These were like a bird of prey had missed his rabbit, leaving a pair of talon tracks in the sand, but since there was only one set of four rabbit paw prints, perhaps the raptor got him on the way up as he recovered from his miss.  There were no other tracks in the area.  The rabbit tracks were quite deep, as though he was getting traction after spotting the incoming bird.  Perhaps he escaped, as I did notice in my own tracks that the sand changed hardness from one area to the next, sometimes leaving a deep track and the next a light impression.  With a rabbit after the first startled imprint, the following footsteps might not have left an impression; but I lean towards the successful hunt on the upwards recovery … I’ll never know.

Kill Site, or did the Rabbit getaway?

The Pigments used in the painting:

Imprimatura: Rublev Ercolano Red;

No Drawing

Pigments: W&N Cerulean, Cobalt & Ultramarine Deep Blues, Cadmiums Yellow Pale and Orange;

Rublev: Ercolano Red, Purple Ochre, Lead White #2.