This is a nice little site tucked into a quiet corner with development all around. Unfortunately it hasn’t escaped unscathed, even though it is mostly intact.
Somewhere on the Volcanic Tablelands tumbled breccia cliffs lines both sides of a little canyon. On the north side of this canyon, a little above the canyon floor, there is a rock shelter that has been augmented with a low rock wall.
Here is a little cave that was an unexpected boon. Earlier in the afternoon we had finally hunted down a rather extensive petroglyph site and were walking back towards our vehicle during the golden hour, taking a straight cut across country instead of the circuitous route that helped us find our earlier quarry.
During the late winter we had the opportunity to return to the “Curious Crack” site. On the first trip we found petroglyphs but this time we peered closely at the nearby cliffs because there are apparently some pictographs in the area that we missed during our first visit.
This site is no secret – the local community knows all about it. Several dirt roads lead up to it and a stone boundary keeps away the vehicles. The ground around the site is scattered with modern debris – shotgun shells, bottles, broken glass – and the petroglyphs themselves have been vandalized by tracing over them and in one case by carving crude additions into the rock. A sign warns rock climbers away from the petroglyphs but the site is nonetheless covered in climbing talc and some of the vandalism is far enough above ground that it was likely done by a climber.
That’s a depressing introduction, isn’t it? Don’t let that scare you away – this site is still really interesting and has some amazing and unique features! For example, the number of cupules and mortars ground into the rock at this site is amazing. How much time did it take to make them all, and what meaning did they have?
The petroglyphs themselves are big and impressive despite the vandalism. Most of them have been filled in with red pigment, an uncommon feature for petroglyphs. There are a few other sites in the same area where the petroglyphs have also been carefully painted in with red pigment.
The Volcanic Tablelands north of Bishop is one of those places you either know and love or have no idea exists.
For rock climbers and desert wanderers it is an exciting spot, offering many problems to work and remote places to explore, respectively.
For everyone else it is dreadfully dull, something to be zipped by ( going downhill ) or crept past ( going uphill ) as you navigate the steep Sherwin Grade on the nearby US 395.
In many ways the shield design is the defining element found in the Great Basin. Rectilinear elements are also really common – not to mention the famous Coso bighorn sheep representations further south – but the shield design pops up at sites all over the region.
This particular site consists of almost nothing but shield designs. The main site consists of eleven well-defined shields on a large upright boulder with a smooth, level north face, and some less well-executed elements lower on the same rock face.
These petroglyphs are found along a sandstone cliff on the eastern side of Chalfant valley. Because sandstone is a relatively soft rock, most of the designs are deeply incised, often with V-shaped grooves, in contrast to the more shallowly ‘pecked’ petroglyphs one sees in harder rock such as volcanic basalt. Since most other petroglyph sites in the area are in volcanic basalt, this site is something of an outlier.
This site stretches about a quarter of a mile along a north-south wash. The sandstone bluff it is carved on sits on the western side of the wash. The designs are mostly high off the ground, suggesting that the bottom of the wash has been eroded down since the petroglyphs were carved.
The following series of photographs follows the wash south to north, taking in the various designs on the cliff faces.
This is one of the most extensive sites I’ve visited to date. I have been on the lookout for it for a while, managing to narrow down my search via scraps of information gathered here and there … and also, mainly, by the time-honored tradition of simply not finding it, over and over! ( Hey – knowing where it isn’t also counts as narrowing down the search, right? )
Early one morning I was out hunting specifically for this site. I had a feeling that it wouldn’t be too hard to actually see if I could just find myself in the general vicinity of it, since the photographs I’d seen made it appear large enough to be visible from some distance away.
This site is enormous – not in terms of surface area as much as in the sheer number of panels and petroglyphs it contains. Around 500 elements are spread across about 25 separate panels on this volcanic outcropping.
As is common with known sites, this one has suffered vandalism. Some designs are defaced, often by gunshots, and some panels have crude designs scratched on them. Fortunately, the majority of the site is still intact.
In the following overview, the path taken around the formation starts at the center of an east-facing alcove and proceeds widdershins (anti-clockwise). The photos follow in that same order.
Continue reading