This is a smallish site on the Volcanic Tablelands. We first found this site late one freezing winter morning. We had started our day driving out from June Lake and south down the 395, and it was a harrowing experience. Overnight snow left 6-8 inches of powder on the 395, which wasn’t closed yet, and it was still coming down hard as we eased down Deadman’s Summit in 4WD. While trying to tell road from snowbank I hoped that the name of the summit wasn’t about to become prophetic!
We had someone trailing behind us in the blowing snow, apparently content to follow us until our taillights either suddenly dropped off or jerked to a halt. I felt a little envious of the driver behind me – I was breaking trail and they only had to follow! And then, as happens, a beat-up old pickup truck came flying down the road out of nowhere and zipped past us as if it was a midsummer’s morning. It seem to always be beat-up old pickup trucks that get driven as if the weather holds no power over them. I wish I had that power, but in a nicer vehicle!
Just then we rounded a curve where the road changes to a drop-off on the right and a sharply rising median on the left. As we did so we lost all protection from the gusting wind, which promptly encased us in a genuine whiteout, blowing snow from the side of the road and from the hood straight into the windshield.
It was at that point that I simply popped straight through being afraid and went back to being mostly calm, even as I really wished I was somewhere else. I knew the road well enough to know that if I could keep us going straight in this white-out ( very slowly! ) we wouldn’t run off the road and into the guardrail on the cliff side, but would either find the higher median on the inside of the road, or, if I steered properly, we would reach another curve where the wind would be blocked and we would hopefully be able to see again.
And, as it often does, things worked out. We found the second curve and we could see again. We were now completely alone, driving slowly but steadily though a real winter landscape. Everything was white. I tried to steer to the least drifty parts of the narrow trench the road had become, picking 8 inches of powder over a foot or so. I thought briefly about how insane this was. The only way out was forward, so forward we went.
Eventually we reached the turn-off for the main road into Mammoth Lakes, and to my relief there was a steady stream of cars pouring out of Mammoth at the end of the weekend and heading home. At least now we were sharing icy, snowy roads with dozens and dozens of others! Yay! We joined the sudden steady crawl of traffic, and rejoiced that the drifts on the road were getting much less scary. Temperatures were dropping steadily into the low teens or single digits, and it was still snowing hard, but the accumulation was a lot less.
In this way we eventually made our way down below the snow line and into safety, descending the Sherman grade on the 395 north of Bishop. Without mishap, too, if you don’t count the moment where our windshield wipers froze and I was back to being unable to see anything, only this time with cars all around me! ( Tip: keep the vents full blast on your windshield even if your toes are freezing because it had dropped to 0F / -18C outside. It is more important to keep the windshield ice free than it is to keep your toes toasty! ) It was still a bit early for lunch but we decided we needed some fortification before we drove on, and thus we turned for the Tablelands, planning to spend a hour or two wandering before we returned to Bishop for lunch.
And that was when we found this little site, while wandering the Tablelands under an overcast sky and being relieved that we were no longer up in the snow.
The pictures I’m going to show you are actually from several months later, in spring, when we returned to the site. This time the Tablelands were a verdant green I haven’t seen before, thriving after a great rainy season. We were also right in the middle of some sort of butterfly life cycle event, with caterpillars all around.
In this picture you can see most of the different elements at this site. The split boulder in front has a single element on each side. In the back is a boulder with petroglyphs on its front face, and off to the left, above the large boulder lower left, there sits another boulder with petroglyphs on two faces.
A little bit closer. The main petroglyph boulder, here visible in the back, is pretty densely pecked with elements.
As we climb up towards the main boulder we pass between the two split boulders. Hmmm, this element looks a bit like the caterpillars a kid would draw, doesn’t it?
On the other side it looks like we have a more traditional shield element, though there is a suspicious-looking antenna poking off the left there. Each quadrant of the shield has small dots pecked in it, too.
Now we can look at the main panel. We see another circle with “antennas” here, though this one is solid. There are also some curved lines at the right bottom that might be a rainbow, and some other abstract Rectilinear elements. The cross lower left looks like two crossed dumbbells – the dumbbell element is fairly common in the Great Basin. I also think that the element that looks like a capital “I” might have been superimposed on the other elements, perhaps at the same time as everything else was pecked since the patination is about the same.
The curved elements. The upper two are pretty uniform and carefully pecked, the third is a bit more perfunctory.
The element just above the curved lines has a LOT of little pecked dots, spaced in rows.
The Rectilinear element at the very top has a tiny little dumbbell superimposed in its upper left corner.
The second petroglyph boulder has elements on two of its faces. Some common Great Basin petroglyph elements can be seen here, such as the bisected circle. We have some parallel curved lines here as well.
On this side the elements seem a bit less well-worked.
Nice little circle on this small rock face, though.
This rock face seems a bit better worked. Again we have an odd element that looks a bit like a caterpillar, some circles, the parallel curved lines … and of course, an anthropomorph as well.
A closer look at the anthropomorph and its closest neighbors.
With the site fully examined, we explore further away. At some point we find an overhang under the boulder that looks like it was used for an overnight camping spot, with some stones forming a wind break. The recent hollow in the sand makes me think that some animal had found this overhang convenient, too.
We climb up to a secondary shelf along one of the outcroppings and find this single cross-shaped petroglyph. I wonder if it is historic. We explore around it but we do not find anything else.
All along, even as we took the photographs I’ve showed, we had to be really careful not to step on the caterpillars crawling all over the rocks. For some pictures we even had to brush them off the petroglyphs before taking photos! Good thing I’m not super squeamish about bugs ( as long as they’re not arachnids. I don’t do those. )
These caterpillars are about set to start metamorphosing. We find them in piles at the foot of the cliffs, where the stronger ones climb high enough to find a crevice in which to form a cocoon. This guy ( or gal ) is well on its way to becoming a butterfly ( or maybe a moth ). I look closely and take pictures, trying not to be too grossed out at this miracle of nature.
A pile of caterpillars at the foot of the cliff. All of these climbed up the cliff but lost their footing and tumbled down, so they will have to start climbing again. I’m not sure if they’ll settle for a “good enough” spot, or if they will just exhaust themselves.
Some of them are still filling up on greenery. I spent a bit of time looking at caterpillar pictures on the internet, trying to find out what kind these were, but there’s a pretty low limit to how many caterpillars I want to see close up, so I never got an answer. And you have to look at this close-up picture of one, too. You’re welcome.
It was a beautiful day up on the Tablelands. Everything was brilliant green, with the snow-capped Sierra blue in the distance. What day to be outside, exploring!
Well, that was it! I hope you enjoyed visiting this site with us. If you find it, be sure to not disturb or damage it: leave it as you found it for the visitors to come. And mind the caterpillars!
Thanks for the adventure on this one!
That drive was definitely some Type 2 fun, haha. Character building experience! Finding some beautiful petroglyphs at the end of it was a very nice ending to the story.
Keep them coming! I don’t know how you do it but I love all your explorations. Thanks!