Tag Archives: bedrock mortars

Wasp Nest Cave Pictographs

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We went hiking in the foothills of the Sierra on an absolutely perfect day – blue skies, fluffy clouds, a light breeze, an ambient temperature that was neither hot nor cold. Some distance from the trailhead, where the trail had petered out and we were going cross country, hopping or wading through the creek we were following, we came across something very unusual – a tubular cave in a small granite outcropping.

We do not pass such things by, so we climbed up and had a look. And we found pictographs, painted around the cave entrance and on the ceiling!

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“Desolation of Disappointment” Petroglyphs

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Early Autumn can be pretty toasty in California’s desert regions, and last September saw us head out to a petroglyph site while wishing the weather was maybe 15 to 20 degrees cooler. On top of that, we weren’t sure if what we would find would be worth it! We’d read some site descriptions from other visitors, and while those descriptions stressed the sheer quantity of petroglyphs, they also mentioned disquieting phrases like “poorly pecked” and “indistinct”. Still, we wouldn’t know what was there until we went to look, would we?

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“High Sierra Meadows” Pictographs

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Several of the sites I’ve written about ( and some of the ones I haven’t written about and hope to one day write about! ) are sites that I’ve been hunting for a while: through tedious and meticulous research I gradually build up an idea of where I should go look, and then I head out and look and look and look, and often come away with no more than a pile of “well, it is not here, here or here” to add to my data set!

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“Shelf Life” Pictographs

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This is one of the earliest pictograph sites I found, right at the beginning of my interest in hunting for these sites. Back then I carried a dinky compact camera in my pocket and very little knowledge of site photography in my head.

Despite their poor quality ( so poor that I’d never actually post them here! ) I enjoy looking at the photos I took of this site back then because they remind me vividly of what it felt like to discover this site for the first time – the excitement of peering up at it in the gathering dusk and realizing that the overhang contained paintings, the hurried scurrying about trying to find a route up, and finally peering into the shelter with a big smile before snapping a few hurried shots and hightailing it out of there before dark traps me in the backcountry. ( Back then I seemingly had a talent for discovering sites at the last possible moment, turning a sweaty day of frustration into a highlight at the last moment. )

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“Petroglyphs and Pictographs and Mortars, Oh My!” Site

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Often a site consists of a handful of pictographs, or a few petroglyphs, or perhaps a granite slab hosting bedrock mortars. Sometimes, the mortars and the pictographs go together. Other times, there might be grinding slicks close to petroglyphs.

This is the first time I’ve found all three in one location!

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“Lone Woman of the Cave” Pictographs

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I made my first acquaintance with “The Lone Woman of the Cave” a few years ago as I hurried out of the backcountry with the sun setting behind the hills. Though it was a pleasant enough evening there was a fall chill in the air and a day of exploring made my limbs heavy. It was a good time to be leaving the desert for the comforts of civilization.

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“Cornerstone” Pictographs

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This little site gave me a surprisingly hard time!

For starters, the first time I was in the area I missed discovering it by about 150 yards. During that visit I was hunting for a somewhat well-known pictograph site that is very close to this one, forming part of the same habitation complex. I was hunting all along a drainage for that site, and had forged about as far as I could go when finally, there it was! By the time the photography for that site was done it was high time for lunch and my companion was in no mood for more rocks so we headed back and had a great lunch at the local microbrewery, instead of exploring the area more.

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“Fall Funnel” Petroglyphs

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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? )

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“Clock Rock” Pictographs

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These pictographs survive serendipitously on a now protected sliver of land in Tübatulabal territory, tucked onto the toes of a hill not all that far out of reach of the high water line of the reservoir that occupies the valley they are found in – and not too far away either from a roadway that plowed straight through at least one occupation site in the nearby vicinity. They could easily have fallen prey to encroaching build-up as well.

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