Friday – Sunday, October 14-16, 2016
Warm morning light strikes the rim of a shallow canyon in the Esplanade.
A few weeks ago Alan contacted me and invited me on a backpacking trip to visit a few Grand Canyon Polychrome (Esplanade Style) rock art sites near the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. I have been wanting to find and visit more of these amazing locations since my first visit to the Shamans Gallery a few years back, so I took him up on the offer. Luckily, I didn’t have anything planned for this particular weekend that couldn’t easily be moved to another. While driving all the way down to the Arizona Strip from Grand Junction is longer than I prefer to go for just a weekend trip, I thought it was worth it to visit these great rock art sites and to meet up with some new friends. Enjoy a few photos from the weekend…
Alan hikes ahead of me as we make our way down to the Esplanade. We were unsure if there would be any water along our route, so we had to carry enough for the weekend. I had an extra four liters in my pack.
The Four Cairn Site was very impressive.
A couple photos from the Atlas Site.
A few photos from the White Sheep Site.
Many of the panels are found underneath shallow overhangs like this.
The Red Deer Site was a bit faded, but still very cool.
Camping on a slickrock bench.
Nearing the end of our hike on Saturday afternoon we had not encountered any water until we stumbled across these two potholes. This was the only water we would see all weekend.
We ended up camping near this panel of more recent Anasazi pictographs.
The Esplanade in the morning.
Hiking back to the vehicles on Sunday morning.
