Saturday & Sunday, January 25-26, 2025
Even though Diane had just returned home on Wednesday after spending a week-and-a-half in Hawaii at a conference for work and hadn’t even finished unpacking from the trip, she was ready to join me in the much colder temperatures of southern Utah this weekend so we could explore the canyons found around the edges of the Bears Ears National Monument together. We left home early on Saturday morning and then spent the rest of the weekend wandering through some canyons along the Borderlands of the Bears Ears Country in search of ruins and rock art. These are just some photos of what we saw.
It was overcast for much of the weekend, but we were lucky to catch a little blue in the sky when we spotted this little ruin on the ledge.
Hiking down the sandy wash of a side canyon…
These mud streaks along the wash caught my eye.
We saw quite a few potsherds scattered along the bottoms of the canyons.
Diane spotted this high ruin above us that looked pretty inaccessible.
Cracks in the Mud
Walled In Ruin
Fading Pictographs
Frozen Waterfall
We climbed up to a large alcove that contained this set of ruins.
We came across this large grinding stone as we hiked higher into the alcove.
These incised lines at the back of the alcove were also very interesting.
Sandstone Snail
Here’s an unusual historic carving we spotted at the bottom of a boulder.
Jigsaw Puzzle
Broken Boulder Petroglyphs
Broken Piece
Spirals On a Boulder
Duckhead Figure with an Atlatl
It was nice to revisit these impressive horses again.
Yei-be-chai
Mud Cracks
This carving of a cradleboard on the ground is most likely Ute.
This faint design was hard to see and we almost missed it hidden behind some trees.
Pumpkin Head Panel
Pumpkin Head
I continue to enjoy looking at all of your photographs! I loved your mudstreaked photo from your recent trip and also found it satisfying to see that one can still discover potsherds. Your photo of the yei-be-chai was pretty cool!