It was late March 2023 in the Mojave Desert, we explored Little Finland, the day before and this morning. After that, we drove to the Seven Keyholes Canyon for a short hike. After hiking the canyon, and looking for petroglyphs, we had lunch and made our way to the petroglyph area west of Whitney Pockets.
Seven Keyholes Canyon Area
There were only a few flowers blooming, since it was colder than normal this spring. The hike to the canyon was short, but it had a steep downhill section with loose rock. I wasn’t looking forward to the climb back up, losing traction in the loose rock. From what I read, they are not sure what formed the curvature to the rocks on the bottom of the canyon. It is not an area that would have had water flow, like the Subway in Zion NP.
When you turn around and start hiking back, you can see the same shape as an old-fashioned keyhole, which is why it was named Keyhole Canyon.
There were multiple caves eroded into the Aztec/Navajo Sandstone, in the rocks outside the canyon. I thought the swirls inside this one were interesting.
There were multiple caves eroded into the sandstone as well.
I had read that there were a few petroglyph panels nearby, so we started searching for rock art. You have to wonder how much is missing due to erosion, being sandblasted and flaking away.
From the National Park Website: “A complete coat of manganese-rich desert varnish takes thousands of years, so it is rarely found on easily eroded surfaces”.
“The color of rock varnish depends on the relative amounts of manganese and iron in it: manganese-rich varnishes are black; iron-rich varnishes are red or orange; varnishes with similar amounts of manganese and iron are some shade of brown. Varnish surfaces tend to be shiny when the varnish is smooth and rich in manganese”.
Pink sandstone under the desert varnish reveals a pink ram. The “Punk Rock Pink” fad started a lot sooner than I thought.
Petroglyph Area
The drive from Seven Keyholes to the petroglyph area is a short drive, but a rough road. It took over an hour to go about 10 miles. We needed 4wd on one short hill, just to keep the tires from spinning, but a high clearance 2wd could have driven the road. Whereas Little Finland is made up of red sandstone, the petroglyph area has tan, brown, red, pink and light orange colored sandstone. The rock formations are very much like Valley of Fire State Park, just 20 miles to the west, across the Overton Arm of Lake Mead.
Gold Butte National Monument was more enjoyable, than The Valley of Fire, since we weren’t sharing it with 1000 other people. From about 6:00 pm that night until 11:00 am the next morning, we did not see another person, or hear another vehicle. Although it is on the flight pattern to Las Vegas, making night photography challenging with all the planes blinking away in the sky.
The trail from the parking area is wide and fairly flat, but the trail soon fades out. At that point, you need to start hiking over the rocks and finding a way through them. There is a small path leading toward an open-ended cave, you need to go through it to get to the Falling Man petroglyph. There are a few petroglyphs near the cave and some on the walls of the cave too.
Crawling through the cave, I was on my hands and knees, and my camera bag scuffed the top of the cave a couple of times. Then you have to scramble down a steep incline, where my 8-year-old grandson, Gauge, is standing. Once there, you have to scramble back up the rocks to a ledge to get around the rock face. I told him to “be careful, It is a long ways down, and if you fall you are going to get hurt”. He said, “I know Papa if I fall and hit my head, it will crack it open like an egg”. I did go back to help Vicki down the incline and maneuver toward the Falling Man petroglyph.
The Falling Man petroglyph is an unusual one, I have not read of any others like it. Based on the trail to get to it, I wondered if it was a warning or a memorial. A lot of the petroglyphs are 8 to 10 feet off the ground, with no good way to stand, while pecking away at the rock with a bone or antler. They must have used some sort of ladder to get there.
Gauge was really excited to find the rock art, he would wander ahead and shout out “I found some more” Meanwhile we were lagging behind, taking pictures and contemplating the meanings. I have since bought a book on petroglyphs trying to learn more about the meanings. As if you can determine the meaning, with no written guide from hundreds of years ago. One thing I read was that the atlatl (spear throwing lever) preceded the bow and arrow by hundreds of years. It was not until somewhere around 800 AD that the bow was being used. I saw one bow in all the petroglyphs in Gold Butte National Monument. Based on that information, the majority of them must be over 1300 years old.
There are several petroglyph rocks, in the West, named Newspaper Rock. One in Arizona and one in Utah, and there may be more that I am not aware of. This one was not far past Falling Man, and there is a lot going on here. Over how many hundreds of years was this “written”?
We made our way back to the pickup, where we were going to camp for the night.
I wanted to get back to Newspaper Rock before the sun went down, so we had a quick dinner and headed back. Vicki stayed at the truck to read a book, and Gauge came with me. I told him we would be out after dark, but since he had a headlamp, he wasn’t worried. The sun had come out from behind the clouds and warmed up the view.
We waited almost 1 hour after sunset to capture this last image. Gauge was getting cold and wanted to head back to camp. I wanted to wait until the sunlight disappeared on the horizon, but he had been a trooper up until that point, and it’s no fun when you are cold. I used two lights, a small LED panel and a small lantern, to add some light to the rock and foreground. The lights were about 100 feet apart, and I got Gauge warmed up by having him run back and forth between the lights, adjusting the intensity. It doesn’t take much LLL (Low Level Landscape) lighting during a 15-second exposure. However, the darkness was still competing with the sun, below the horizon, and a quarter moon, just out of sight. Venus is just above the left corner of Newspaper Rock.
We made our way back to camp. Things always look different at night, and you can easily lose depth perception. We took a wrong turn, it did not look right, I stopped, and Gauge held my hand. A quiet voice said, “go back”. Were those thoughts mine or from nearby? Gauge said, “I am scared”. I told him there was nothing to be afraid of, we are all good.
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