April 29-30, 2017 Gold Butte, Nevada

Today we hiked the Whitney Pockets overlook trail. We left from the bus, hiked 3 1/2 miles. It was in the low 70’s,  sunny and very windy. The hike was lovely.

Last light last night from the bus. A big bird next in the cliff. Probably a raven’s.

Wierd weathering on this rock, swiss cheese rock and the last two are petroglyphs below the bird next on the cliff. At the end of the rock were more modern petroglyphs, tons of people carved their names. 

Fins on top of an outcropping of red rock. The flowers and one of the views of Whitney Pockets. 

Another couple views off the cliff.  More bright orange and yellow rocks looking into the canyon below.

John imitating Gabby Hayes with his hat turned up in the perfect seat in the rocks. The view to the east  over the cliff looking back down the road into the park and the bus is the tiny dot in the middle of the photo just right of the big rock. We are camped right off the road, but all by ourselves and no more than a handful of cars a day go by. 

Evening primrose, curly plant fiber, desert tobacco flowers, desert horned lizard- he matches the rocks and is hard to see, and a desert willow flower. A field of evening primroses and red rocks.

Today we hiked the lower part of Whitney pockets. High 70’s and sunny. Hot down in the canyon. We spied this colorful, narrow canyon from above yesterday. Bright yellows, oranges and reds.

The canyon narrowed and got really convoluted. 

Wild colors and weird twists and turns.

Every turn was different.

John is standing above this part which was narrow and twisty. I walked through it.  Stunning patterns in the rocks. It was hard to walk because I just wanted to look at the patterns. 

 It was a 3.6 mile round trip. This is John on the way back up. 

April 28, 2017 Gold Butte, Nevada

Today we drove to Little Finland to view the fins.

The historic Mud Wash Corral. It is made mostly of railroad ties. Broomrape- a parasitic plant, white cone flowers and purple flowers.

We climbed up a steep ramp on the side of the cliff to get to shelf Little Finland is on.  The rock shapes were unbelievable.  Fins, hoo doos, mushrooms you name it. We wondered around for a few hours  in this wonderland.  Large dune looking rocks, covered with salt deposits.

Lines , shapes and salt in the rocks. Mushroomy cliffy  formations.

Pot holes, sharp cliffs.

John wandering into a canyon. John through a small arch, looking sweet, thoughtful and crazy!

Me throught the other side looking happy. One of many larger arches.

Sharp twisted rocks, and John by a big mushroom.

Pointy things and more mushrooms.

Cute little shapes. Here we are coming down the steep ramp. Notice the palm tree a the bottom. There were springs and seeps all along the base of the cliff. 

Spring at the base of the cliff filled with greenery and flowers.  Cracked mud, lines. The rock was very sharp, didn’t want to fall on it. Desert willow blossom in the wash on the way out.

A small rain squall that blew through. 

April 27, 2017 Gold Butte, Nevada

We hiked the Falling Man Trail today. It is a trail to a number of petroglyph panels.

We had hiking directions from the internet with pictures and GPS points. John set the GPS points in his GPS, but they did not match the spots on the real earth.  At each point John reset them. In the second photo there is a tunnel behind John and there is a petroglyph of a corn stalk over his head. It is a good thing I brought the directions and photos or we never would have found all these places. It was like a circuitous treasure hunt finding the glyphs.

John on the other side of the tunnel. The petroglyph on this side of the tunnel  looks like me with my hair standing on end, the Falling Man that the trail is named after. It is by itself on a cliff face, the lower left in the bottom of it is a pictograph of a red cross, hard to see because there is so much other color on the face and some cliff color. The colors here are really brilliant reds, yellows, oranges and purples. The place looks air brushed. The color comes from the presence  or absence of iron oxide.

John photographing the red pictograph.  Round petroglyph, cliff colors and sheep glyphs.

On this face the black layer has sheep at both ends. Yucca blossom.

In the lower photo the water runs from the lower left to the upper right in the wash. As the water wore down the rock it went through different layers of color. The holes in the rock will hold water long after the rainstorm is gone and are called tinajas. These two are dry, but in the upper photo, which is the lowest tinaja has water in it. More colors and glyphs.

This jeep and heavy duty trailer are a sweet rig for the desert. John reading newspaper rock.

Glyphs and colors. John in the colored little grotto we had lunch in.

Colored rocks. This panel is on a rock that fell from under the cliff. The bottom photo is big foot or hang ten glyph that this panel is named after. The foot has the toes wrapped around the edge of the rock like a surfer would on his board.

Sun glyph, round colors and line colors. Back at camp we had cocktails and dinner and watched the colors change on the rock as the sun set.

Chollas backlit at sunset. 

Older glyphs. They are carved in the back desert ‘varnish’ crust  on the rocks. The varnish takes about 3000 years to form and it is reforming in these glyphs so they are older than 3000 years. Sunset behind a mojave yucca.

Sliver moon.