the weird rock formations at the seldom visited Edmaier’s Secret
This guy named Edmaier was publishing a book of images from the Southwest and as part of his research he took aerial pics of this area close to the Buckskin Gulch slot canyon (the first part of the canyon that no one hikes). These images were of massive brain rock formations. He let the BLM know about it and eventually this area was informally referred as Edmaier’s Secret, get it ?
There is not that much info in the internet to research the area, but like many other sites in the area I did find a couple of German guys that have visited it and marked some areas with GPS coordinates.
I started the hike at the real trailhead for Buckskin Gulch (not Wirepass); you pay I think it is 5 dollars at the registration box and sign in. No one really hikes this part of the gulch since it is not yet a canyon but a large wash full of tumbleweeds. Lucky for me, there is a social trail that avoids hiking on the sandy part of the wash, so that makes the hike a lot more pleasant.
At some point, I believe after 1.5 miles into the wash I started seeing a fence to my left and soon after a path with some footprints leaving the wash that matched my GPS coordinates. I crossed the fence and entered the Edmaier area.
This is the first rock formation that I found. It is going to be a recurring theme in the area: very delicate fins.
Even though I had GPS coordinates mapped on my Garmin, I didn’t have a topo map in it, so I could not evaluate elevations and map a path to some places in real time. Anyway, I jumped from one rock formation to the other and it became a treasure hunt.
I call this one The Battleship
It was early in the morning and I started to realize that comments on the websites I read made sense, photographing the brain rocks in the afternoon is a lot better. The morning sun was not helping, so I had to do some editing tricks to highlight them:
I created some dramatic effects for these standalone formations:
I kept moving around and finding rocks that looked interesting (these are very small):
I then started going up the West Clark Bench and running into a lot of fins, small ones, big ones. The looked like veins coming out from the ground. It is amazing how delicate they are and the fact that very few people have explored this area since I didn’t notice damage to them.
I kept going up the bench and I ran into this magnificent bell tower arch. It was difficult to photograph since the best background would not reveal the holes in the rock.I was not expecting to see this arch. In the video below you will see the parking lot for Wirepass at a distance.
There are more rock formations further on, I think, but I decided to turn around at that point.
On the way back, I notice this “wave”:
Now that the sun was going down, it was easier to take pics of the brain rocks.
I saw this from a distance; when I got close I noticed like those two rocks were embedded into the bench. Weird, uh ?
Finally, I ran into more large fins.
Then it was time to leave. I am aware of more rock formations in the area that I didn’t find, so a return trip will be needed. I was one guy in the area early in the day and on the way back I ran into a group of four at the Buckskin wash and told them about the entrance to the area.