I love Barrier Canyon pictographs, I can’t stop admiring them. I will occasionally see other types of pictographs for the fun of it but the real thing doesn’t compare. To me, preparing the paint and imaging what to draw is what made those who did it a long time ago humans. I will never be able to see the fantastic pictographs in Spain and France, so the mysterious Barrier Canyon one are the closest thing. Who painted them ? What do they mean ? Where these people come from ?

In my most recent trip to the Canyonlands I visited a couple of areas of interest.

Disclaimer: all of these images are heavily edited in order to show the details of the artist.

First is the area around Pekaboo Springs in the Needles District in Canyonlands. These ones are referred as the Flying Carpet panel.

Those two plums coming from the top of that ghost, what are they ?

the complete left side of the panel, a closer look

this little ghost has the most preserved color of the panel

and this is the right side of the panel, a closer look

I wonder about those two horizontal lines on top of that ghost

These ones are from a couple of nearby panels across the wash. To get close you need to jump on top of some large rocks, no big deal.

This is the shield petroglyph on the way to the Flying Carpet. I don’t really like petroglyphs, that is lazy to me. The previous culture found pigments to paint and all you could do is to scratch the rock ???

The ones that everyone sees when they arrive from the top of Peekaboo trail is this well preserved panel. It is faint, but there are older pictographs behind the panel, look between the two orbs and you will notice a human figure there and then a ghost to the right of the second orb from the left.

The panels that I was really looking for were in the Devils Lane area in the Needles District, specially one that I have seen in images and I wanted to find it, desperately.

This typical ghost is all by itself at ground level. This was the first panel that I looked for and ran into another guy that was actually looking for ceramics in the area (now, that is cool to find). We compared notes and confirmed all the locations that I had coordinates for.

nearby, typical hands panel found all over the place in the Needles.

The second location is referred to as the Crown (or queen’s crown) Panel and you can see why below.

Below is the complete panel ……………

To the left of that panel there is another one with smaller figures:

Ok, I saw this panel on a popular website for pictographs, but its location is never revealed. I looked for years for tips and finally I was given coordinates for 4 areas and this was the last one I was visiting. I arrived at the exact coordinates and I could not see anything; I kept moving along the wall, no dice. I had planned to take a side trip to Cyclone Canyon and time was of the essence, so I gave myself ten more minutes to find the panel.

I was getting so pissed that I was not going to find it until I keep moving and moving and looking when I finally saw it and I could not stop smiling and yelling. If someone was watching they would think I was a mad hatter. I could not believe I finally found it.

Again, these images are incredibly heavily edited because the panel is fading and it is easy to notice the sun line on the panel. There is a way to get close to the panel (I took these images with my zoom lenses) but I was alone and decided not to risk taking a false step and breaking a leg.

A couple of closeup images, you can start noticing the sun like on the left side of the panel.

And now I started fooling around with my editing program to create more images:

Of course, each time I am at Devils Lane, I have to take a nice pic:

I did eventually had time to take a peak at Cyclone Canyon. I think I need to schedule a summer trip (I need long days) to explore it or maybe hike all the way to the Colorado River overlook and the are to access The Maze.

looking for pictographs in the Needles District

That time I thought I was a goner

hiking the Hilite trail in Island in the Sky, Canyonlands