May 22 High Desert Rock Art

Our group of six was out to camp and hike to rock art sites in the Mojave. But characteristically, cold weather showed up, as it does so often in late May.

That's snow down to about 8000'

Bighorns are the popular motif out here

More bighorns

The archaeologists say Paiute-Shoshone medicine men pecked them into these basalt boulders roughly a thousand years ago

Lots of lithic scatter out here, from local obsidian sources

This rock is covered in images

There's also wild horses and burros out here. They are destructive and have displaced the bighorns and the BLM has to do periodic roundups

A wide-angle view of the area

These are older and cruder-looking images. Some of these probably date to pluvial times when Sierran glaciers retreated into their upper basins. So these are potentially over ten thousand years old.

We looped back to camp on this higher route that dropped into another canyon. Snow flurries fell on us for a little bit up here

Nights were cold, but driving out Sunday the sunshine felt good