Death Valley Deep Dive 2024

[TacoLand]

Yyyeeaaahhhh, did that drive up Arrastre in 2021 and it's definitely only for folks that air down and don't mind bumpy roads (hello, it's me?). It was kind of worth it, but nothing I would revisit or ever point anyone towards.

Also took a look for Robber's Roost that trip and don't think I found what was marked on my map, but did find another cool old camping / mining spot. There's a spot near Geologist's and I think near your favorite spot that I've always camped at. Starting to get discovered/overrun a bit. I think this area suffers from the Instagram phenomenon of big group runs through Goler, visit Geologist's, etc.

Russell Camp is a great spread. According to Digonnet, "Butte Valley's most visible resident was Asa Merton Russell, also known as Panamint Russ. Russell first came to Butte Valley in 1925 with a friend, Ernest Huhn, and explored the area for precious and base metals. ... In 1929, intent on spending more time in Butte Valley, Russell came back and started developing the camp, now named after him, at the spring south of Greater View Spring. The following year, after finding gold on Manly Peak, he built a stone cabin at Anvil Spring, a sturdy structure now referred to as the Geologist's Cabin. Somehow he ended up not using it as his main camp: over the next few years he made Russell Camp his local home, perhaps because of its greater seclusion." There's more to the story on page 452 of The Bible, according to Digonnet.

Gorgeous photos & hike. Never had the chance to make it up that high with three people waiting back at camp. The big cave & fern growth are especially fascinating.

One other random note / query ... the DVNP road status page shows green for a backcountry road from Butte Valley and down through Woods Canyon to the edge of the Park. Unless I'm remembering incorrectly, isn't that just a wash and old hiking trail (that I think Manly and his group used to escape from DV?) that dumps out into a big mining operation? I doubt the Park would accidentally mark a wash / old trail as open 4wd backcountry, but I'm just super confused now. I thought the only way into Butte Valley from Panamint was Goler / Mengel.

[TacoLand]

Scratch that question on the DVNP road status page ... I fired up Google Earth since my print map didn't have enough detail. Redlands Canyon Road (and Spurs) on DVNP page are same roads that have always been there, and that terminate at the Wilderness Boundary. To get down to the Briggs Mine in Panamint Valley you'd have to hoof it down Woods Canyon (I think?) to Redlands Spring, and then it'd eventually kick out into the Mine ... which I'm assuming is private property and not somewhere pleasant to hike into.

[netllama]

Wow, yet again some gorgeous photos. And that brings back a ton of memories, as the only time I've ever made it out to Butte Valley was over a decade ago. I always want to go back, but for _reasons_ haven't made it.

[Beardilocks]

Scratch that question on the DVNP road status page ... I fired up Google Earth since my print map didn't have enough detail. Redlands Canyon Road (and Spurs) on DVNP page are same roads that have always been there, and that terminate at the Wilderness Boundary. To get down to the Briggs Mine in Panamint Valley you'd have to hoof it down Woods Canyon (I think?) to Redlands Spring, and then it'd eventually kick out into the Mine ... which I'm assuming is private property and not somewhere pleasant to hike into.

Correct.  Road terminates at the Wilderness Boundary in Redlands Canyon.  I have never hiked down past that, but the views are nice.  There is some sort of camp on a drainage of Manly that you can see on a sat, specifically what looks like a school bus, if you hit the boundary and turn left into Manly.  But I've never been up to it. 

I did poke my nose down that road this trip and it seems to still be in decent shape up to a point.  The pin-striping got a bit more than I wanted to endure eventually and I had a good spot to turn around so I gave up.  It was getting late at that point anyway.

Thanks for the quote from Digonnet! (Am I the only one that can never remember which letter to double up???) I left my bible at home this time. I had no idea he built both cabins. Makes you wonder who built one in btw Russell Camp & Geologists.

[TacoLand]

That's Stella's cabin ... the last Lady Prospector of Death Valley.

(And thanks for the info on the Redlands Canyon deal.)

[Beardilocks]

I've been holding back on my first new Petroglyph post from Death Valley.  I have recently been reading  Kenneth Lengner's “A Prehistory & History of the Death Valley Region's Native Americans” and it had some thought provoking things to say about the rock “art” in the area. 

Fair warning here: this might get a bit rambling, so feel free to skip to the photos.

The book does have it's flaws and it focuses primarily on the Coso/Sierra & modern Timbisha tribes (while also going DEEP into the flora/fauna/geology of the area), but to be fair there's virtually nothing known about earlier Death-Valley-proper inhabitants.  However, it also doesn't take itself too too seriously, for example listing possible meanings/origins of petroglyphs in the park that include “left by aliens from outer space … or the lost tribes of Israel”.  Lol.

It also brings up some very interesting points and perspectives that I had not known about or considered.  For instance the local tribes are somewhat offended by using the term “art”.  They prefer rock “writing”.  For that matter they would prefer if we didn't refer to them at all.  To all the local tribes all petroglyph sites and their surroundings are considered sacred and should be avoided completely.  To touch them brings sickness or death (fair enough, another good reason for no touching).  The oral history passed down by the Shoshone and Paiutes et al is that rock writing was done by supernatural beings some times called tutuguv, or water/rock babies.  These are small humanoids that live in the bubbling spring water or inside the rocks themselves and come out at night and peck out these rock writings (or possibly peck them from the inside out). 

Now as an avid rock “art” hunter and enthusiast, this gave me pause.  I do everything in my power to Respect, protect, preserve through photos, and teach the same about the amazing petroglyphs and pictographs left  so long ago by the ancient people that lived here.  If the local Timbisha belief is that they are scared and should not be visited or shared, where does that leave me as someone who thinks these sites need to be documented before climate change, graffiti, and time itself erase them completely?  Or even on the basic level that I feel a strong connection to the humanity of wanting to leave an enduring mark behind, and therefore to witness those enduring marks in the memory of those that left them?  Are these feeling misplaced and/or disrespectful?

This sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole (deeper even than usual) as to what the purpose of petroglyphs really are and what various tribes think about them as they exist today.  And the unfortunate answer is … there is no answer.  Or maybe the reality is that any voice that could have passed down that knowledge has been long silenced through the Europeans treatment of native peoples everywhere. 

But (summing up here and trying not to make this too overly dense & rambling) looking at the over-arcing timelines of migrations in & out of the area by different tribes (which interestingly is tracked based on language type as much as DNA), it's apparent that the Shoshone and Paiute ancestors moved into the region much later than most of the petroglyphs in the area were carved.  Which is utterly fascinating to me.  (I'm also currently going down a massive rabbit hole on the migration of ancient myths and stories and how some orally passed down story archetypes could date back a hundred thousand years and half the planet away from where they originated, but I digress).  So the petroglyphs in Death Valley existed here long before the ancestors of the modern local tribes arrived and therefore the meaning and origin of these carvings is virtually as mysterious to them as it is to us.  (For context: Most petroglyphs in the park are estimated to age somewhere between ~1400-1700 years ago and up to 4000+ year ago.  More modern rock writing was typically scratched glyphs or painted pictographs, instead of pecked.  The Timbisha Shoshone are thought to have arrived around 700-1000yrs ago.  Making the gap between the newer petroglyphs in the park and the arrival of the Shoshone something on the order of ~700 years separate.)  I find the collected mythologies, the stories of the origins of these ancient writings, utterly fascinating.  It's amazing to me that we still have the stories of the local Shoshone & Paiute peoples, passed down for nearly 1000yrs, describing their myths of how these ancient glyphs were left and how their origin & meaning is likely just as mysterious to them as it is to us. 

*All dates, ages, and meanings are speculative and still heavily debated.  I'm mainly citing Lengner's collection of citations from previous studies and he even states clearly that this all under-studied and constantly subject to change and interpretation.  Hell, my ideas are constantly changes as I learn more or new evidence/dating techniques/theories come to light. 

Anyway…  Sorry for the wall of text.  Onwards and upwards.  I have known of this site in theory for many years but have never visited it, nor spoken to anyone who has.  I honestly had expected it to be rather disappointing for the work involved in getting here, despite the quote I will share with you momentarily.  That is in part because this site has virtually no footprint online whatsoever.  So I am going to be very careful with location details etc. 

William Wallace (again, the archaeologist NOT Braveheart) refers to this site in passing as “An extensive petroglyph locality… hundreds, if not thousands, of boulders… are covered with pecked designs.  This is one of the largest and most interesting petroglyph localities in DVNM and one which thus far has escaped the disfigurement and vandalism suffered by more accessible rock pictures.”  The survey that mentions this location (but does not cover this location) was done in the early 1950's, as much of the published archaeology of DV was.  So I'm unsure of what knowledge existed at the time of other petroglyph sites in the then National Monument (a much smaller area than today's National Park) and I frankly doubted his statement of “hundreds if not thousands” of glyph covered boulders. 

After visiting the site, I will concede to Mr Wallace that it indeed does contain at least many hundreds of petroglyph covered boulders, and possibly up to a thousand.  In an attempt to save face a bit, I will say that thousands plural is a bit of an exaggeration, but I was still shocked at how many I did find. 

I was also shocked by the variation in designs present as well as the vast differences in age.  Some of the petroglyphs had re-patinated back to the color of the boulder before it was carved.  Others looked much more fresh and clear.  Some contain design elements I've never seen before.  Others are classic DV/Coso style glyphs. 

The site itself was very difficult to navigate.  The boulders are all extremely loosely placed on a steep slope.  Even the largest rock, at many hundreds of pounds, could try to roll out from underneath you, crushing your foot or breaking your ankle.  You also had to be extremely vigilant with foot placement because you could never tell where a petroglyph would be.  I can't say how much the pile has/is shifting and how many rocks with glyphs have moved or rolled, but glyphs could be on any side of any boulder 360deg. 

Lastly I'll apologize for the less than stellar quality of the images.  Sun was very bright the day I was there and really wreaked havoc trying to photograph glyphs that are pointed in literally every direction.  If I go back I'll try to make sure it's a cloudy day! 





This glyphs style is seen on at least a half-dozen boulders here.  Whether it's a plant or what, I can't say. 


Possible plant thing again, with some other glyphs behind on a rock pointed at the ground.


This dude is so cool.  Bisected head and… a headdress? 


Looks like a classic rain cloud at the bottom.  Not sure about all the “lightening” going up from there. 


This rock was covered with hard to make glyphs.  Although possibly another rain cloud maybe. 


This one photographed poorly.  Carved all over in the round with some interesting elements, but hard to make out. 





This one is particularly interesting.  The carvings are especially deep.  What I originally thought was deep scratching I'm not half sure is just the grain/texture of the rock.  Definitely one large atlatl but the rest is hard to make out. 


Same rock from another angle.  Interesting because this atlatl has the extra detail of the handle or the loop on the throwing end, making it more detailed than most. 


It's possible here that an earlier design was covered over.  But notice the rain cloud that carries over around the corner.


The rain cloud from above, straight on.  Much darker patina than most of the other side. 


With so many different types of rock it's hard to judge patina or re-patination very accurately.  But this is a cool design.






Only in a few spots are glyphs on a number of rocks clumped together.  Generally speaking it's more spread out. 








Much older glyphs here. 


I really love this one and I can't say exactly why.  Hell I don't even know which side is up. 


All available space used. 





Busy and possibly layered designs. 





Another deeply carved design.  Very perfectly round circles do seem common here. 





Probable horned anthropomorph on the right. 


Again, appears to be older, re-patinated behind possibly.  I can't make them out though. 











Love the design at the top. 


This one somehow made more sense in person.  Lol.  The lighting was hard to work with. 





Horned snake and dots?


This one is really cool and frustratingly hard to make out.


Detail of the right part of the above boulder.  Seems to be a guy with 2 sets of arms and a big head (bisected again) over some kind of landscape or clouds and a bird above him/on his shoulder.  Just guessing. 


This one really baffles me.  The style of the chipping is a bit different from most (but not all) here.  Larger/deeper impact points.  I have seem this in other places in DV, but rarely.  It looks brighter and more recent.  And the design….  I certainly have never seen anything like it in the surrounding area.  It has aspects of the “shield anthropomorphs” in areas like Arrow Canyon, North of Las Vegas.  Very unique. 


Possibly stylized sheep here (sideways, legs on the left)?  Less detail in sheep usually means an older glyph.


There are a few classic sheep glyphs at this location (I may not have included them in the photos on this post…) but this is extremely odd.  I am speculating that the right side of this small panel is a sheep. 


But not knowing which was is up complicates things.  Lol.  I withdraw that speculation. 





Atlatl on the left and multi-cross thing on the right.  The line with multiple crosses (either perpendicular or approx 45deg angle) are common here.  No clue what they mean. 





This one is quite large. 


Classic bubbles design.  Again, quite large. 


There are several of these larger, very busy/complex curvilinear designs like this.  Some of these seem to have been re-carved in parts.  Where someone has come back much later and redrew a fading design. 








This one is very odd in it's specificity & simplicity. 


Several obvious atlatls but otherwise mostly hard to make out. 



Well there you have it.  I'm impressed if you're still reading this.  Haha!  A wall of text followed by a hundred indecipherable and poorly photographed ancient carvings.  I still think this is a fascinating site and one with a lot to tell us if we could only understand what it was saying.  The mixed up & scattered nature of the site combined with never knowing which way is up on any of the small panels adds to the chaos of the site.  But it is without a doubt one of the larger and more magnificent petroglyph sites in Death Valley, just like that angry Scottish man said.

[TacoLand]

Netllama: _Reasons_ being ... the CIA will only foot the bill to send you to Africa, not DVNP?!

[netllama]

Netllama: _Reasons_ being ... the CIA will only foot the bill to send you to Africa, not DVNP?!

shhhhh

[Beardilocks]

Uhoh. Someone is getting disappeared into CLNWS when they’re in the Owlsheads. 😁

[Bluegreen kayak]

Thank you for the newest installment on the trip report. I enjoyed your explanation and pictures. You make it really interesting, a challenge considering that petroglyphs aren't high on my list of reasons to go exploring. Your enthusiasm is a little contagious; I hope you keep finding great sites and sharing them (cautiously) with us.