Death Valley Deep Dive 2024

[Beardilocks]

While up in the North end of Death Valley (generally), I stopped at this big boulder that is just outside of the park boundary. 

It has quite a few petroglyphs on it, but how many exactly is nearly impossible to tell.  With the naked eye you can make out quite a few on the light side of the rock, but the lichens make it very hard to make out what they are and also make it nearly impossible to photograph.  To the point where you can't really tell what's maybe natural and what's definitely a petroglyph.  SOME of the features are definitely man made, but it's hard to decipher.

There was a fair bit of lithic scatter (mainly obsidian again) around and I have seen photos of arrowheads found nearby, but the tumbleweeds and the snow made any searching pretty futile. 

Still, a very cool site and I'm quite curious as to the age of these glyphs. 



There are a few petroglyphs on the top of the rock that are visible from ground level.  I did not attempt to climb the rock due to the delicate nature of the glyphs.  I did however fly my drone to get a better look at the top (yay for being just outside the park boundaries) and found mainly bits & pieces of glyphs, as the a lot of the patinated surface on the top has been worn away.





If you squint long enough glyphs start to appear.  Lol.