Wednesday

Hiko Spring Hike - Trip Notes for 01/31/2017

             

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This page last updated on 02/09/2017


(Fig. 01)
01/31/2017 Trip Notes: On January 31st Jim Herring, Ron Ziance, Bob Croke and myself drove to visit Hiko Spring and Grapevine Canyon, located just north of Laughlin NV. For the first time in months, it was a beautiful sunny day near 70 with almost no wind. Though Jim had never been to this site before, Bob, Ron and I visited it a year ago. Besides giving Jim the opportunity to view the great petroglyphs found at this site, we were curious to compare what we found on our visit of a year ago (Fig. 01). As we hiked the wash, it was obvious that there was nowhere the number of spots of surface water that we encountered a year ago, as evidenced by the picture in (Fig. 02). Bob did a great job of making the comparison picture in Figure 02.

Once we reached the site, we spent considerable time scouring the area and the cliff sides looking for "not-so-obvious" petroglyphs. In addition to the obvious on the lower level, you can see from the blue arrows in (Figs. 04 & 04), the petroglyphs go right up the cliff to the top edges. Although almost all of the glyph symbols found at the site are very abstract in nature, there are a couple of examples of zoomorphs such as the sheep in (Fig. 05). As we continued hiking down the wash, Jim spotted what looked like a pictograph on the side of a cliff (center of Fig. 06)). The picture in (Fig. 07) is a close up of the image. It appears to be two warriors facing each other. The one on the left appears to have a waist band and a loin cloth. To me these images certainly don't look old. They are in too good of shape to be as old as the surrounding petroglyphs. I have no real explanation. For more pictures of rock art found on this site, click on the following link ... Trip Notes for 02/02/2016 - Hiko Spring. By the time we got back to the car we had hiked nearly 3.25 miles. We found a shady spot to have a picnic lunch and then drove to view the pictographs at Grapevine Canyon, a site that neither Jim nor Ron had ever been to. Click here for information and pictograph pictures of my previous visits to Grapevine Canyon ... Grapevine Canyon Hikes - Inside The Bridge Canyon Wilderness Area. We then followed the eleven mile dirt Christmas Pass Road back to US-95. Offering some stunning desert mountain views, this rough dirt road runs through both the Bridge Canyon Wilderness Area and the Spirit Mountain Wilderness Area, home to Spirit Mountain (elevation 5,639 feet). This area its surrounding canyons are considered sacred grounds for the Yuman speaking tribes of the lower Colorado River. Click here for some pictures of Christmas Pass Road ... Christmas Tree Pass. All-in-all, it was just another great day of hiking and fellowship in the Nevada desert. We thank Jim for being the driver for today's trip.
                         
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(Fig. 05)
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(Fig. 07)