Canyonlands - Needles District
Canyonlands National Park includes three distinctly different districts. We visited the Maze District when we hiked to Horseshoe Canyon a number of years ago. We had a fabulous day photographing the Island in the Sky District a few years ago as a storm blew through. Today, we drove to the Needles District.
Our first stop was Newspaper Rock. It included some of the best petroglyphs we've seen. The petroglyphs were etched into the rock over a period of about 2,000 years by people from the Archaic, Basketmaker, Fremont, and Pueblo cultures. More recently, contributions from Ute and Navajo people, as well as Western Europeans were added to Newspaper Rock. Two of our favorite sections show a hunter on a horse facing off with a gigantic bison and another hunter on a horse shooting an arrow at a deer.
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The petroglyph panels of Shay Canyon were our second destination. The panels were scattered along a cliff face above the wash. We climbed up to a ledge that followed the contours of the canyon walls and provided access to the petroglyphs. We timed it nearly perfectly. As we hiked up the canyon, the panels facing west were lit. When we returned, the east-facing panels were lit.
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We stopped for the Fighting Men Panel also, but it was high enough above a talus slope that we settled for shooting it from the base. We were growing concerned about how fast the afternoon was passing, and we hadn't even reached the main part of the park.
We made a brief stop at the Wooden Shoe overlook before stopping at the Visitor Center. Nearly all the National Park visitor centers now have stations for re-filling water bottles. They have made it a priority to cut plastic bottles going into landfills. We first saw them at Zion, but they seem to be nearly everywhere now.
Since sunset was approaching so quickly, we drove to Elephant Hill next. This is a very famous area for the hard-core 4x4 enthusiasts. We hiked the "road" to reach an area called The Fortress. I would be petrified trying to drive over Elephant Hill. The climb up the hill was bad enough, but the trail down to the wash on the other side was even worse. Just as we finished photographing The Fortress, a couple of guys in a stock Jeep drove up and made driving down the back side of the hill look easy. They had to crawl along with the navigator also serving as a spotter, but they had no problem getting down. We continued hiking around Elephant Hill looking for a way to shoot the Needles across the canyon. We were at a difficult angle, and we couldn't find a good ridge overlooking the valley between us and the Needles. We ran out of time to do any additional exploring because we wanted to be back to the Explorer and out to the main park road before dark.
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We had a good day at Canyonlands, but we really needed about 4 more hours. We had prioritized seeing the petroglyphs at the expense of less time to explore Canyonlands. We need to allow more time for the main part of the park next time.
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