Rockhouse Canyon Petroglyph Backpack

January 5, 6 & 7, 2007

A petroglyph is a rock carving. Gary J. and Joel F. showed me this old Indian village site last year. It is up a very steep zig zag trail in RockHouse canyon that I assume very few people know about it. A 450 foot climb puts you in a high wash that leads you to a shallow circular valley which was probably a village or at least a well used layover and food preparations place. Morteros, slick rocks, agave burning pits and pottery shards are easily found. We left Friday morning and parked the van past the fork but before it got real 4x4 tough. This allowed us to take a loop approach. Walk up the canyon, stay two nights and return cross country by a more direct down hill route (in theory). While there was no threat of rain the wind was fierce. We observed sand being blown up a vertical 50 foot cliff. We were fortunate that while we were hiking directly into the wind we did not have any trouble with sand. The temperature dropped quickly to around 35 degrees once the sun went down. Friday night was especially cold because of the wind. The days were pleasant, almost warm. No wind Saturday or Sunday with some very enjoyable hiking. The telephone booth in the captions refer to a spot on the edge of the plateau that has a line of sight with Borrego Springs. This one spot has very good phone reception. I called my Mom and chatted with her and told I would take some pictures from where I was standing. There is no water source and even with these cooler temps I went through my 2.5 gallons. With 30#'s of gear this gave me a pack weight of 50#'s. It was about 6 miles hiking in and because of the long ridge, we missed a shorter one, over 5 miles coming back.  This is my second time here and is a spot I will return to in the future. It has a very special feeling about it. Next though I do hope hope it will be warmer.