A gang of five painted faces...

is hidden in a sandstone alcove protected from the elements, thereby preserving the vibrance of the pictographs, in upper Davis Canyon inside the boundary to Canyonlands National Park. They seem a jovial bunch.

The wonderful Five Faces pictograph panel in Davis Canyon and another guy.

Log House ruin in Davis Canyon sits high on a ledge, precluding any close investigation. Note the numerous hand prints above the structures. All of the wooden logs had to be lifted up the cliff face!

Conjuring spirits the night before our walk, BH contemplates the meaning of life, the universe and everything at our rock shelter camp.

An interesting alignment of glyphs...

occurs in Shay Canyon where two separate but identical geometric patterns, about 20 feet (6 m) from one another, seem to match from the right perspective as one approaches the petroglyph panel from below. Coincidence or purposeful design by the ancient scribe?

Friend and neighbor BH points along the sight line that links the two separated petroglyphs.

BH’s point of view as observed from his position in the first image.

Did ancient astronomers use the Six Shooter Peaks...

as natural pointers in order to track the changes in seasons? Here are a couple of potential “observatory” sites that the early residents of Indian Creek Canyon constructed along sight lines related to equinox and solstice sunrises and sunsets.

The so-called “Mushroom Ruins.”

The “Boulder House.” The summit of South Six Shooter Peak sure looks like a gunsight from this perspective.

Photographer’s Ephemeris software suggests that the Boulder House ruin is optimally located to catch the descending Sun in the notch of South Six Shooter Peak during the winter solstice. An early winter test of this hypothesis is in order if the weather permits.

Red pin is location of Boulder House. Yellow line marks the Sun’s position, blue line marks the Moon during winter solstice.

Sun’s position at 3:34 pm MST on 21 December 2026, during winter solstice. Note the sharp shadow cast by the spire pointing directly at the location of Boulder House.

But wait, there’s more: Boulder House ruin also has a direct sight line to the summit of North Six Shooter Peak, and during the summer solstice the setting Sun falls right above its summit! This is no accident but by design.

Boulder House ruin and the view toward North Six Shooter Peak.

Photographer’s Ephemeris shows that during the summer solstice the Sun passes over North Six Shooter Peak during sunset, as seen from Boulder House.

So-called 'hero dirt' conditions...

exist on the singletrack right now, the perfect level of soil moisture that makes for a grippy experience with optimal traction. When I left the valley in July the trail surface was dry and dusty and loose so it’s wonderful that the recent rains have naturally repaired the trails.

The perfect trail surface: Better traction, effective braking, precise cornering with overall enhanced control.

It doesn’t get any better than this.

The first flood event to pass the new culvert...

beneath Castle Valley Drive earlier this summer did so quite easily, leaving behind a clear high water mark in the stranded flotsam. Considerable deposition of fine sediment has occurred in the bouldery rip rap, both upstream and downstream of the arch culvert.

Given the level of the high water line within the culvert, I conservatively estimate that the peak discharge through the structure was at least 300 cubic feet per second (cfs) but cannot estimate its duration.

My usual trajectory re-entering canyon country...

involves an exploration of the northern San Rafael Swell. Cedar Mountain provides a commanding location for landscape photography at both dusk and dawn. But the nearly full Moon once again defeated any attempts at Milky Way photography last night. Nevertheless, this high perch is magnificent!

This site will just have to make do for the evening. There is absolutely nobody around, save for jackrabbits and birds.

View southward from my perch, 1,600 feet (488 m) above the valley floor below. Look closely: Henry Mountains are on the far horizon, about 75 miles (121 km) away.

Dawn light strikes canyon country. Window Blind Peak - the stumpy butte left of center that is nine miles (14 km) distant - caught the first rays. Profoundly quiet. Sublime.

There’s even an outstanding geological cheat sheet provided at a BLM viewpoint. A crossbedded conglomeratic facies in the Dakota Sandstone (Cretaceous (143.1 Ma - 66 Ma)) forms the ledge at the edge of the high escarpment.

My first Estwing rock hammer...

serves as scale for various rock specimens that found their way home with me from travels around the world. Geologists tend to have pretty interesting rock gardens as a general rule.

1- Planar-tabular crossbedded Dakota Sandstone (Mid-Cretaceous) from Colorado Front Range north of Fort Collins, Colorado.

2- Peridotite clast from an aa lava flow on Hualālai shield volcano on the island of Hawaii.

3- Dacitic breadcrust bomb from the crater at Mount Saint Helens, Washington.

4 & 5- Silurian greywacke and Old Red Sandstone (Devonian) from Siccar Point, Scotland, the site of Hutton’s Unconformity.

6- Fossil coral (Devonian) from the Bastille karst, northern British Columbia.

7- Rare shatter cone feature from the Beaverhead impact structure (Neoproterozoic) in western Montana.

Silent witnesses to the placement...

of an important historical survey monument, these so-called ‘witness marks’ were chiseled into this basalt rock outcrop years ago as an aid to future surveyors in order to locate or ‘recover’ the old monument. Distances and bearings from these markings to the monument were recorded, and where they intersect, voila. These two glyphs were just recently touched up with a Sharpie by Washington State Department of Transportation engineers doing fieldwork along the bike trail, attempting to recover the monument marking the section corner.

Old climbing and caving hardware...

put to creative use as a wind chime, utilizing various types of pitons suspended on Kevlar thread. Admittedly it takes a good gust to get these iron relics clanging against one another, but the sound is a nicely pleasant ringing in several different tones.

Pitons from the past, manufactured by the Great Pacific Iron Works: Angles, Lost Arrows and Bugaboos dangle from a wooden armature.

It's small but fierce...

and I expect this newly finished (but unpainted) Wildman Punisher Sport high power model rocket to put on a good show at the upcoming Sod Blaster VIII launch event over Labor Day weekend. I’m now running computer simulations using different H and I impulse engines in order to anticipate its performance during flight and to determine the proper ejection charge delay timing. It really is rocket science!

This fiberglass model rocket stands three feet (one meter) tall and weighs 1.9 pounds (0.9 kg).