March 19, 2019

By Tim Briese

7.4 miles, 700’ elevation gain, 4:10 roundtrip time

Horseshoe Canyon lies within a remote detached unit of Canyonlands National Park on the west side of the Green River drainage. The big attraction here is the Great Gallery, in Horseshoe Canyon, the single greatest display of prehistoric rock art in North America. I headed south from I-70 on Hwy. 24 through the barren and wide open San Rafael Desert and 24 miles later turned east onto a dirt road. From this point I followed dirt roads for about an hour to the trailhead, some 31 miles from the highway. The road was quite reasonable today but could be problematic if wet. This was a very remote place, as is much of southern Utah, which holds some of the most remote and uninhabited land in the continental US. I felt like I was really in the middle of nowhere. I have wondered before, somewhat whimsically, when you visit nowhere, how can you tell when you are in the middle of it? I suppose the answer to this riddle lies in the fact that it is a sensation that is being described rather than a physical location.

on the road across the desert

some cool orange sand dunes along the way

There was one other vehicle parked at the trailhead area. I set off to the southeast on the faint trace of a rocky old abandoned oil exploration road that switchbacked down into Horseshoe Canyon.

the beginning of the trail

the descent trail into the canyon was pretty rocky for a ways

a view down into horseshoe canyon

the trail down into the canyon

After a mile and a half I reached the bottom of the sandy canyon and turned right and followed a trail southwest up the canyon. There were occasional patches of ice where the intermittent Barrier Creek and melted snow had frozen over. As I hiked up the canyon I paused to inspect some lesser pictograph panels on the adjacent canyon walls: the High Gallery, Horseshoe Shelter, and the Alcove Gallery. I met a couple and a teenager who were hiking back down the canyon.

in the canyon

an icy stretch in a shady spot

some pictographs in the alcove gallery

continuing up the canyon

After hiking about two miles up the canyon I rounded a bend and could see the awaited prize, the Great Gallery, a couple of hundred yards ahead on the canyon wall on the right under a protective overhang.

the great gallery lies ahead in the distance a little to the left of the center of the photo

I approached the Gallery and met a couple there who was just leaving. Then I had this incredible place to myself. The Gallery is about 200 feet long and 15 feet high, containing over 75 ghost-like figures painted on the wall. The primary figure is a compelling, 7 foot high presence called the Holy Ghost, with round empty eye sockets, and a narrow armless and legless body. Surrounding it are several other lesser figures. While most pictographs in the Southwest were drawn by natives some 800 to 1200 years ago, these were drawn by the Desert Archaic Indians, some 3000 to 5000 years ago. This place indeed has a soul-gripping power, at lease to those who are inclined to experience it, which photos of it simply do not convey. What do these pictographs mean? One can only ponder and wonder. The eerie, long and narrow shapes seemed to connote to me some transition between the physical and spiritual realms. As I sat and gazed at these drawings for a while, at those figures that seemed to be looking at me, a strange fear began to overcome me. Perhaps it was from the sheer remoteness and loneliness of this place. Perhaps it had to do with the great age of the panel, thousands of years old, and of the overwhelming sense of the inexorable passage of time and the utter brevity of our own lifespans, leading to panic about my own mortality.

a view of the entire gallery from some distance away. many of the figures are approximately human-sized.

the holy ghost section of the panel

After the experience of anxiety I soon packed up and left, after spending a half hour or so there. After a while I met a single female hiker heading up to the Gallery and then saw no one else on the hike back to the trailhead. After returning to my truck I rested for a while gazing at the wide open expanse of the land thinking about my experiences today and then headed to Green River for the night.