The trailhead begins at Wolfe Ranch. Old man Wolfe came out here to raise a few cattle and to recover from a leg wound he earned during the Civil War. He wintered with his cattle and his demons beside a small creek for years until his children came to visit him, and found conditions "so hellish and primitive" that they forcibly removed John Wesley Wolfe to Pennsylvannia to live out his remaining days in relative rural comfort. Wolfe had other reasons for staying: a short detour away from the main trail and the tiny ranch lies a rock face with a well-preserved set of petroglyphs estimated to be at least four-hundred years old. This estimation is based on the appearance of horses (absent in North America until the Spaniards released an invasive population) in the image; glyphs are near-impossible to date accurately by non-correlative means. This is because they are carved into the surface of the rock, etching away the thin layer of desert varnish to reveal the more colorful sandstone below. They use no pigment with organic components whose isotopic content or predictable decay might be used as a sort of clock.
The first stretch of the hike up to the arch is a half mile across lowlands, and in spite of the growing heat of the day proves merely invigorating. The occasional boulder or sprawling juniper provides a spot of shade every hundred yards . As the second third of our journey begins, our path starts to get vertical. The grade rises precipitously on bare slickrock, and there is no pity from the merciless sun.
Depending on your shape, fifteen to thirty minutes in hell, but you do get a nice view of the surrounding plateau.
Would hate to do this in the rain, as stated yesterday - wet slickrock deserves its name.
but one can see where the lichen has broken down the rock and the rain has eroded channels into the side of the stone that occasionally form small traps for sand and nutrients and even a little water, which allows the incredibly durable and touch desert juniper a chance to grow, casting a little shade and trapping more moisture allowing some small grasses and bushes to grow, providing nutrients for small herbivores like rabbits and ground squirrels who provide nutrients for plants in decay and higher predators such as coyotes and hawks... creating a complete successional ecology on the side of an otherwise barren stone slope.
Once you make it to the top of the slickrock, you can walk along a short trail that is shaded for most of the day... and then, as you approach the top of this rock wall, you turn and see what has made the whole climb worthwhile.
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An amazing piece of geology.
Still, the irreverent part of me that plays Halo on some weeknights has to wonder: "if I ran to the top, would I still find the rocket launcher?"
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Legend behind DHP is that cowboys used to herd the wild horses onto the top of the plateau, as it made an ideal natural corral. The mustangs could not escape because the Point was a natural peninsula, surrounded by the Colorado River - nearly three-thousand feet below. The cowboys would pick out and break the ones they wanted to keep, and leave the rest of the mustangs to find their own way off the Point. Apparently the gate at the head of the point was not always left open, or some of the horses were too stupid or too afraid to go through it, and they would be stay in nervous hers atop the Point, gradually dying of dehydration, even with water so close.
Also a good look at the layers of geology. A careful eye can pick out history as it happened, can see the sand dunes of enormous deserts sweeping across the continent, can see them covered over by a shallow river, and can see that river pushed into an ocean.
Stayed for sunset here. Very scenic, very pretty.
As the sun sets, millions of years, in an instant. Fade to black.
| back to day three | whole week | onward to day five |