Oh, So, (San Rafael) Swell (Apr 2022)

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I can't really believe that I've been exploring the western United States for nearly five years now and have yet to spend any time in the San Rafael Swell. That's not entirely true - technically. I did camp one night on - what I now know to be - the extreme eastern edge of the Swell, just before a trip into The Maze with Ben @m3bassman and Zane @Speedytech7, but since then, I've never even driven through this amazing place on the highway!

This week would change all that. With eyeballs as big as saucers, I set about planning what I hoped would be an extensive foray into a place that I've only ever heard great things about. I knew it would be just the first of what would - hopefully - be many trips to this awesome place.

I had no idea at the time just how varied the San Rafael Swell really was. And so, thinking I knew what to expect, we set off south. Oh, did we get more than we ever thought possible. And boy, is there so much more to explore!

Come along then, as we head (mostly) west-to-east along I-70, forking off to the north and south to find some of the treasures - petroglyphs, pictographs, fantastic 4WD trails, and views into infinity - of this special place, including:

• Mussentuchit Wash (say that out loud )
• Rochester Rock Art
• Ferron Box
• Molen Seep Wash
• Short Canyon
• Molen Reef
• Ascending Sheep Panel
• Sand Bench
• Sid and Charlie
• Broken Hearted Man
• Head of Sinbad
• Dutchman Arch
• Devil's Racetrack
• Fixit Pass
• Nielsen Dugway
• Temple Mountain Rd
• The Ocre Alcove
• Reds Canyon Loop and the Dirty Devil Mine
• Black Dragon Wash
• Spirit Arch and Petroglyph Canyon
• Buckhorn Wash
• The Wedge and Little Grand Canyon Overlook

And that's not all, whew!

 

Part 1:

Not What We Expected - San Rafael Swell #1​

...It'd been a full day - of unexpected terrain, and amazing rock art. Not knowing if our delayed schedule would cause any issues on the rest of the trip, all we could do was to have faith that everything would work out. After all, when everything goes to plan, it's not an adventure!




















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Not What We Expected - San Rafael Swell #1​

 

Gorgeous pictures, looks like a phenomenal trip.

 

Thanks! Lots more over there on my build thread, if you're interested.

 

I’ll go check it out!

 

...Taking a slightly different path back to the Tacoma, we soon found ourselves headed south, back towards the Sid and Charley hoodoos for which the area was named. Though it was only 3:30pm, we planned to camp at the hoodoos, meaning that even with the 3-mile hike we had planned to view a bunch of rock art, we were likely to be in camp early this evening....

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A Juggler, a Broken Hearted Man, and Sid & Charley - Swell #2​

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A Juggler, a Broken Hearted Man, and Sid & Charley - Swell #2​

 

...The plan - if we could do it - was to follow Devil's Racetrack to Coal Wash to Fixit Pass and finally to Neilsen Dugway, ending up where we started. I say "if we could do it," because prior to departure, I'd learned that Fixit Pass had been unfixed by storms a few months earlier, and a couple of the videos I'd seen were somewhat hairy looking. Enquiries on various forums and groups hadn't yielded much in the way of information, so I knew that we could find ourselves backtracking if the road was impassable....

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More Than We Bargained For - Swell #3​

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More Than We Bargained For - Swell #3​

 

...Often referred to as the Transformation Panel, the pictographs here are a fantastic - one of the best, really - examples of Barrier Canyon Style images that we would see. We spent a bunch of time checking out the detail of all the figures, each section of the panel holding hidden treasures as we looked more closely....

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Transformation Panel of the Ochre Alcove - Swell #4​

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Transformation Panel of the Ochre Alcove - Swell #4​

 

...Where the roads most of the previous day had been slow going, McKay Flat was - for the most part - wide and smooth. Before we knew it, we were approaching the southern-most point of our loop, near Tomsich Butte, the huge monolith on the edge of Reds Canyon rising up before us as we approached....

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Dirty Devils and Black Dragons - Swell #5​

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Dirty Devils and Black Dragons - Swell #5​

 

...But before we could find a camp site, one thing was for certain - we were going to check out the Wedge Overlook of Utah's Little Grand Canyon. This was a spot that a fellow explorer - Randy - had suggested to me as something that I really shouldn't miss when we visited the Swell, and given his preferences, I knew it would be spectacular....

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Buckhorn Wash and The Wedge - Swell #6​

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Buckhorn Wash and The Wedge - Swell #6​

 

Amazing pics.

 

Excellent trip!!!! Awesome pictographs and petroglyphs!

 

And.........

all in my back yard......

pic.......high pressure system locked in all the valley haze