There are a couple of things that I meant to mention (and forgot) in my last post about the Wedge. The first is that, although I’m not aware of any rock art immediately at the Wedge, I saw a lot of evidence of the Fremont having lived in the area. There were two places, one on each side of Good Water Canyon, where people had spent a lot of time making arrowheads. I found flakes of chert scattered over areas dozens of feet wide, and even found a broken spear point (or perhaps just a cutting tool) in one canyon. I also saw a couple of rocks that could have been metates. I hiked slowly and spent a lot of time scanning the canyon walls for rock art or the remains of dwellings, but never saw any.
Something I was surprised by were the singletrack trails that crisscrossed the area. While hiking and driving around I noticed several bike trails, and I wondered how much the BLM knows about them. They spent a lot of time and effort closing off the Wedge to cross-country travel by motorized vehicles, but mountain bikes are apparently ok, or at least tolerated. I can’t find any info online about any singletrack trails in the area, but it’d be fun to check them out sometime.
I may go back to the Wedge this weekend to explore some more. I’d originally wanted to go to Exclamation Bridge on Saturday, but I decided that I don’t want to go alone because there will probably be some serious scrambling involved in getting to the bottom of the arch, and I’d hate to get down in there any not be able to get myself back out. If I bring a friend and a length of rope, I’d be a lot more confident that I’d make it out alive. 🙂 Anyhow, as for the Wedge this weekend, I’d like to either hike some more side canyons off of Good Water Canyon, or try finding a route down into the San Rafael river gorge from the overlook. There are two new geocaches down in the river bottom that are supposed to only be accessible via a very long hike from up- or downstream, but it would be fun to descend straight down into the canyon to find them.