After spending the previous day around Keg Point exploring for alcoves below the ridgetop but well above the canyon floor, I did the same thing about 10 miles away near Horseshoe Canyon. This ended up being a shorter but more fruitful hike than the day before. My route took me in and out of the park boundaries a few times, and right off the bat I spotted a metate at the foot of one of the sandstone fins.
I walked around the base of the fins and poked around in the gaps between them. A pair of adjacent alcoves had a small rock structure and a metate in them. Another very small alcove really piqued my interest, as I could see some pieces of wood inside that had to have been put there by a person. I tried accessing it from below but couldn’t climb up, so then I scrambled around a lot on the opposite side of the small canyon to try getting a better look inside. I never could make out anything interesting in there but I sure would have loved getting an up-close look.
The fins tapered off and there wasn’t much else to see so I began looking for a shady spot to sit down and eat lunch when my foot fell into an animal burrow that I hadn’t noticed. My hand landed right in some cactus and I had a lot of small hair-like spines in my skin. I found a tree to shade up under and picked the cactus out and then ate my lunch.
Since there were no more promising cliffs to check out, I could have reversed course and had a shorter route back to the truck but instead I continued following the base of the ridge. Eventually I found an easy way to get on top of the ridge and then followed that back to the trailhead. Again I passed in and out of the park boundary, and along the way I saw some old cans and a survey marker. I got back to the truck after only about six hours of hiking, and it was satisfying to explore an area that I’d been curious about for a long time. There are a lot of areas similar to this in the San Rafael Desert that I’m sure still hold some secrets and I hope to visit more of them.
Since I was driving home a little earlier than I expected I decided to stop to check out a constructed section of road that has always made me wonder every time I drove past it. I walked up the old road and wandered around the top of the hill that it led to, and determined that it’s probably just an old alignment of the current road. I could see the path that the old road followed and it appears to have been built to bypass a small ridge and drainage that was no obstacle for modern road-building equipment. I’d even guess by the construction method that it was built for wagon traffic before motorized vehicles were common. There’s no indication along the old alignment that a blade of any sort was ever used to grade the road. With one more curiosity satisfied I finished the drive home.
Photo Gallery: Horseshoe Rim