An intriguing petroglyph site near St George within the Snow Canyon State Park, where the rock art is located within a spectacularly long and narrow slot canyon, and guarded by an old and gnarled tree.
The petroglyphs are near the end of the long slot canyon, and date back to the Fremont culture (local indigenous people who inhabited what is now Utah and parts of Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming and Colorado from about AD 1 to 1301).
It can be a bit hard to make out all of the figures, which include a few sheep.
Most of the motifs are of indeterminate shapes.
There is a set of feet – the image below is the same scene, with and without flash (the use of direct flash removes the depth of the figures).
On closer examination, it appears that the feet actually belong to a body…
Interestingly, there are no horned, trapezoidal-bodied anthropomorphs (human-like objects) which typify the Fremont art style.
Other nearby petroglyph sites you can access in the area along the same trail include:
Getting to the Snow Canyon Slot Petrogyph site
There are a few ways to reach this Snow Canyon site, which is accessed via the Gila Trail: the official trailheads are to the south near the Chuckawalla Climbing Area and to the north near the junction of the W 5745 N and State Route 18. However, this makes it an closer to an 8-mile round-trip.
A shorter route is from a pull-out along State Route 18 between W 3700 N and W 4200 N. From here you can pick up a social trail – or just walk in a westerly direction – until you hit a wide service trail that runs parallel to the highway. (It may also be possible to start from the end of W 4200 N – but you cannot park here, and you may be passing through private property.)
From this service trail, there are two options: walk south along this trail until you reach the Gila Trail, and then continue north up the Gila Trail. Or, continue northwards along the service trail for a short distance, and then head west directly towards the slot canyon. We took the second option, finding a route down the slickrock until we reached the opening to the slot canyon.
The slot canyon is fairly obvious by its length and height, and has a marker neat the entrance.
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