Black Canyon Loop, Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge, NV

Hiked March 30, 2025. This post got pushed back a bit because of my recent comet adventures.

I took this hike right after the early morning hike at Cathedral Gorge, and breakfast in Panaca. We then started the long drive back to Henderson. Early in the drive, we passed a sign for the Oak Springs Trilobite Site. Sort of figured actually finding anything there would require some digging, which I wasn't willing to do. But we made a U-turn, drove down the dirt road, and walked around the site, a bit. It was just a short hike, for me. No photos, and no digging. Lots of broken shale. No obvious visible trilobites. Then, back in the car, and continued south, on to Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge.

We had stopped here once before, last April, during the time I was supposed to see the total eclipse, but cancelled various plans due to forecasted clouds in TX and NY.

It's about 90 minutes north of Henderson, so doable as a long day trip, which is what we did, last time.

Since that trip, on my various facebook and what not scrolling, I learned that there was a recently-reopened trail in Pahranagat NWR, with petroglyphs you could see with binoculars. It's the Black Canyon Loop, about 1.5 miles, if you take the spur trails. AFAIK, all trails in the Refuge that are open are open dawn to dusk. During hunting season, you may wish to revise your hiking plans.

The small parking area is on the opposite (east) side of US-93 from where you'd turn towards the Refuge visitor center. If you are driving from the visitor center, you cross directly across the highway to get to the dirt road. The dirt road is the start of an off-highway route, but there's the small parking area with swinging gates, on the left side of the dirt road. Some informational displays are there.

The trail itself is a narrow oval loop, which passes by several clusters of petroglyphs, one the far side of the loop, and another where the loop turns back towards the south, with a short spur to view Pahranagat Man, and other petroglyphs adjacent to him.

You're not adjacent to the water/lakes, though there are some vernal ponds and an intermittent stream, but not much water, so few or no waterfowl, unless they're flying to or from the lakes. Some sizable raptors were cruising above the volcanic areas, however. The turkey vulture, in particular, made a number of low loops around me. The red tailed hawk also got pretty close to me, but not as close as the turkey vulture, and he's quite a bit smaller. That shot was cropped by about half, while I only slightly cropped the turkey vulture shot, to center the bird.

Most petroglyphs were pretty faded, and not strikingly bright. But they're always nifty to see, as it's a way for long-dead people to talk to us, today. In this case, we're looking back one or two thousand years, which is a long time, for humans.

The star of the show is Pahranagat Man. He's apparently specific to this general area and that general time period. He's supposed to be a watchful, benign figure, overseeing his people. The Shoshone and Paiute consider themselves to be descendants of these people.

Pahranagat Man is visible in the picture adjacent to this paragraph, with a slightly wider view directly above this paragraph.

A stylized Pahranagat Man is also on the NWR visitor center building. That's the last picture in this post.

Along the various trails, there are metal representations of some of the local widlife -- squirrels, frogs, whatever. The one here made me jump back somewhat when I first saw him.

In speaking to the (volunteer?) in the visitor center, she mentioned that there are several other areas in the refuge with petroglyphs, if you were willing to walk around and find them on your own. I may try that on my next visit.

I didn't spend that much time looking at the exhibits in the visitor center. I was mainly there at Pahranagat for my specific goal of hiking Black Canyon, and, before and after that, making use of the flush toilets and running water at the VC!

But I do seem to recall from my previous visit that the migratory bird season is earlier, so if I want to see more migratory waterfowl, I should come earlier in the spring, or during late fall. That'll be something to keep in mind for fall or for next spring.

I will note that there were a LOT of turkey vultures we saw flying around while driving between Henderson and Cathedral Gorge. Most seemed to be flying north.

By itself, this morning in Pahranagat NWR alone wouldn't qualify as a "hike" under my old rules of three miles, minimum. Probably even adding the wandering early that morning in Cathedral Gorge wouldn't bring me up to that total. Maybe adding the walks to and from the visitor center? At any rate, it was a nice bonus reason for visiting Cathedral Gorge that weekend. And I do plan to make additional trips up here, maybe for the petroglyphs elsewhere in the refuge, and maybe for the ones on BLM land further up, near Hiko or Caliente.

Just for informational purposes, I can say that pets (mainly dogs) are allowed on trails, if they are leashed. Different rules for hunting dogs during hunting season.

The information on the website says pets, not dogs. So, I suppose in theory, if you have a well-behaved, leash-trained cat, he or she can come, too. But my cats aren't trained, and I did not ask.

Around Arch Rock trail, Joshua Tree National Park

Hiked April 12, 2025. Moved this one up in the publication queue because of its timeliness.

A recently discovered comet had me itching at the chance to get out somewhere dark to have a try at it. Its name is C/2025F2 SWAN. It's called "SWAN" because it was discovered by the "Solar Wind ANisotropies" instrument, about the European Space Agency's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). Most comets nowadays are being discovered by these automated imaging observatories, once someone gets around to reviewing the data. NEOWISE and Tsuchinshan-Atlas were two other recent examples of that.

On March 29, this comet was observed on data collected by SWAN. On April 8, it got the current official name. Unfortunately, it may have been undergoing an outburst right about when the first photographs were taken following the announcement. It apparently got dimmer after that, so, unlike some previous comets, it has really been pretty quiet on my facebook feed and news stories for this guy. Most are still using the first photos following the report, which showed a long and thin tail. The more recent photos look more like what I got on April 13, which was a small and undefined fuzziness.

As I write this, Comet C/2025F2 SWAN is in the morning sky, rising a little before sunrise. It gets less than five degrees up (ten apparent moon diameters) before dawn starts brightening the sky.

On the morning I viewed, it was in the east-northeast. It's moving further north each night, but also getting lower in the sky. It'll be hard to catch as we get towards later April, unless it gets a lot brighter.

I had two ideas for where I might view: Ryan Mountain trailhead, or Arch Rock Trailhead. I've done viewing from both locations in the past, and visited both sites the afternoon of the 12th. Ryan Mountain works better for things to the west, but, to the east, the land climbs in altitude, and there are rocks and hills, so for a low in the east-northeast comet, it didn't look like it would work well.

Meanwhile, although there is a slight hill to the east and northeast of Arch Rock trailhead, it's far enough away that it doesn't take too long for objects in the east to rise above them. I confirmed this while parked in the lot, and picked my spot within the lot for the next morning. Then, with about 90 minutes before the end of civil twilight, I went hiking.

No particular destination. I've seen the major attractions here many times (Arch Rock and Heart Rock), and also wandered, in the past. Did the same, this evening.

Late afternoon and early evening is a great time to go hiking in the desert. The sun is low, and the soft, warm light makes the desert look rather magical. Everywhere I turned, I saw somethng photogenic.

Began my return trek as the sun went down. Atop several different outcroppings, my fellow hikers sat, watching the sun set over the Joshua trees.

Not sure of my hiking distance, because I forgot to shut my Alltrails recording when I got back to the car. The actual Arch Rock trail is given as 1.2 miles roundtrip. However, I wandered a lot before looping back to Arch Rock. I also made the spur to Heart Rock. So I would estimate somewhere near three miles for the afternoon.

The next morning, I got to the parking area around 3:45am, and assembled my 8" dob, and two photographic setups. But I forgot the setting to let me take longer exposures with my Nikon D3500 (you need to change a video setting if you're using Liveview to take exposures longer than 1/60th of a second, even in photo mode), so I only took photos with my refractor system, and visually searched with my Dob.

It was somewhat cloudy to the northeast, and a practically full moon was off in the west, so the sky was pretty bright, even before dawn. That limited the exposures to only 8-13 seconds. Good for limiting star trailing, I guess. But not good for picking up comets.

I did get images of the comet, but no tail was visible. Just a greenish smudge.

I'm going to try again on April 20. As noted above, the comet may be brighter, but it will also be lower in the sky. Also, while the moon is smaller (waning, last quarter), it will also be closer in the sky to the comet.

Unfortunately, the latest news is not encouraging. Sounds like the comet may have disintegrated, which would explain the brief outburst early last week, then the dramatic dimming after that.

Cathedral Gorge State Park, Lincoln County, NV

Hiked March 29 and March 30, 2025. I had been "to" Cathedral Gorge once before, stopping on the way to or from Great Basin National Park. But that was on a pre-blog trip, a long time ago, probably ten years before the Great Basin hikes that did get blogged. And that trip was just a view from the overlook. It was nice, but didn't really resonate.

Then, more recently, I started getting things on my facebook feed from Cathedral Gorge that looked a lot more amazing that I experienced. Keep in mind, I'm skeptical of some of those views, because my personal experience and feeling when hiking, for example, Angels Landing was not nearly as spooky or stress-inducing as videos I have seen of the same hike. In fact, I took a second or third hike Angels Landing, because the video experience was so much more dramatic than my recollection. In that case, I confirmed that, no, with with chain, the dropoffs were really not very threatening. Still, figured my one trip to Cathedral Gorge was pretty surface-only, and a long time ago, so another trip was in order.

So those videos I saw of Cathedral Gorge made me want to revisit the place, and, especially, to experience it from within the gorge rather than from above.

From the Las Vegas area, it's 2 1/2 to three hours driving time, depending on where in the valley you are starting from and what time you leave, because, especially for folks southeast of the Spheghetti Bowl, you'll have to drive through that aggravating interchange. Once through there, it's north on I-15, which is also US-93, for about 21 miles, to where the "Great Basin Highway" (US-93) separates from I-15 and heads due north.

There's a rather unattractive Love's truck stop on US-93, near I-15. After that, there are no formal flush-toilet rest areas between that and Cathedral Gorge, though there are a few smaller gas stations along the way. There's also the visitor center for Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge, where we did stop, both coming and going (more on that in the next post). And that's about it. Otherwise, it's a pretty lonely drive. Not really any chain restaurants along the way, other than I think the occasional Subway in a gas station.

There is a BLM office in Caliente, about 14 miles south of Cathedral Gorge, which I would like to have stopped at, but they're only open on weekdays. There are about five major historic rock art sites not far off the route to Cathedral Gorge, but all require some amount of driving on dirt roads. I wanted to see which could be reasonably accessed by someone driving a Camry, and how long the walks would be from any parking areas to the rock art. Not able to ask that, but I did find some flyers for those sites at the regional state park visitor center at Cathedral Gorge, so I have that to work off of, in the future.

The closest town to Cathedral Gorge is Panaca. There are no "regular" motels in Panaca, but there are at least two "bed and breakfast" properties (both owned or operated by the same group of folks). Other than that, you'd have to camp in the state park, or stay a motel back in Caliente.

We checked in to the "Pine Tree Inn," because this one had breakfast on site, while a review for the other B and B said you had to drive to the nearby "affiliated" site for your food. That being the case, I figured I'd rather stay where the food was!

Price was about $100 a night. Room was comfortable. Private bathroom attached. Locking bedroom door. Microwave and refrigerator shared, upstairs. Also, frozen or shelf-stable food available for purchase, which would be a major convenience, since there is no real restaurant in Panaca, either. So if you didn't bring your own dinner or snacks, you would either buy it from the B and B (reasonable prices) or starve. We brought our own food.

After dinner, I drove the 10 or 15 minutes into the park, paid my entry fee at an automated kiosk ($10 for a non-NV plate on my car), drove to the end of the day use road, and wandered. Even just wandering a fraction of a mile from the parking area, among the slotted canyons, eroded in the clay, was pretty amazing. The hard but easily eroded clay made some fantastic shapes. The blue sky contrasted with the yellowish shale, which photographed warmer than it appeared to the naked eye, because my cell phone camera has no IR cutoff filter. (That's why you can see IR tv remotes light up when you point them at your cell phone camera). Pigeons apparently nest in some of the openings in the clay.

After 20 minutes or so of messing around inside the gorges, I walked the Juniper Draw Loop trail. I was initially confused by a closure sign, but that only applied to a spur along this trail. The loop itself was open. It's about three miles long, so less than 90 minutes, even with lots of stops for pictures. I managed to finish before dark, though somewhat after sunset. My day pass, by the way, said I had to be gone within one hour of sunset. So I'm not sure how things work if you want to do astronomy or astrophotography but not camp in the park. I encountered no park personnel during my visit. Even the visitor center was unstaffed when we popped in, the next day.

The next morning, I returned to the park. I brought back my non-hiking wife, who I thought would enjoy even the short wanders into the slots, which she did. Cost me another ten bucks, but it was worth it.

There's another hike that would have taken me up the west side of the gorge (Hawk's Ridge trail, about four miles), but I figured I had experienced the main vibe for the park, already. Then we went back to our B and B and ate breakfast. Tasty, by the way.

Skipping the morning hike let us leave Panaca earlier. I already planned to stop for a short hike in Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge, so I knew I had another 60-90 minutes in addition to the drive time to go to get back to Henderson. So, away we went.

Bell Rock Pathway and Vicinity, Red Rock Ranger District, Coconino National Forest, AZ

Hiked March 16, 2025. After the drive down from Kingman and the visits to the Crane Petroglyphs and Montezuma Castle, we drove back up I-17, exiting again at Exit 298, AZ-179. Left turn at the bottom of the ramp and you're on your way toward Sedona. Our motel tonight was the Kokopelli Inn Sedona, although it's actually in the village of Oak Creek, a bit south of Sedona. It was priced somewhere around $250 a night, or 27,000 Wyndham Rewards Points, which is what I used.

Room was nice, the location worked, and the price, while very high by my standards, was about what other rooms would go for in the area. And I've got plenty of points, so although the value for the points was not particularly good (less than a penny per point), it did mean no out of pocket expense, which is a plus.

The price included a light breakfast. "Overnight oatmeal" was the main attraction. With available dried fruit and nuts, it was pretty hearty. Beyond that, it was toast, muffins, coffee, or juices. I grabbed a muffin, but wound up eating two oatmeals, instead. The muffin went home with me. At home, one of the cats found it, and chewed it up. Stupid cat. :D

The hike was after a late lunch. We wanted to eat at a place in actual Sedona, but the traffic was terrible, followed by the impossibility of finding parking, so we wound up driving back to where we started from and eating at Los Betos, a local Mexican food chain that we first became acquainted with about 25 years ago (!), during my wife's internship in Tucson.

After a bit of resting up, I walked out of the room, down the stairs, and headed north. My Alltrails showed an access to the trail system by just heading along the residential streets, east of AZ-179. Unfortunately, that was a lie. Accessing the trail would have required crossing a signed No Trespassing area. So I had to backtrack a bit to get back to the main highway, and approach via the large (but mostly full of cars) parking area that is the south trailhead for the Bell Rock Pathway.

I had no real destination or route in mind, other than going mostly north, and trying to make a loop of it. My intial though of going around Courthouse Butte was nixed, on account of it possibly taking too long. I only had about two hours of daylight, and, despite having Alltrails, could not be sure about the difficulty if I did start the loop and then ran out of daylight.

So I just wandered around Bell Rock. Ended up going counterclockwise rather than clockwise, as I would have preferred, just because there were some young women ahead of me who turned that way, and I didn't want them to feel like I was following them. I mean, if I knew where I was going, I could have just accelerated past them, but because I didn't know where I was going, I had to keep stopping at each trail crossing to confirm my direction.

And because this is a heavily used trail, there are a LOT of crossing trails, and a lot of unofficial trails. Even with the heavy signage, it was easy to get misdirected. Matter of fact, later that hike, I encountered an "older" couple (meaning probably a little younger than me) who couldn't find their car. I directed them to go back the way I came and make a left, and it would take them back to the parking lot. But then, about an hour later, as I made my way around Bell Rock, there they were again, heading north, rather than south. I sure hope they were parked where I thought they were parked, because, otherwise, who knows how long they had to walk after dark!

In any event, Alltrails says I walked about 4 3/4 miles, mostly flat, and got back to my room somewhat after sundown, but before it got dark. No doubt, could easily spend several days hiking the area and visiting other ancient indigenous ruins. But it was only a long weekend for me, and I had to get back.

Incredibly scenic place, but also pretty heavily travelled. Still, not hard to get some breathing space, once you got away from the road.

The next morning, before breakfast, we made a quick drive north to see the Chapel in the Rock. It was one of two things I saw pictures of before going, and wanted to see.

Turns out if you go early, the road to the top is gated, so I could only take a picture of it from far below.

I was told that around spring break is their busy time, and it surely was busy. The debacle of trying to eat in Sedona was off-putting, but, man, those rocks sure are pretty. It's as gorgeous in real-life as it was in pictures. I'd like to return again, with more time for hiking. Would also be great in a monsoon -- you could see stains where short-lived waterfalls must run, after those rains or after the snowfall melts. That would also be amazing.