39 replies to this topic

[Foy]

Happy Birthday! Another Veterans Day birthday I'm familiar with.

As always, a fine write-up with excellent photography. Many thanks.

And 60 is the new 30, by the way.

Foy

[SunMan]

Sad epilogue to this wonderful report:

http://www.sierrawav...yph-theft-case/

All the more reason to not publish the exact locations these treasures on the Internet.

[highz]

That's terrible news. Some folks have posted directions online to a special petroglyph site near me (also on BLM land), which makes me nervous. I sent them an email...

[CraggyMan]

Really sad, hoping it was not the Sky Rock site??

[Ted]

A great TR as usual, Ski. Thanks for inviting us along on this special trip.

We did see evidence of vandalism on this trip. The road to one site had just been closed due to grafitti painted on the rocks. We hiked in to see the glyphs. It appeared the paint was directions to climbing rocks and not on the glyphs themselves. Still it confounds me as to what could make someone do this. At other locations there were bullet holes in the rocks on the glyphs (circled in photo). Don't know if they were recent or old, but WTH? Did not see any vandalism at Sky Rock.

[clikrf8]

Just read a posting of this by a FB photography buddy. I am just really sad about this. We had planned, based on your TR to stop by there on our return or enroute April trip to AZ/NM. I guess there are others to see but what a terrible act against a culture. We like to stop at galen Rowell's photography gallery, also. I am hoping that the perps are caught but sounds like an organized group to me. Happy birthday.

[Smokecreek1]

Good trip report as usual Ski. I was 50 once, seems like a long time ago. I spent allot of time recording rock art and trying to protect same over the years and vandalism was always a major problem. It seems that some people can't resist using them as targets and yes they are very difficult to catch. You can't really protect most sites with fences and cops, and educational programs only goes so far! We used local vandalized rock art sites as part of the local school education program since the early 1980's-both as regular site visitsin the fall/spring and as a reward for good students. , we gave school talks and even worked to create several lesson plans for the 3rd and seventh grades that were used by the school district as a part of their education plan . Again we started this at the request of the local school district as a program about local history and used a local icon-rock art site /fishing hole as a test case. It still got shot (again) but we felt that it worked and I did it for 25 years until I retired.

Lot's of soul searching showing sites and things to the general public, but in truth they belong to them and we can only do so much to protect them without the public's help and support. In some ways you can understand dumb people using rock art as targets, but the ones who used saws to cut them out so they can sell them or dig up burials and bronze the skulls,were on my you know what list. I was in the first ARPA class for LE & Archaeologists in Marana AZ (cops and arks learning thingstogether), many moons ago-and even got to be an expert witness in a federal ARPA case-put him away too, anyway starting to hijack this thread, get me around a campfire sometime and in a few beers can tell you lot's of stories about aircraft, ARPA, patrols learning to work with LE and lot's of week ends doing lonely stakeouts!

Smoke

[LT Traveler]

Great TR and happy birthday.

We love to spend time down in the Bishop area, usually climbing, but reading your TR makes me want to do some other exploring. We love rock art and petroglyphs, most of our southern Utah trips are centered around finding these gems.

Big FU to the vandal/thieves that would destroy this stuff. Another article here: http://www.modbee.co...-stolen-in.html

[Dughlas Stiubhart]

Happy B-day 3pin! As for your age, soon you'll be getting your federal "geezer card"--not so bad! And thanks for the TR and pics.

[ski3pin]

Sad epilogue to this wonderful report:

http://www.sierrawave.net/15230/petroglyph-theft-case/

All the more reason to not publish the exact locations these treasures on the Internet.

I had several links to news articles in my email the last few days concerning this. The fines and imprisonment sentences are not high enough. Occasionally thieves like this do get caught but it takes a solid case and diligent work. It also takes us speaking out that this stuff actually matters to us.