Round Trip Distance: 0.5 miles
Difficulty: Moderate
Elevation: 5492 - 5601 feet
Cellphone: 0-3 bars
Time: 1 hr.
Trailhead: 37.54342, -109.54818
Fee: none
Attractions: petroglyphs
The Lance Site is about 10 miles southwest of Blanding, Utah. The location gets its name from a memorial at the site for Reed B. Lance and Norma Borreson Lance. A few petroglyphs, which include a solstice calendar, can be found on some of the large boulders below the memorial.
For turn-by-turn directions you can enter 37.54342, -109.54818 into your driving app. From the junction of US-191 and UT-95 you will be directed west on UT-95 for 3 miles where you will turn left onto CR 290, the Westwater Point Spur Road. From there it is 2.5 miles to the trailhead. During dry conditions CR 290 is usually okay for 2WD highway vehicles.
At the 2.5 mile point from UT-95 there are several spots that can be used as a trailhead. One is at a canyon overlook and the other comes up a few hundred feet before that. We marked on the map, and put a waypoint in the GPX file, a good approximate place to drop into the canyon from the rim for the shortest route to the petroglyphs.
There are several social trails leading to the drop in point that once you reach continues down somewhat of a chute to get below the rim of the mesa with a moderate amount of scrambling.
Just below the rim of the mesa the Lance Memorial is tucked away beneath an overhang where at one time there may have been a rock shelter. Several pieces of pottery can be seen on one of the rocks along with a few other trinkets. In this setting it is impossible to determine whether the pottery fragments were from this location or brought from somewhere else.
The petroglyphs are all found further down the hill below the memorial amongst some large boulders. Several of them are beneath the overhang of a large boulder. On the back of that boulder there is a gap between that rock and another one. Within that gap there are some concentric circle petroglyphs that make up a solstice calendar.
One of the sets of concentric circles is divided by a vertical line. Lower down a horizontal line has been inscribed. Looking up you can see how the horizontal shadow of the top of the boulder behind you plays down the gap while the vertical shadow of the end of the same boulder moves in from the side.
Another set of concentric circles within the same gap may have been an equinox marker or something else entirely.
Yet another set of older looking concentric circles is located on the east side of the large boulder.
Beneath the overhand near to that set of concentric circles is a somewhat bilaterally symmetric figure with some bird tracks beneath it.
In the same area there is a sheltered space between some boulders with another image.
This photo turned out a little blurry but this is what is part of what is there.
