Round Trip Distance: 2 miles
Difficulty: Easy
Elevation: 5639 - 5794 feet
Cellphone: 0-3 bars
Time: 2 hrs.
Trailhead: 38.61558, -108.12535
Fee: none
Attractions: petroglyphs, rock shelters
The Painted Cliff Site is located at the foot of the Uncompahgre Plateau on BLM land about 7 miles west of Olathe, Colorado. Found at the site along its colorful cliffs are numerous sharpening grooves, a few petroglyphs, and some grinding slicks.
A straight forward route to the trailhead is to drive west on CO 348 from the center of Olathe for 7.4 miles to the Cedar Road. Continue on the Cedar Road for 1.4 miles to Grandmas Ride Road and follow that out into the desert to the Rusty Nail Road. Go left and follow the Rusty Nail Road for 0.6 miles to the unmarked trailhead and begin hiking, For turn-by-turn directions to the Rusty Nail Road enter 38.61558, -108.12535 into your driving app. The Rusty Nail Road is well signed and suitable to 2WD vehicles during dry conditions. It is however unknown to driving apps so they can't quite provide directions all the way to the trailhead.
An old reclaimed road drops down from the trailhead and after passing an earthen dam joins up with another road. This road is a good alternative route that cuts some distance off of the hike but was too muddy on the day that we were there for us to use.
We explored an overhang at the first bend of the wash and found some tool marks on the cliff but nothing else of any note.
Further down the wash we found an overhang with a rock shelter.
On the right side of the overhand there are some stacked rocks around a sunken pit that formed the outline of a room.
On the left side of the overhang there is a better looking room in which someone has stashed a camp stove. We have found many sites like this, especially along the Gunnison River, that have been reoccupied by homeless people. Such activity probably makes the authenticity of the ruins indeterminable without some other supporting archeological evidence which only a legal excavation could provide.
There might be some images on the back of the shelter in a couple of places but there is also some graffiti so its difficult to tell what may have been original.
Continuing up the wash it comes to a fork where a shallow side canyon connects on the right. It is up this side wash a few hundred feet to the Painted Cliff Site.
Here a narrow bench runs along a colorful mud stone painted, south facing, cliff that is marked from one end to the other with tool marks and a few petroglyphs.
Unfortunately most of the images have been chalked sometime in the past. An indication that this image wasn't just random tool marks is that the exact same image can be found a few miles south at the Harris Site.
Tool marks are the most prominent feature at the Painted Cliff site.
On this rock the tool marks form a pattern that somewhat resembles a bird.
This image is similar to ones that we have seen that tell of game, like deer, being herded into boxed in, or other favorable places, where the hunters can ambush them for the kill.
Down low on the cliff there is a row of a half dozen little bear paws.
Here's a closer look at two of them.
Here are a half dozen rocks that were used for grinding slicks with a set of dirt bike tracks passing between them.
At the west end of the cliff the overhang forms a shelter where there is nothing really worth mentioning.
We came up with the Painted Cliff name on our own not knowing of anything more official. On our maps the canyon is one of the many in the area that isn't named. The site is interesting enough in our opinion to be worth visiting. If you would like to see it for yourself then all you have to do is 'Take a hike'.
