Round Trip Distance: 0.2 miles
Difficulty: Easy
Elevation: 4377 - 4382 feet
Cellphone: 0-3 bars
Time: 30 mins.
Trailhead: Ghost Panel
Fee: none
Attractions: petroglyphs
The Ghost Panel is a name we gave to a petroglyph site that is a couple miles east of Bluff, Utah. Among its many images the panel has a number of ghostly looking faces with round hollow eyes. Weathering has faded the images to the point that they appear almost to be staring back through a mist at all that look upon them.
To get there from Bluff head east on Highway 162 for 2.3 miles. The highway is paved and the short road leading over to the cliffs is normally accessible to passenger vehicles.
Stay to the right at the fork.
At first the most prominent images are the ones that look a little like keyholes. Similar images can be found at other sites in the area.
It takes a few minutes of examining the rock and getting accustomed to looking at the faded images to realize how extensive they are. Among the assortment are 2 large bighorn sheep, some animal tracks, footprints, faces, geometric patterns and more.
Here is a nice bust with 2 feathers and hollow eyes. Higher to the right is what might be a mountain lion track.
Here are a few of the ghostly images.
We could never decide about this image. The person with a single feather appears to be sprinkling something on the neck of an animal but whether the person is standing over the animal or riding it like a horse left us scratching our heads.
A couple images of plants suggest a harvest. There is also an image nearby that brings to mind waffle gardens that we have come across.
There are a couple of anthropomorphic figures like this one with spiked hair. One of them appears to have bird hands.
