Round Trip Distance: 2 miles
Difficulty: Easy
Elevation: 6089 - 6187 feet
Cellphone: 0 bars
Time: 3 hrs.
Trailhead: Nampaweap Petroglyphs
Fee: none
Attractions: petroglyphs
The Nampaweap Petroglyphs are located south of Colorado City, Arizona in the Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument. Over 1,800 petroglyphs can be found on the basalt boulders and cliffs along the Nampaweap trail beginning just over a half mile from the trailhead and continuing for at least another half mile.
To get there you have your choice of taking CR-5 in Colorado City or CR-109 which turns off of AZ-389 about 8.3 miles west of Fredonia. CR-109 is the better route in dry weather but CR-5 is a smoother road. Both routes merge after 40 miles and continue as CR-5.
From where CR-5 and CR-109 merge all you have to do is follow the Nampaweap signs on CR-5 for another 10 miles to the Nampaweap turnoff where it is another 1.1 miles to the trailhead. For turn-by-turn directions enter 'Nampaweap Petroglyph Trailhead' into your driving app.
From the trailhead the route follows an old 4WD road.
After just over a half mile you will come to a trail register where the petroglyphs begin.
From the trail register you can cross the wash where it is easy to begin spotting petroglyphs. On the left there is a shallow cave. Below the cave we spotted some small pieces of pottery. Be sure to leave these where you find them.
Here is an image of a snake with a 4 armed male figure. We noticed in several places single anthropomorphic figures, both male and female, paired with animals such as snakes or sheep.
Look closely and you will notice that this image is a clever weave of multiple snakes set off in a pattern that resembles that of a single snake.
This might give you an idea of the density of the images in this area. Many of them are in hard to get to places and at a bad angle for photographing from below.
Here are some of the images that are on the kiosk at the trailhead.
This one was also on the trailhead kiosk. There are several anthropomorphic images of this style. The legs forming a circle might suggest a person sitting 'Indian style'.
Four turns out of the Sipapu.
Horned figure with 3 fingers with a rising thunder symbol.
A crack in the rock passes through the center of a spiral or some concentric circles. The crack is touched from above by one of two anthropomorphic images and from below by a serpent and another image within a circle.
Here is another large panel of images. The boulder below the panel on the left has quite a few images also.
Here is an interesting line of small anthropomorphic figures. Maybe dancers, maybe not.
Here is one of several painstakingly reticulated images that we noticed.
A spider web.
A spiral coming out of a crack.
They certainly had a lot of stories to tell.
One more of over 1,800 images that seemed a little interesting.
Four fingers and four toes man.
We marked this as a probable solar calendar. There are 3 spirals situated beneath an overhang where the shadow probably interacts with one or the other at the significant time of the year for which it is meant. One spiral would be for the summer solstice, one for the winter solstice, and the other spiral would be for both the spring and fall equinoxes.
This is what we marked as the turn around petroglyphs. Past this point the nature of the cliffs was changing and it didn't look like there would be much more to see.
It was a dark overcast day during monsoon season when we took the photos for the Nampaweap Petroglyphs. What we have shown here is just a small portion of what we saw and we may have missed quite a few others. The following slideshow has more of the images but we even had to cull several hundred out of that to reduce it's length.
It's a long drive on dirt and rocky roads to get to the remote Nampaweap Petroglyphs. Google Maps shows it as a 2 hour drive from Fredonia but it was closer to 3 hours for us.
If you would like to see it for yourself then all you have to do is 'Take a hike'.
