Round Trip Distance: 0.5 miles
Difficulty: Easy
Elevation: 5098 - 5139 feet
Cellphone: 3-5 bars
Time: 2 hrs.
Trailhead: Hidden Cove
Fee: $25/person
Attractions: petroglyphs
The Hidden Cove Petroglyph site is owned and operated by the City of Holbrook, Arizona. Guided tours, which presently cost $25/person, are the only means of visiting the site where scores of petroglyphs are found on the cliffs around its hidden cove.
To book your tour visit https://odellhiddencovepark.com/. Once your tour is booked you will meet your guide at the Golf Course Clubhouse where there is a restroom. No restrooms are available at the site itself. From there all you have to do is play follow the leader to get through the 2 locked gates and to see the petroglyphs.
Most of the petroglyphs are grouped on a low bluff to the east of the Hidden Cove.
A well constructed trail leads up to the level of the petroglyphs and loops around beneath the rim of the mesa. There are a few spots that require some minor scrambling to get close enough to some of the panels for good photos.
For many of the petroglyphs you can stand very close while taking photos. There are some that are higher up on the rocks where only a zoom lens can reach.
The very experienced guide can provide insights to many of the images.
Most of what vandalism there is, which occurred before access to the site was secured, is in the form of bullet holes.
These are a few of the images for which you will want a zoom lens or a long selfie-stick.
Here is a warrior, or hunter, and what might be a clan symbol. Our guide pointed out that the object hanging behind the hunter might be a fox's tail which apparently was a commonly worn accoutrement.
This is one of the larger panels.
An image the occurs multiple times is a small figure holding up what our guide identified as Paho feathers or a prayer wand.
Another insight which was shared was that of this rectangular image that seems to show crops being watered by falling rain.
This interesting image is one of those that is higher up on the cliff.
In this panel there are several more little figures that are holding up prayer wands.
These images were hard to photograph but if you look closely you can see a line of footprints walking up the cliff.
The guide mentioned something about these rayed discs not actually representing suns but I don't recall exactly what she said.
These images are most interesting because they a some of those at Hidden Cove that obviously were never finished. As you can see the large image isn't completely pecked out. Below that images is a deer which has legs that were scratched onto the rock but were never pecked. There are at least a handful of other images in the area that were sketched out, if you want to call it that, but never completed. The unfinished images provide a helpful insight into the making of petroglyphs.
Below the cliffs on lower ground are some large boulders with 3 or 4 more panels of petroglyphs.
It is believed that the larger boulder that is leaning on this rock toppled over after the images were created.
In doing so it caused the boulder that it fell on to turn upward covering up some of the images on the very top edge.
Right when you think the tour is about over it continues on around to the east where there is still more to see.
One of the remaining stops is a small rock shelter.
Past that is a boulder with this skinny figure with oversized hands standing above a large pair of feet.
The last images that we will include is what looks like a fight scene. The figure on the right is brandishing a knife. He appears to be throwing darts or something at the figure on the left.
