Tenmile Wash

Rating:
Round Trip Distance: 7.2 miles
Difficulty: Moderate
Elevation: 4270 - 4397 feet
Cellphone: 0 bars
Time: 6 hrs.
Trailhead: Dripping Spring
Fee: none
Attractions: rock art, grinding slicks

Tenmile Wash is the wider, upper portion of Tenmile Canyon that is located northwest of Moab, Utah. It stretches for a little over 4 miles from the Dripping Spring trailhead toward the Green River. A little past the 4 mile point the wash narrows into a canyon and continues for another 10 miles or so to the Green River. Along the way it is connected to by Cow Canyon, Freckles Canyon, Trail Canyon and several short unnamed canyons. Each of the main connecting canyons has its own natural spring that provides water for bighorn sheep, deer, livestock and other animals. The perennial springs also supplied water for early inhabitants of the area that left behind petroglyphs, pictographs and multiple habitation sites.

By entering 'Dripping Spring Moab Utah' into Google's driving app you are presented with 3 routes. The route that it normally recommends is the southern route up Highway 313 which requires a high clearance 4wd vehicle. We normally take the middle route by turning off of US-191 onto the Blue Hills Road and following that to the 10 Mile Road. That route also requires a high clearance 4wd vehicle and has some deep sandy spots but it isn't as rough as the Highway 313 route is between the Secret Spire Road and the Ten Mile Road. The shortest, and fastest, route is the northern one that begins at the Floy exit on I-70. The middle, or Blue Hills, route does go by the Moab Grotto if that is another stop you would like to make.

There is plenty of parking around the corral at Dripping Spring. Be sure to park off to the side and leave room for anyone that might need to turn around with a trailer.

There is a reclaimed 4wd road that travels through the wash all the way from Dripping Springs to the Green River. On our hike rather than follow the road we stayed closer to the edge of the wash so that we could scramble up onto the benches along the way looking for ruins and rock art sites. In a few places the brush was too thick along the side of the wash and we had to move more toward the road to get around the brush. If you use our GPX file you can save some trouble by skipping the benches that don't have a waypoint marked.

The first petroglyph site is only about six tenths of a mile from the trailhead.

The petroglyphs appear to be of the Fremont style. Here is a string of a half dozen bighorn connected snout to tail in a procession.

This probable BCS, (Barrier Canyon Style), panel is on a bench that is about another mile down the canyon. A lot of partial and indeterminable images can be found under the same overhang.

This image shows what looks like a bighorn, that is shaded like an elk, with a hunter to the right that has a bow and arrow.

Other than this image, most of the others are pretty faint.

On the bench right before the Big Cave there are what look like four shields. They still show up pretty well but we went ahead and outlined them on the computer to give a better idea of what is there.

Before the road through the canyon was closed for reclamation people used to drive right up to the base of this big cave. There is what looks like a partial ruin and some petroglyphs or pictographs that can be seen from below but there is enough graffiti mixed in to make the images that we could see without climbing up into the cave questionable.

Directly across the wash from the big cave is an unnamed side canyon with more than a handful of large alcoves. One of the smaller alcoves on the west side of the canyon has some storage cists.

On the east side of the canyon is a large alcove where most everything is buried beneath a large eolian deposit of sand. There are a couple of boulders in that alcove that are covered with grinding slicks.

It is surprising how well corncobs hold up over the years.

Sharpening grooves are also present.

Just around the corner from that large alcove is a smaller one that faces the main wash which also shows signs of habitation in the way of more grinding slicks and broken metates. Pieces of the broken metates can be seen on the left in this photo.

Anyone wanting to explore Tenmile Canyon more thoroughly might consider making a backpacking trip. While we are showing a round trip distance of 7.2 miles we actually hiked more than 13 miles in looking about. We have hiked the length of Cow Canyon and Freckles Canyon without finding even any less than obvious archeological sites. While both of those canyons have water none of the alcoves were suitable for habitation. At some point we would like to go back and explore Trail Canyon and a couple of other minor branches as well as from the Big Cave further down toward the Green River where according to Kelsey there is a granary. As far as what we have posted here, if you would like to see it for yourself then all you have to do is 'Take a hike'.