Round Trip Distance: 2 miles
Difficulty: Moderate
Elevation: 4271 - 4552 feet
Cellphone: 3-5 bars
Time: 3 hrs.
Trailhead: 13 Moons/Sky Rock
Fee: none
Attractions: petroglyphs
The 13 Moons, High Checkerboard and Sky Rock petroglyph panels are all located within close proximity of each other in the Volcanic Tablelands area above the Chalk Bluff Road in Bishop, California.
The unmarked trailhead is 1.07 miles up the Chalk Bluff Road from the Happy Boulders trailhead. There is a regular parking area on the east side of the road similar to those for the Sad Boulders and Happy Boulders sites. Just up from the parking area the well worn trail can be seen angling up the side of the hill.
Sand and loose rocks make the steep trail more difficult than the other trails along the Chalk Bluff Road as it gains a little more than 225 feet before reaching the rim after only a quarter mile of hiking.
After reaching the rim the trail levels off and travels along the base of a ridge. Within 1,000 feet of where it reached the rim it passes the Sky Rock site which is up amongst the boulders on the right. My sad story is that I broke and separated some ribs on the previous day and wasn't up to the task of scrambling up to Sky Rock to take photos. It is marked on the map and there is a waypoint in the GPS file so you can find it yourself.
Continuing to about the half mile point from the trailhead the ridge on the right comes to an end. As you hike around the end of the point the High Checkerboard site will be about a quarter mile away further down the next ridge across the valley. As you head in that direction you will come to a road that travels up the valley that makes an easy hiking route until you get to where you need to cut across to the High Checkerboard panel.
The High Checkerboard is pretty faded but it is easy enough to find if you have the GPS coordinates. Without the coordinates it might take a little more hunting but should still be relatively easy with the map showing the general area.
There are some very nice images on the top of a black basalt boulder right below the High Checkerboard.
Even though I wasn't able to scramble up on one of the other boulders to get a better photo they were still easy enough to see from below.
By following the 4wd road further up the valley between the two ridges you will come to a pullout on the right that is about even with the Sky Rock coordinates. Across from that pullout is another one on the left where you can see the 13 Moons panel with a keen eye or pair of binoculars. If you can't see it from there you can walk up the road a little further and look across. The panel is on the right, or east facing, side of the boulder. There is a bit of a social trail that heads in that direction from the pullout.
Unlike the High Checkerboard panel everything here shows up like a neon billboard.
There are normally 12 full moons in a year occuring every 29.5 days but every 2.5 years there are 13. Native Americans had names for each full moon. We don't know ourselves whether any of that meaning is meant to be drawn from this panel or not. The circles and arcs might represent comets or meteor showers. Meteor shows and comets are also cyclic. For instance, the Leonid meteor show peaks every year on the 17th of November. The rayed circle on the left might represent the sun. The other images might relate to planting, hunting, migrating, annual festivals, and other things that occur near the times of each full moon. Of course the full moons don't occur on the same day each year but they are relative. Or the panels meaning could be something entirely different that we aren't seeing.
