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Ryan Creek White Pictographs

Rating: 
Round Trip Distance: 0.4 miles
Difficulty: Moderate
Elevation: 5705 - 5794 feet
Cellphone: 0 bars
Time: 45 mins.
Trailhead: Ryan Creek Road
Fee: none
Attractions: pictographs




On the side of a cliff above the Ryan Creek Road, in the Triangle Mesa Area, near the Colorado/ Utah border west of Glade Park, Colorado there is a collection of white pictographs that mostly depict hunting scenes of sheep and anthropomorphic images.


To get there find your way to Glade Park, Colorado and continue past the Glade Park Store on DS Road to the Utah border and turn left onto the Triangle Road. The pavement ends at this point with the route continuing on dirt and gravel roads.


Continue for about 6.5 miles and turn right onto the 4wd Ryan Creek Road. Follow the Ryan Creek Road for about 4 tenths of a mile and you should be looking up toward the point of cliffs in this photo. The site with the pictographs is on the right, or shady, side of the cliff. There are several primitive campsites with plenty of room to park that serve as a trailhead. Most 2wd vehicles with moderate ground clearance can probably drive up to this point when the roads are dry.


After parking head north along the base of the hill for about a tenth of a mile. The pictographs are visible from a few places if you hike past this point but this is a good spot to start angling up toward the rim.


It is a pretty good scramble without a trail to follow, presently anyway, to get up to the base of the cliff.


The images are on a little bench beneath a shallow overhang where it is easy to move about.


There are at least 3 anthropomorphic figures and 4 sheep in this photo. Men and sheep are what make up pretty much all of the images at this site.


Notice the faint white line extending from the man to the breast of the sheep that probably represents a spear hurled by an atlatl. Anyway, it is a hunting scene. The hunters represented by the other anthropomorphic images were probably herding the sheep toward this hunter so he could make the kill. The sheep images could easily represent any big game like deer or elk for which there are large numbers in this area.


Here is another pair of man and sheep images to the left of the others.


The large image here is probably that of a woman and the smaller obviously that of a man.


We're guessing that the solid circle in the middle of the chest was a pendant necklace and the object on its left arm is a bracelet. It looks like it also might have hair buns or whorls.


To continue all the way down the Ryan Creek Road requires a high clearance 4wd vehicle to make it all of the way to the west side of the Triangle Road loop. It was more extreme than what we wanted to put our Tundra through so we ended up hiking a couple miles of it. We did notice several rock shelters along the way. One of them had some faint wet charcoal pictographs but nothing very exciting. Even with the scramble up and down the hillside the White Pictographs were worth the time and effort. If you would like to see them for yourself then all you have to do is 'Take a hike'.