Round Trip Distance: 2 miles
Difficulty: Moderate
Elevation: 5486 - 5739 feet
Cellphone: 0-3 bars
Time: 2 hrs. 30 mins.
Trailhead: 37.76696, -111.42706
Fee: none
Attractions: pictographs
Weavers Cave is a well known site that is located in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument near Escalante, Utah. Found at the site are 3 shallow alcoves that each have large numbers of intricate Barrier Canyon Style pictographs depicting, among other things, what look like sewing needles and blanket patterns. A couple of former habitation sites can be found on the opposite side of the canyon, one of which includes a grinding slick, and another with a partial piece of masonry wall.
To get there drive 13 miles north from Escalante on UT-12 and turn right into the parking area just after passing the downhill grade sign where the highway drops down the hill to the Escalante River. For turn-by-turn directions enter 37.76696, -111.42706 into your driving app.
From the parking area find the obvious trail that heads off toward the wash.
Once the trail reaches the wash it is simple enough to just follow it downstream. The wash is a bit sandy but the distance is short enough for it not to become miserable to hike.
Eventually the wash comes to a long, steep expanse of slickrock. If you haven't hiked a lot of steep slickrock like this in the past one of the tricks of it, besides good tread on your feet, is to walk flat footed so there is more of your shoe touching the rock for a good friction bite.
At the bottom of the steep expanses of slickrock the route comes to a narrow gap in the wash with two potholes, one after the other. Both potholes might be full of water but some logs that are in place make it easy to cross them. Since you can reach out one hand to the side of the cliff you don't even need to rely much upon your balance.
From the bottom of the potholes hug the cliff on your left following it around a few hundred feet to where the three caves will quickly come into view.
All 3 of the caves have a large number of intricate images. The first cave is a little smaller leaving it with less room for the art work but the images are very much as exquisite as in the other 2 caves.
These are some of the images from the second cave.
The color pallet used included red, white, and black paints.
Here it looks like a little red may have been mixed in with the white to produce a pinkish hue.
Cave 3 seems to have the greater number of images that are in the best condition.
It's a shame that they made such exquisite images on such an inferior canvas as these caves offer where moisture and salt combine to dissolve the rock and pot mark the art.
Various pattern designs.
This anthropomorphic image is holding a staff so we would presume he was a shaman. He has bird feet with 4 toes instead of 3. Birds have 4 talons, counting the spur in the back, but only 3 are seen in most rock art.
These 'V' shaped images look like headless anthropomorphs.
The shallow caves on the opposite side of the canyon looked like they may have been habitation sites. We noticed this grinding slick at one of them.
