Round Trip Distance: 0.9 miles
Difficulty: Easy
Elevation: 4290 - 4413 feet
Cellphone: 0-3 bars
Time: 2 hrs.
Trailhead: 35.03611, -115.42511
Fee: none
Attractions: petroglyphs, pictographs
Near the mouth of Saddle Horse Canyon, in the Mojave National Preserve, west of Needles, California, is an area known by some as Counsel Rocks. Found at the site amongst some of its cave like boulders are a number of pictographs and petroglyphs.
There isn't an official trail or trailhead that leads to Counsel Rocks. At one time there was a 4WD road but that has all been reclaimed since the area was created into a Wilderness Area. The route that we took was to turn west off of the paved Black Canyon Road, about 1,200 feet south of the turnoff to the Hole in the Wall Information Center, onto the unmarked Wild Horse Canyon Road. Follow that for 2.1 miles to where it crosses a wash and find a place to park out of the way. The wash will serve as the beginning of the trail. For turn-by-turn directions enter 35.03611, -115.42511 into your driving app.
We only hiked up the first wash for a short distance before cutting over to one that ran closer to the side of the hill. As you approach the area there will be some cool looking caves higher up near the first rim. We explored all of those and found while they were interesting to look at they showed no signs of any rock art or former habitation. The boulders that make up Counsel Rocks are actually down close to the wash itself and very easy to get to.
The first boulder is one with a little over hang.
There are a handful of pictographs here but without the aid of something like Dstretch they are a little hard to make out.
The next boulder is much more interesting. It has a cave area beneath it with a couple of windows out the back.
Petroglyphs can be seen in a cup like depression above the entrance to the cave.
All of the pictographs are on the inside.
Within this particular cave the pictographs are mainly red and white.
There are only a handful of images that aren't too faded to make out.
Carefully examining some of the other boulders reveals images done in black.
Here they smoothed a place in the surface of the rock to place their image.
Even though the inside of the boulder where these petroglyphs are found is somewhat sheltered the surface of the rock is nevertheless decomposing.
This image will be missed if you don't stick your head inside the rock it is in and look up.
There are quite a few more petroglyphs on some of the boulders. There is one large boulder that has one side of it covered with easy to see images that we meant to photograph on our way back down the hill but missed.
