Round Trip Distance: 4 miles
Difficulty: Moderate
Elevation: 4486 - 4646 feet
Cellphone: 0-3 bars
Time: 3 hrs.
Trailhead: 37.37105, -109.57752
Fee: none
Attractions: ruins, pottery, petroglyphs
Black Rock Canyon feeds into Cottonwood Wash about 7 or more miles north of Bluff, Utah. While the main branch of Black Rock Canyon is dry the branch just to the west is well watered by a natural spring. For this post we hiked about a mile down that wet west branch to where we discovered a few petroglyphs and a minor ruin with lots of pottery.
For turn-by-turn direction enter 37.37105, -109.57752 into your driving app. The best approach is via the Lower Butler Wash Road. Vehicles that can handle that road should have no trouble getting to what we are using as a trailhead. Shortly past this point the Deckers Road turns into a high clearance 4WD route. With the Fee Station, or Wolfman Panel trailhead, as a starting point follow the Lower Butler Wash Road for 7.5 miles and stay right. In another 1.4 miles stay right again and continue for 1.8 miles. At this point go left and in about 0.2 miles there will be a large area of slickrock on the right that makes a good place to park.
From what we are using for a trailhead either follow the shallow wash for about 4 tenths of a mile until you reach the canyon or shorten the distance a little by hiking due east until you reach the edge of the canyon.
Upon reaching the rim of the canyon there are easy walk-in routes both to the left and the right where you can reach the wash below without needing to do any scrambling. Just over a mile up stream, where the Deckers Road crosses the wash, there is a natural spring that feeds water down this branch of the canyon.
The wash itself is a coarse, or gravely, sand where you might sink 1 or 2 inches with each step. That is only in places like this where the stream of water is flowing below the surface.
Where the water comes back up to the top the sand is firmly packed. It is easy to cross the stream without the water coming over the soles of your boots. We should mention that the flash flood level reaches 6-8 feet in the narrow sections of the canyon. Getting caught here during a thunderstorm would probably mean certain death.
Just past the 1 mile point from the trailhead we noticed a spiral petroglyph on the west side of the canyon a couple of feet above the wash.
On the east side of the wash, below a bench, we discovered large amounts of pottery shards.
Interestingly enough there are a lot of shards that were imbedded in the wall of the wash below the bench. The top of the bench is probably a good 10 feet or more above the wash. Layers of charcoal are also visible in the wall.
Be sure to leave all of the pottery where you find it and remember that it is illegal to do any digging. An archeologist can't even dig without the proper permits.
There isn't much in the way of ruins up on the bench above the wash. It is evident where there were once some walls. The bench is littered with quite a few old rusty cans showing that some cowboys or other people used it as a camp at one time.
We hiked about another half mile past the ruin to check out an alcove that was in the main branch of Cottonwood Wash. Hiking around this part of Cottonwood Wash is difficult, due to tangles of tumbleweeds and debris from flashfloods, unless you can find a cattle trail to follow.
While hiking back up the wash we found a few more petroglyphs on a sloped ledge that was about chest high. They are only about 10 feet or so from the spiral petroglyph. These concentric circles show up the best.
Another option to the out-and-back hike that we did would be after reaching Cottonwood Wash to hike up the main branch of Black Rock Canyon to the Deckers Road, follow that down to where the Deckers Road crosses the wet branch of the canyon, hike down the wet branch to where we entered the canyon originally, and then climb out and hike back across the top to the slickrock trailhead. That loop should come out not more than 6 or 7 miles. It would allow a lot more exploring and seeing how the canyons are fun to hike and pretty easy anyway it should make for a good time.
As far as what we have shown here goes, if you would like to see it for yourself then all you have to do is 'Take a hike'.
As far as what we have shown here goes, if you would like to see it for yourself then all you have to do is 'Take a hike'.
