Round Trip Distance: 1.1 miles
Difficulty: Easy
Elevation: 6958 - 7055 feet
Cellphone: 0-3 bars
Time: 3 hrs. 45 mins.
Trailhead: White Mountain Petroglyphs
Fee: none
Attractions: petroglyphs
The White Mountain Petroglyph Site is located about 26 miles north of Rock Springs, Wyoming. The site features hundreds of petroglyphs carved into its whitish sandstone cliffs that were made by ancestors of Plains and Great Basin Native People as much as 1,000 years ago.
For turn-by-turn directions enter 'White Mountain Petroglyphs' into your driving app. From the signed turnoff on CR 17, the Chilton Road, it is 3 miles to the trailhead. The roads are suitable for normal highway vehicles during dry conditions.
From the trailhead the route follows a 4WD road to where a locked gate bars vehicle access and a green Powder River gate allows access to hikers.
Before having gone a half mile there is another gate with a trail camera. From this gate follow one of the trails that leads to either end of the broad sandstone cliffs up ahead. For this post we started on the right side of the cliffs and worked our way west along the cliffs looking for petroglyphs.
Some of the first images that we came upon included a tall, cute, human like figure with raised arms and some sort of 4-legged animal with a dozen other images as well.
Several shallow soot stained caves can be found with petroglyphs around their openings.
Here are 2 more tall stick like human figures with a broad bodied figure between them.
Here you can see human figures, grizzly paws, and various game animals.
Some of the most often occurring photos from the site are of its deeply grooved hand forms.
Here are several more skinny and broad anthros and a couple of teepees. The fainter images look like they had been chalk outlined, an old destructive practice that is now illegal.
Here are some large and small figures of a different style. All of them have bent arms with hands raised. One might have an arrow through its body.
This is an interesting shadowy figure. Off to the left is a yoni image. To the left of that is another interesting human figure in profile that might be sporting an erect phallus.
Here are several more female figures.
Several images of horses and horses with riders can be found amongst the wide array of images.
Other common images include large elk and a variety of other animals. We had some trouble trying to decide what some o the other animal images were supposed to represent other than some abstract game animals.
There isn't very much contrast between the rock the images are carved in and the images themselves which makes them appear faint although most of them still have sharp lines If you would like to see them for yourself then all you have to do is 'Take a hike'.
There isn't very much contrast between the rock the images are carved in and the images themselves which makes them appear faint although most of them still have sharp lines If you would like to see them for yourself then all you have to do is 'Take a hike'.
