2020 Winter Camping Trip Day16, 2020/12/11
This day we started with lower calf creek hike. Since we were camping at the campground at the trailhead, we were able to start hiking early. This hike costs money, if I remember correctly it was like $6-7, but it's totally worth it. Since we were camping there we didn't need additional hiking fee. Good thing for paying is that we could get a brochure. I like hiking with some descriptions. Several things can't be noticed without that pamphlet. One of them was granaries in the farrrrrr distance and uuuuuuup high.
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Storage Granary
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Please look at the picture in the left. Can you tell where the granary is? There is a pile of rock in the middle of cliff. That is the granary. I saw that and thought, "Whoa!! How can you get there? How could you build a granary on such a steep cliff?" I guess a rope was needed to reach there from the top. Or they could climb from the bottom? They could be a rock climber champion if they were now. Ancient Fremont people were here AD700 to AD1300. They gathered nuts, plants, and hunted some animals. They needed a secure storage place not to be accessed by rodents. I can tell this granary is indeed a secure place.
Native Americans are very good at rock climbing. When I went to Mesa Verde National Park, I learned that they were very good at rock climbing. They had a cliff dwelling and they made corns at the top of cliff. Thus they had to rock climb every day and a lot of place to put fingers to climb the rocks were found there. Amazing!
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| Pictographs |
The second wowing stuff is pictographs. The pamphlet says that there are pictographs at a certain point on the trail. At first I couldn't find it. After a minute, I found it and "Wow!"
Can you find the pictographs in the left picture? If it is difficult, the picture took with zooming in is below.
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| Pictographs |
A lot of questions came to my mind. First of all, the pictograph is really above the ground. How could old Fremont people reach such high place with bringing painting materials? What was the materials? How long did it take to paint that? It might be hard to tell by picture, but the pictograph is actually big. It is not a few hour work for sure. The biggest questions are why these were painted? What do these mean? Why are these needed to be at certain place and particular point of the rock?
According to the brochure, these painting are typical Fremont-style, but no idea what these mean.
Another interesting fact about the rock in the above picture is those stripes. Those black and orange stripes are from activity of microorganisms. Microbes oxidize iron and manganese and where the rain flows on the rock: that made those colors! Biology and chemistry are everywhere! It is exciting for scientists.
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Lower Calf Creek Falls
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Then we arrived the lower calf creek falls! We were the first ones of the day! Really beautiful. Falls reflected the sun and shined. Only we were able to see the shiny falls because the falls went in the shade after 30 minutes or so when the next group came in. Yay! It is very unique fall, because this is in the desert, and fall on the brown rock with countless stripes made by microorganisms. The pool under the falls was also pretty. It was greenish right under the falls then light green in the surrounding area.
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At the Upper Creek Fall Trailhead
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The hike was 6 miles and we still had time for another medium size hike. So we went hiking to the upper Calf Creek Falls. Lower and Upper Calf Creek Falls in a day!!
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Upper portion of Upper Calf Creek Falls
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Trailhead for the Upper Calf Creek Falls is at the high altitude, then go down to the falls as you see in the above picture. How wonderful the view is! This area the hike offers non-stopping views! I was sooooo excited about that. After a 3-mile down to the canyon we came to the upper of Upper Calf Creek Falls. As you can see in the picture, there are several cascades of small falls and inviting (if it is summer) pools to swim. It is very nice and we sat down on the hill and relaxed and looked at nice view for a while.
We actually saw a bigger fall, that view was mostly blocked by rocks, on the way to this cascades, but it seemed it was not accessible, however, while we were eating snacks, we started thinking that we should explore if there was a way to go to the bigger portion of the fall. We looked around and carefully went down the canyon and found a great spot to see the fall. It was really beautiful. What a color! I had never seen with so many colors on the rock. Black, white, grey, red, green brown....the pool is dark green. A lot of science here, including geology, microbiology, biology, plant biology, ecology. This is the natural art. This is great and we spent some time to stare at the falls.
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Upper Calf Creek Falls
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