Top of Comb Ridge Trail-Procession Panel

Comb Ridge is a massive wedge of uplifted sandstone that runs north and south for 80 miles in southeast Utah. The east side of Comb Ridge along Butler Wash Road has many eroded canyons that offer interesting hiking.

One of the trails allows a moderate route to the top of Comb Ridge and also has the Procession petroglyph panel.

Butler Wash Road starts about 5.0 miles west of Bluff along Highway 163, near the San Juan River. The trail that begins about 6.6 miles north of the south gate of Butler Wash Road offers a route to get to one of the high points of Comb Ridge offering wide views of the remote Cedar Mesa area, an area rich with small Ancestral Pueblo ruins sites.

 This trail starts on a short side road from the Butler Wash Road and doesn't have a BLM sign in box or any trail head information.

The trail is mostly over sandstone without a marked route. Head for the reddish ridge and stay to the south of the deep canyon, working along the south rim. There are visible trail segments on the areas that aren't bare rock.

The trail leads to a view point between two rugged peaks of Comb Ridge. To the right are some flat vertical south facing cliffs. The environment here is scattered Pinon Pine and Utah Juniper trees with Mormon Tea, Prickly Pear Cactus, and maybe Blackbrush. This area is very hot in the summer with spring and fall being the best times to visit.

To the upper west end of the cliffs is the Procession petroglyph panel. The trail doesn't lead directly to the petroglyph panel so you'll have to steer up to the right.

There doesn't seem to be any ruins in the vicinity of this panel, though ruins are present in the adjacent canyons. This panel features three long lines of small figures marching toward a circle along with several animal figures.

I notice that among the marchers are a few larger figures, with birds on their heads and carrying long staffs.

The nearby Sand Island petroglyph site has several flute player figures, and ducks on the heads of figures are also found there and  in several other sites.

The line of marchers extends around the natural corner of the rock and they keep coming. Another petroglyph site that appears to show a procession is along the Hidden Valley Trail near Moab, Utah.

Some of the marchers seem to be in particularly good spirits, waving to the viewers from across the gap of deep time. I spent about 2:30 hours on this hike and walked about four miles, including the walk past the petroglyphs to the top of Comb Ridge. At the top, there is a ruins site in view in one of the canyons to the north.

Hobbs Wash Exploring

Hobbs Wash is a short tributary to Lower Butler Wash, about five miles west of Bluff in southeast Utah. There are no official trails into the wash but the area has some Ancestral Pueblo ruins sites and petroglyphs to hike towards and the distance is short.

I started my hike at the Historical Marker that is on the west side of Butler Wash and still east of Comb Ridge on the north side of the highway. Crossing to the south side of the highway, it is a short walk down into Hobbs Wash, but quickly the wash reaches a pour over point.

I explored further south along the rim looking for an easy route down, but didn't see anything reasonable, though I think others have found an easy way.

To the right of the pour point, there is a rocky slope that isn't easy, but is feasible to descend to the canyon floor. It is a little tangled going down the small wash but once you reach the junction with Butler Wash, there are some hiker made trails up and down Butler Wash.

At the junction, I turned left, or north and hiked back towards the highway. There are some alcoves in small Hobbs Wash that look like feasible sites for ruins but I didn't see anything still standing. I did notice one small petroglyph on the north wall. Looking to the south, I think there must be another ruins site nearby, but I didn't go that way to see it.

A few hundred yards to the north I found a small site. This site is very close to the highway and vehicles can be seen racing by. The sandstone layer here sits on top of a thick layer of soil that has eroded into steep dirt cliffs with sluggish water flow winding in between.

The bottoms area is thick with vegetation and there is a meandering stream. Even though the distance is short back to the highway it didn't look very hikeable.

This site has two small structures and a reddish pictograph on the back wall. The historical marker on the highway commemorates four scouts that sought shelter in this area on December 27, 1879. The scouts were exploring a route for Mormon Hole in the Rock pioneers.

I retraced my steps without searching further south along the Butler Wash, climbing up the rocky slope. I spent about 2:00 hours on this hike, much of it looking around on the rim for the route down.

I don't think I visited the better known Hobbs Wash Ruin. This is an area where it might be good strategy to spot the sites from the east side of Butler Wash first.

Four Alcove Trail on Comb Ridge

The Four Alcove Trail is along one of the many creeks that flow east off of Comb Ridge into Lower Butler Wash in southeast Utah, about five miles west of Bluff. This isn't one of the better known trails in this unpublicized area, but a small ruins in a high alcove is visible with binoculars from the Butler Wash Road at about 5.5 miles north of the south gate.

This trail starts at short side road that has a loop and a campsite at the end, right on the edge of Butler Wash. It heads up a narrow gash in the Comb Ridge sandstone to an area that has two alcoves on the north and two on the south. There are cow trails leading across the wash and sage brush area to the creek. In the creek there are trail segments that cows and a few hikers use. There isn't a sign in box or other information for this route.

The small ruin that is visible is high in an alcove and comes in and out of view. In the area below the ruins there is another south facing alcove and also two north facing alcoves directly across. The high desert plants like Pinon Pine and Utah Juniper penetrate this creek area. There was some moisture in the upper end of the creek from recent rain.

To get a better view of the south facing ruins I climbed into the very large north facing alcove. Although this alcove is very large there were no standing structures, though there were several holes that looked like amateur excavations. I didn't see any easy way to get closer to the high level site.

The lower south facing alcove has a deep cave but quite a bit of sandstone has crashed into the area in front of the site. There is a small dry wall structure with what looks like an attempt at petroglyphs. The second and smaller north facing alcove also has a small dry wall structure.

I liked the views from this narrow gash of a canyon back down towards Butler Wash. Before the four alcove area there is a side trail leading to the left to a side branch of the creek that also has an alcove with a small dry wall structure and more good views.

I used about 1:45 hours here and this felt like about a 3 mile hike.

Wolfman Petroglyph Trail in Comb Ridge

The Wolfman Petroglyph Trail is a 1.5 mile round trip to an unusual panel in the Lower Butler Wash area on the east side of the massive Navajo Sandstone Comb Ridge in southeast Utah, about five miles west of Bluff. The trail head is about 1.0 miles north along Butler Wash Road.

The first part of the trail is a 4WD road that ends on slick rock at the edge of the wash. The Wolfman Petroglyph trail is one of the better known trails in an otherwise unpublicized area that has many small archaeology sites in a very rugged and scenic setting. There is a BLM sign in box and information kiosk at the trail head, but the information was not specific for this trail.

From the trail head, the La Sal Mountains are visible to the north and there are steep sandstone cliffs along the east side of the Butler Wash valley. There are a few rock cairns where the 4WD road ends leading to the south to a narrow notch that leads to a ramp down into the wash bottom.

From the rim there is a small ruins site slightly to the north that is probably most easily viewed from this elevated position.

At the bottom of the rocky ramp an alcove comes into view and the panel is just past the alcove. These figures are to the far right seem to be much smoother and carefully done than others in the region.

The bird figure next to the humanoid looks like an Avocet, or some other long billed shore bird and further to the left looks like a Great Blue Heron. These are wetlands birds that might be common in the bottoms of the nearby San Juan River. There are two carefully done canine prints and other figures appear to be flowers or parts of plants. One figure looks like Cattail, a common wetlands plant.

Closer to the alcove is another group of figures that includes what looks like an owl head, a fish skeleton, a catfish, and a jelly fish. The circular figure looks like an overhead view of a mushroom. It seems to have also drawn attention as a target. Many of the petroglyph panels in the region feature wildlife, but mountain sheep seem to be the most common.

The wash bottom here is narrow and seems unusual in that the sandstone rests on a layer of deep soil that erodes easily. From the distance, the small ruins here looks like it was constructed from mud bricks rather than sandstone bricks. I spent about 1:00 hour on this 1.5 mile hike.

Natural Bridges National Monument Short Trails

Natural Bridges National Monument is in the remote Cedar Mesa canyon country of southeast Utah and has three examples of giant natural rock spans. Traveling around the Bridge View Drive, there are trails leading down to each of the three Bridges.

Bridges are different from arches in that bridges are partially formed by the moving water of a stream, where arches are formed by frost action on seeping water. Bridges are also often hidden deep in canyons, whereas arches are eroded fins and are often perched up high and easy to see. These bridges are in the Cedar Mesa sandstone layer that is deeper than the layer where the stone arches of Arches Park occur.

The first trail head along the nine mile loop road is Sipapu Bridge Trail. The trail down there is only 0.6 miles but has a 500 ft. elevation change. There are wooden ladders, stairs, and hand rails to help you traverse the steep slippery sandstone. Sipapu Bridge is 220 feet high, 31 feet wide, and has a span of 268 feet with a thickness of 53 feet. Sipapu is an Ancestral Pueblo term referring to the place of emergence. The circular kivas found at many ruins sites have a symbolic Sipapu in the floor.

At the bottom it is lush and green and a different world from the desert conditions on the rim. This area of southeast Utah is rich in Ancestral Pueblo Ruins and these canyons have some, though you need to explore to find them. The Horse Collar Ruin that is visible from the rim is about one mile down canyon from Sipapu on the north side of the canyon. (There are also ruins up the canyon to look for.)

The Kachina Bridge Trail here was the longest of the three bridge trails at 0.75 miles down, but the elevation change not so bad at 350 ft. On the road to the Kachina Trail Head is an overlook for Horse Collar Ruin. The Kachina Bridge is 210 feet high, 44 feet wide, with a span of 204 feet and is the thickest here at 93 feet.

A lot of work had been done on the trail, cutting and arranging stones to make convenient steps down an otherwise steep route. There are some faint petroglyphs high on the walls of the Kachina Bridge. (Kachina Bridge is named for some of the petroglyph figures on the walls near the base of the bridge. Some of the figures are also of interest to those who believe that the Ancestral Pueblos lived at the same time as the dinosaurs.)

These bridges are so massive that it is hard to take pictures of them up close with your typical cameras. The dark streaks on the sandstone are desert varnish, a mostly manganese and iron deposit left from evaporated water. Again, it was much greener and moister at the bottom of the canyon and the place was alive with birds calling.

The Owachoma Bridge Trail is the shortest and easiest of the three bridge trails. This bridge is 106 feet high, 27 feet wide with a span of 180 feet and a thickness of only 9 feet. Owachoma translates as "round mound."

Owachoma Bridge is an example of an older bridge, perhaps near collapse. It is so old that the stream that formed it doesn't flow under it any more. It is easy to get to, only 0.2 mile and only a 90 foot descent. This one is on the cover of the park brochure, the highlight of natural bridges. It is possible to hike between each of these bridges through the canyons with connecting loop trail on the mesa top. A tour of all three bridges in one hike is 8.6 miles.