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Classic Fall Hikes: Great Gallery At Canyonlands National Park

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Published Date

October 7, 2015
The Great Gallery, Canyonlands National Park

The Great Gallery at Canyonlands National Park contains one of the best rock art sites in the world/NPS

Fall, which is arguably the best season for hiking in the National Park System, is almost upon us. The cool days and bright colors provide hikers with plenty of incentive to hit the trails.

With that wonderful season in mind, we’ve selected some of the country’s “scenic trails” for your consideration. To those we’ve added a Yellowstone National Park classic, a hike in Canyonlands National Park, and another that traces one of the bloodiest days of the Civil War.

Here's our fifth hike for this fall:

Great Gallery At Canyonlands National Park

There are pictographs all around the Southwest, many easily accessible by vehicle. But it takes a hike—and a good one at that—to reach what is arguably the most famous rock art display in the country.

The cool days of fall and spring are the two best seasons to visit the Great Gallery in the Horseshoe Canyon annex of Canyonlands National Park in Utah. Summer temperatures can feel like a blast furnace in the canyon bottoms.

From the canyon rim it’s about a 7-mile roundtrip hike down the trail that descends 750-800 feet to a sandy wash floor, and then meanders along that floor. You’ll pass some lesser rock art panels—the High Gallery, Shelter Site, and then the Alcove Site—but then you’ll arrive at the masterpiece.

The Great Gallery panel alone is wondrous. That it has survived the elements and erosion for tens of centuries is phenomenal.

Some archaeologists who have studied the Barrier Canyon images believe they were created by Archaic age shamans between 1900 B.C. and A.D. 300. The ancients are believed to have filled their mouths with red ocher-tinted paint and sprayed it out with a mighty burst.

There are benches beneath the golden cottonwoods, so you can sit and ponder the motivation behind the images, and the lives of the human beings who made them.

Helpful books:

The Archeology of Horseshoe Canyon

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A Day In The Park: Canyonlands National Park

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