Sloan Canyon Petroglyphs Hike

Today we are leaving Las Vegas returning to Phoenix with a few stops along the way. The first stop we have planned is in an area with many petroglyph panels reached by a four mile out and back hike. The area is part of Sloan Canyon National Conservation Area and we start from the Sloan Canyon Petroglyph Trailhead. The trail that we follow, Petroglyph Canyon Trail, is easy to follow and relatively easy going most of the way. However before reaching the petroglyphs there are two scrambles over pour-overs in the canyon making this slightly more difficult than we expected.

However the effort is certainly worth it with the petroglyph panels being some of the best we have seen. The area covered by petroglyphs is also quite expansive and we enjoy exploring the rocks to see what petroglyphs we can find.

And there are a lot of them including with proghorn antelopes which seem to be a common motiv for this area. Others however we cannot even begin to guess what they represent and some we assume might be more recent and not that ancient.

After returning to the car we still have time left till sunset so we go back to the area west of Searchlight and continue on the cache trail and the sun sets and it is time for the long drive home. Overall we had a great time on this trip with a nice mix of ancient art and modern architecture.