The main draw of Hueco Tanks are the incredible pictographs that have been painted here over thousands of years. The earliest ones are from over 6,000 years ago. Yesterday I went on a guided tour to see them. This was the first wall we stopped at. Although it looks like all that is here is writing from the historical era (late 1800’s) there are ancient pictographs underneath.
I have an app called iDStretch that lets you look at your picture with different colors and can bring out the pictographs. This is the same photo, but now you can barely see the more recent writing while the 6,000 year old pictographs stand out.
A number of these images have been dated and our guide told us the oldest ones were mostly geometric designs like those in that first picture. My favorites are the masks like this one that are about a thousand years old.
Here, our guide Chris is pointing out part of a story pictograph. The white tree that shows quite faintly is part of what is in essence a story mural. These were done in the more recent past.
Using the enhanced images you can see a few white figures to the left and the tree to the right.
The other side of this drawing shows more figures, including a man who appears to be wearing pants and a hat. The Kiowa say this is the story of a small band of Kiowa who were trapped in a nearby canyon by enemies, including Spaniards. The legend is that after some time holed up in this cave at the end of a box canyon the Kiowa climbed up through the cave and over the canyon wall at night and escaped.
Chris then took us into the canyon…
and up to the cave.
Three climbers went up a ways to see what it was like. Chris has done the climb, and it was very scary and dark in the daytime with modern equipment. Those Kiowa were pretty desperate to do it at night with no equipment at all.
We scrambled around and saw some other neat pictographs.
They are quite startling when you enhance them.
Some more recent ones need no enhancement at all.
It was a fun hike and we went places that I wouldn’t have gone on my own, and not just because it’s not allowed. There was a lot of climbing, but I didn’t get pictures of the steep parts, I was too busy trying to stay on my feet and keep up.
On the Roam Again 