Upper and Lower Pictograph Caves (Great Basin National Park, Nevada)

My destination this weekend was Great Basin National Park in eastern Nevada. While I have been a few times in the past, there are still plenty of adventures to be found within the park's borders. In addition, all other directions out of Reno led to a smothering layer of smoke from numerous large wild fires burning in California and Nevada. 

After getting my camp set up at the Baker Creek campground, I headed to the Grey Cliffs area of the park to examine some ancient Native American pictographs left on the walls in and around a series of small caves. It's a short drive and I find a wide area of the road to park the jeep before scrambling up to the rock art area.

I'm amazed at the amount of specimen on these walls. Painted in red dyes, dozens of figures can be seen. I can discern some of the figures such as humanoid figures and butterflies, but others are much more obscure. Last year, I had the privilege to attend rock art class at the Maturango Museum lead by Dr. Alan Garfinkel, an expert in rock art. During the class, I was introduced to an application called Dstretch, which applies numerous color filter algorithms to faded images in order to enhance the image. It was specifically designed with pictographs in mind and this seemed like the ideal time to use it. Below are some examples of Dstretch enhancements (original photo on the left and enhanced photo on the right).

I was really impressed with how much the color filters make the images pop and even illuminate some that aren't really visible without the enhancement. After exploring around the area a bit more, I decide to head back to my campsite, fix some dinner, and crawl in my tent for some rest. I have a big hike ahead of me tomorrow.