Sandstone Bluffs

Sandstone Bluffs is like an out-and-back hike because the trail follows a line of narrow bluffs for several miles before turning around and heading back. But the fun part is that you have a choice of walking on top of the bluffs or walking through the desert at the base of the bluffs. Since the wind was rather chilly when we started we chose to start hiking at the bottom where we would be more protected from the wind.

The trail at the base is unofficial and the challenge of starting the hike that way is figuring out exactly where to climb down from the bluffs. We wandered back and forth along the edge and finally took a guess at what looked like the best way to get down. After we got home I researched a track of this hike from 2 years ago where we had done it the opposite way. I was surprised to see that we had picked the correct spot because it didn’t seem like it when we were slowly threading our way down the steep, rocky slope.

Another interesting aspect of hiking at Sandstone Bluffs is the opportunity at many spots to find pottery shards left from the time when native peoples lived in the area. It’s against the law to take any of them, but we like to gather them together in one spot to make a nice arrangement for someone else who might be walking this way. A couple of examples:

There are some petroglyphs at the far end of the hike that we have seen on previous hikes here. But we weren’t sure exactly where they were and found out later we hadn’t walked quite far enough.

The next couple of photos are from a previous hike here. We did see the rock bridge on this hike but my picture of it wasn’t very good. And we didn’t get as close to the lava rocks as before and that is another thing that we like about hiking Sandstone Bluffs.