Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge – 09/24/2015 Trip Notes
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This page last updated on 04/13/2017
(Fig. 01)
(Fig. 02)
(Fig. 03)
09/24/2015 Trip Notes: Today’s visit was with the Rock-hounds from the Henderson Heritage Park’s Senior Center. Several of us started from the visitor center and hiked back out along the headquarters' entrance road and then along ridgeline and creek on the west side of the Great Basin Hwy (Fig. 02). We spotted three young mule deer (Fig. 03) “jumping” the road in front of us. Even though they crossed the road twice, they were so fast we were unable to capture any pictures of them. In all my visits here, this was the first time I‘ve ever seen any deer.
(Fig. 03a)
Once we reached the highway, we hiked along the ledge on the west side of the road looking for petroglyphs. We spotted several petroglyphs we hadn’t seen on a previous visit, located near the red dots in (Fig. 03a) on the cutout taken from (Fig. 02). These were two Pahranagat Patterned Body Anthropomorphs (PBA) (Fig. 04) and a very well defined Pahranagat Man (Fig. 05). On our way to the spillway at the south end of the lake, we could hear the sounds of rushing water. When we climbed over the bank on our left we found a rushing stream that paralleled the road (Figs. 06 thru 08). Once we reached the lake (Fig. 09) we hiked the trail on the west side of the lake up to the dam (see Fig. 02). The picture in (Fig. 10) is looking south at the east side of the lake from the dam. Though the road and trails on both sides of the lake are lined with trees, those on the west side are some of the largest trees (Figs. 11-13) I have ever encountered in the desert. Picture (Fig. 01) is looking towards the North Marsh from the dam (Fig. 02). In addition to dozens of other birds and water fowl we spotted a pelican in the marsh (Figs 13-15). Who who have thought?
