Vandalism on Spry petroglyphs

[rick t]

Hi there,
This is Park Ranger Matt McCarthy with Zion National Park.
You are being contacted because you were in the Zion permit system for doing the canyoneering route called Spry Canyon in late May/early June.
Unfortunately, this is not good news. Sometime late May/early June somebody ruined a petroglyph panel that is located at the top of Spry Canyon.
We are, currently, trying to find any leads to find out who could be responsible for this. See attached photos.
We are trying to find who is responsible so we can at least educate them on the importance of these panels to our American culture. Petroglyphs and Pictographs are fragile, non-renewable cultural resources that, once damaged, can never be replaced. Introduction of graffiti destroys the petroglyphs & pictographs and is disrespectful to contemporary Native Americans and their ancestors as well as ruining it for the next person to enjoy.
Rock art in the vicinity of Zion National Park was once assumed to date to Anasazi times about 1000 years ago. However, people have lived in the area for as many as 7000 years. The Archaic people preceded the Ancestral Puebloan peoples formerly known as the Virgin Anasazi. The ancestors of the modern Southern Paiute occupied this area as well. Non-disruptive dating techniques are now being developed that may answer such questions as the age of rock art. To even try and understand a petroglyph or pictograph it needs to be viewed in relation to its environment: including the adjacent image(s), the entire escarpment, and the surrounding landscape.
If anyone has any information even to the dates they were there and when they saw this, please let us know. If you saw this petroglyph and did not see the graffiti, please let us know that too. See attached photos.
If you have any information regarding this graffiti, please contact me anytime at 435-619-1684 or at matthew_mccarthy@nps.gov.
Thanks for your time.
Matt McCarthy
Park Ranger
Zion National Park
Email: matthew_mccarthy@nps.gov
Ph: 435-619-1684

[rick t]

Since I did Spry with a group on June 23 I received this email from the park, asking if I had seen anything or anyone unusal on that day. I did not, but thought it was appropriate to pass this along to the entire community to let them know what had happened, and to make everyone aware and alert to this kind of despicable character and activity. That panel is obscure enough, high enough, and far enough in to indicate that the perpetrators might very well have been canyoneers, as opposed to just the normal inebriated redneck drive by opportunists, which makes this crime even more repugnant.

[Byron]

Meat fer brains.

[accadacca]

Can one of you guys upload the pictures?

[jman]

Just thinking here...

Is this something the CAC could get involved with? Apparently they narrowed down the time frame to the month of June. However, it is interesting that neither Bogley or CC has had ANYONE mention this. Perhaps I missed this in the email that I received as well...but maybe they cleaned it up after they found out about it.

Anyways, the CAC claims it has over 800 members now and perhaps they could email the group and ask for anyone who traveled through Spry during that month and try to decipher a better time frame of the incident (rather than just "late May, early June").

My small group went through on June 5th. And Rick mentioned he went through on the 23rd of June, but did he stop at the petroglyphs? We stopped and we definitely did not see those markings at that time.

So I can safely presume that it happened after June 5th.

[jman]

Can one of you guys upload the pictures?

I just fixed it above...take a look!

[dustinsc]

Why would anyone write "Hail Odinn" on a canyon wall? This is beyond stupid.

[Steevo]

We went through Jun 30. This was not there on that day.

[Iceaxe]

I bet the canyoneering community could greatly narrow the time frame with a little help from CAC, Bogley and CC.... the ability to tell the rangers this occurred between such-and-such dates would be a nice public service from us canyoneers. If the CAC took up the cause it would show everyone they have some useful ability to the park and earn some brownie points.