Adam Trahan: Picacho

You can get back here with a two wheel drive car if you take your time. It’s a sandy drive and there is a distinct possibility of getting stuck in the sand. It’s a long hike out. In two trips, I’ve seen one truck. I have a Subaru Forester, perfect for this. Be mindful of the approach in. You will need an Arizona State Land permit for recreation. It’s fifteen dollars and covers a year. The gate is not locked but you will have to open and secure it behind you.

My page is not a “how to” but inevitably someone is going to discover this place from it. At a minimum, I’ll point out the caveats and law.

edit: Three months later as I write this edit, I realize I’ll be spending much more time here. This site will preempt my priority in exploring other Gila and Hohokam sites as I found an archeological study focused on the petroglyphs of the Picacho Mountains. The study was from the mid eighties, complete with analysis on each location and subsequent individual petroglyphs and petroglyph clusters. The study is a comprehensive review with dating, interpretation, collateral identification of structures and shelters. This study will allow me to work through the site having an archeological reference to compare and contrast my own study.

Even as an amateur archeologist photographer, it is super important for me to remain true to the facts. I’m a member and the photographer for the Phoenix chapter of the Arizona Archeological Society. At my convenience, I have a tremendous resource available. Being an amateur archeologist photographer, I want to remain true to the techniques and honest to my work however this is my personal blog and I am not posting my findings as a representative of the Society, although I am a member and their photographer, my work here is subjective even as I strive to remain factual. There is no professional peer review component of my presentation here.

I fly free from this method yet I respect science and enjoy the order of a peer review based report, clearly my opinion and view is subject to my personal recollections of the artifacts found at this site. Immediately you will find omission of detailed maps, location data and references. As I photograph and write these words and release them to the wild so to speak, they lose my control over who sees the work. Even in the study I found, created over ninety full days and almost three hundred double sided pages, there were accounts of high school aged kids climbing about the site not knowing they were observed by scientists and state officials.

I will not contribute to the degradation to this site with my written words and photographs. I will not carelessly share the information with people that I do not know or even those that I know that I understand may share second hand critical information on this site.

With this tremendous resource comes my own responsibility. I myself have not to date even touched a petroglyph anywhere. I’ve touched less than a half dozen pot shards and have returned them to the exact same spot I’ve found them. The ONLY thing I’ve taken home is the dust on my boots and a few thousand photographs. I have seen the destruction that careless idiots have left over the course of a couple hundred years, it is disgraceful and utterly disgusting.

So with this knowledge, I’ll stop here until I can again pick up my activity at the Picacho site exploring and studying, photographing and writing about my experience here.

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May 23, 2026: Hot AF! The temp was only in the mid nineties. The reflection off the rocks was intense at ten in the morning. I had driven to Signal Hill earlier and my time now was limited. I wanted to be home by high noon as I had business commitments to attend to. The site was a good ways off the I-10 and behind one gate and still a solid hour on the Interstate. On the way in, I was super disappointed seeing the gate across the road so far back but it wasn’t locked, the chain just secured the gate closed. If you go, please make sure to close the gate, thank you.

I had heard about Picacho when I first started photographing petroglyphs. This site is not on the iconic peak between Phoenix and Tucson, it’s on the mountains north. Picscho isn’t really talked about in petroglyph hunting circles and this is great as far as I’m concerned, good for the site as well. The Picacho petroglyph site is south of Casa Grande Pueblo and I’m pretty sure the people that lived there are the same people that inscribed these rocks.

I did not scramble on the rocks for photographs, I used my long lens, the AF VR Nikkor 80-400mm f4.5 - 5.6 D on my Nikon D780 on the first pass. I made the second pass with the same camera and the AF-S Nikkor 17-35 f2.8 D, both lenses utilizing a rotating polarizer filter. It was a bit alarming as when I tried to take the filter off the plastic threads of the long lens, the filter was stuck on because it was so hot. I literally started the car and used the air conditioning to cool the filter and lens so the filter would unstick from the lens threads. It is a must use device to cut through the glare of the nuking Arizona sun off the desert varnished rocks.

The air conditioning trick worked!

Earlier, I had driven to Signal Hill so this was my second stop on the way back home. This place, even though it was hot AF is really cool. I did not climb, I’m saving that for a cooler day. There are rock tappings at the top boulders in a corner. I wasn’t to get up there with a wide zoom and see all the backside etchings. This is one of my favorite sites, I’ll definitely be back.

Friday, October 8, 2026 @8:30a temperature is 91 degrees. The sun was intense and it is too hot. It is an El Niño year and the Pacific is churning out hurricanes. Hurricane Rachel is bearing down on Arizona and we are going to get rain this weekend. Friday was my target day for a quick trip to N. Start Rd, site number one. There is a boulder pile that I did not climb up on to photograph. Inevitably, I missed a lot of petroglyphs however, I captured many. I used a 400mm lens to get a picture of a panel that I thought was going to be interesting. Turns out it wasn’t what I thought it was. I parked at the spot, got my backpack ready, I loaded my Nikon F6 with a 35mm lens with a circular polarized filter and a roll of Kodacolor 100. I also put the 16-35mm on the D780 and placed that in the pack padded up. I grabbed my stick and plotted my approach.

This is a pretty significant bolder pile, some of the bolders are 8-10' and larger near the top. My path up quickly turned in to hand and foot holds and there were a couple of sections that had tenuous foot placement. My pack was pulling as I haven't worn it in a while and my pole was helpful but as my approach turned into scrambling, it was in the way. I finally got to the top and realized my target was close. All I had to do was navigate to the direct other side facing east. I walked around and realized that I could have just walked up! I was so excited that I just assumed from memory that the direct route up from the car was the way. The target was still about 15-20' away but it just didn't appear to be anything that I wanted to scramble up for. So I took t he shot at 35mm and it actually turned out similar to the 400mm shot that I had previously grabbed.