What’s At Fish Mouth Cave?

Fish Mouth Cave is a cave like no other. Well, in the Comb.

Yikes! I’m in the Fish’s Mouth.

Look at how high into Comb Ridge this cave is as I look out over Butler Wash Valley.

To get to Fish Mouth Cave, it’s yet another 2 mile round trip hike into another Comb Ridge canyon from Butler Wash, here near Bluff, Utah.

Above is, what do you say, just another cave.  Not really!  On the way to the Fish Mouth Cave we pass another cave with obvious ruins.  Oh well, we will go see the names cave first.  We will come back to see this one.

Let me take this moment and tell you how fixated I am on consecutive water holes.  I’m below the Fish Mouth Cave and as water has come down over the centuries it has warn pockets in the stone where water flows from one to another.  Some birdbath size to kiddie pools.

There I am looking up to the Fish’s Mouth.  You probably can’t tell but it is seriously up hill.  The last few hundred feet are loose rubble rock.  It can be easily dislodged so I’m careful for those down hill.

On my way into the cave I found very little signs of building.  This looked like a vent hole to the back.

Sadly I found way too much graffiti.  Lists of it.  Not petroglyphs either.

I went way to the back of the cave for this photo to give you a perspective how big it is.



I did find signs of grinding on the sandstone.  It’s where the natives here used harder washed river stones to grind things.  In the middle you can see someone found a corn cob hundreds of years old and placed in a grinding hole.



I had my head down climbing the steep incline into the cave and missed this stone building in the corner of the Fish Mouth.



Oh look.  I made it out of the Fish Mouth and I’m standing at the ruins in the smaller cave looking up to the Fish Mouth Cave.



Although not on the billing of the name of the hike, it’s nice that they are here as it added a lot of interest of the entire hike.



The finders of pottery chards findvthem and place them on a rock for those that follow to see.  Check out the pottery detail designs on the outside of the pots. 



A Rock.  I took this picture of this extremely colorful rock as it looked out of place.  It also helps bring out the colors of the cactus that may be at the end of its life.

I guess I’m distracted by color.  Just another interesting picture from today’s hike.

Brent

macaloney@hotmail.com