Each time I return to Painted Bluffs,  I pick a different month and hike a different route, and every time I hike in the park, I am rewarded with a visual kaleidoscope of colors and shapes of the Bluffs badlands terrain.

On this last trip I paddled across from Savona, landed on the beach, then hiked into the wash at the foot of the bluffs.

All routes from the foot of the bluffs will involve some scrambling.   Some routes are easier, following well-established erosion gullies and hikable ridges.

The steeper sections require some route-finding and careful scrambling.

On a bright day, I try to keep the sun behind me for the photos to be taken along the route, but since the park faces south, the shots have to be taken obliquely once up in the upper parts of the park.

Most people who travel to the bluffs never get up to the middle or top of the bluffs where there are new perspectives to be gained.

Iron, copper, and cinnabar stain the bluffs and water and wind erosion have created the gullies and ridges.   The bluffs are mostly barren badlands right down to the tracks.

All of the scrambling up through the bluffs, then over the hills and back down is slow work and care must be taken to avoid falls and also to reduce any human erosion to the bluffs.   This last route was about 5km and took 2 hours.

The paddle over and back is about 2.5 hours plus the 2 hour hike, a good workout on a hot day (with no shade at all), but it is always a privilege to scramble Painted Bluffs.

“Men come and go, cities rise and fall, whole civilizations appear and disappear-the earth remains, slightly modified. The earth remains, and the heartbreaking beauty where there are no hearts to break….I sometimes choose to think, no doubt perversely, that man is a dream, thought an illusion, and only rock is real. Rock and sun.”
― Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness