Lagomarsino Canyon Petroglyphs

New to Reno in 2023, I attempted this hiking route up the Long Valley Creek river canyon towards the Lagomarisino Petroglyph site at 39.44359, -119.57045 at the end of November. From the hiking stats (10mi, 600ft), I thought it would be a straightforward thing but was turned back by underestimating how long navigating the terrain would take and how filled in the canyon could be with brush and trees. Armed with that knowledge and more scratch-resistant clothing in 2024 we did a successful hike up this very wilderness-feel river canyon with loads of cool natural features and many pieces of rock art.

Long Valley River Canyon

Driving up past Lockwood, I just pulled over on the shoulder by the bridge over Long Valley Creek. There was a cow/horse trail less than half the time over the course of hiking go up this river canyon, but many times we were forced up and out of the canyon to traverse the side of the canyon on loose-ish rock. The alternative of crisscrossing the canyon to stay in it burned a lot of time in 2023 so I pretty much stayed left and went up high when the brush became too intense or the water too close to the canyon wall. It took more effort, but saved us time by avoiding getting mired in finding ‘the best way’.

Cool high columnar basalt wall section of the canyon. As you can see it can get pretty tree’d and brushy.

The hike up the canyon had many cool and unexpected moments from wild horses, old stone walls, a full coyote skeleton (including the skull), a beaver dam with tons of chewed large limbs, a section of columnar basalt cliffs and lots of bones.

Full coyote skeleton, was about in this state one year earlier

Very surprised when we spotted this beaver dam, we even got a a water-slap from somewhere despite the mostly iced over surface

Lots of beaver evidence, pretty cool for Nevada

There were a bunch of old stone walls in the beginning

Lagomarsino Petroglyphs Site

After hours hiking alone, I was surprised to find a group of SxS’ers at the river when we hit the 4×4 road near the end of the hike. A short walk up a another road at a nearby junction brought us to an unassuming rock pile with lots of rock art. Unfortunately, there was also a lot of evidence of more modern contributions to this rock art area (like V + M 23′) which made me suspect of some of the art since sometimes these people try to add contributions that ‘look similar to the real thing’.