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| Hiking | 8.40 Miles |
1,600 AEG |
| | Hiking | 8.40 Miles | 5 Hrs 15 Mns | | 1.60 mph |
| 1,600 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no partners | | I took the "scenic route" to Black Mesa Ruins. I parked at the Bumble Bee exit and went cross-country up and across the mesa approaching the ruin from the rear.
It's not very scenic at the beginning as I had to walk up the I-17 on-ramp until the walls of the hill cut were suitable to get up. Also the barb wire fence a little further up is well constructed and not so easy to get by. But it's about 20min to the mesa rim and then it's a matter of picking a trajectory that gets to the semi-isolated far southern edge of the mesa and the fort.
I walked mainly the "local" southern edge of the rim looking for anything interesting but didn't see much, just a lot of prickly pears. Easiest access to the semi-isolated far southern edge is via a saddle. This was an interesting passage, the prickly pears giving way to teddy bears and ocotillos, and I came across some interesting modern petroglyphs left (I think) by Basque shepherds from the early 1900's.
The fort itself was very impressive with tall walls and well-defined rooms. On the cliff band below I found some nice petroglyphs.
On the way back I decided to cut the dogleg and took a high traverse over to a jeep road I could see (walking the road is quite a bit easier than bushwacking the mesa). While getting to the road I startled a group of javalina and I also went through an area with a lot of pottery shards - though I didn't notice a ruin which would probably have been hidden by the shrubs. The road, apparently a service road for the power lines, switchbacked up to the mesa and then it was again cross country back to the car. |
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