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| Hiking | 6.00 Miles |
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| | Hiking | 6.00 Miles | 6 Hrs | | 1.00 mph |
| | 20 LBS Pack | | |
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| no partners | | V163… Oh where art thou?
Ahhh….low 60s at night, low 80s during the day, overcast, very lite sprinkles, there is no better time or “clime” to be in the Sierra Anchas.
Johnny and I finally synchronized our schedules (its tough with kids in high school and college in both families) and put together a day and a half hike into the Sierra Anchas, our destination: hopefully; the elusive (for us at least) V163 ruins! This was to be our fourth attempt at locating this ruin…what for Johnny and I had become our own personal Odyssey.
We spent the night overlooking Cherry Creek. What a gorgeous view to wake up to.
Thursday morning we broke camp, loaded my 4Runner and drove north about a mile, along the rim and hit the trail shortly after sunrise…. after an hour of hiking … something just didn’t feel right, we reviewed our data package of papers, pictures, Triplogs, IMs…and … recognizing the error of our ways … performed a CTRL-ALT-DEL and headed off on a different course.
I would be remiss if I didn’t offer, many thanks to: Lange c.1980, Haury c. 1932, “the yeti”, “the Bart01”, “the Bartels” and “the Schulhauser”, for knowingly and unknowingly providing pieces of the puzzle that is V163, as was explained to me in an IM, all the info is there…and indeed it was (even tho' I couldn't weasel any GPS Coords out of them, that SSSAR is a tight bunch), we just had to pick out the pertinent data and put it all together to form the picture..er map. I can certainly appreciate Preston’s comment “hard to get to”, not sure I understand his “easy to find” comment…at least for us anyway.
At any rate, this ruin is further off trail than the others (V-162, V-164) and while it was certainly not as impressive as the others, finding it did complete our TRIAD! Yes! We finally located the Sierra Ancha ruin V163, also referred to as c:1:14 by Haury. Although, Haury appears to have some confusion about location and nomenclature between C:1:8, and C:1:14 in his paper, his pictures match up, but his locations don’t. Both Johnny and I are impressed with Haury’s elevation accuracy (recall he did his survey in 1931/32, pre-GPS) as this ruin was located right at the elevation Haury indicated it would be. And yes, I realize GPS elevation accuracy is not as good as a calibrated barometric altimeter, but GPS beats eyeballing it in my book.
This ruin appears to be only large enough for a family or two, ie 3 rooms. Johnny and I speculated it was a resort destination for the more affluent families of the Canyon Creek metropolis (12 miles to the east)…or more likely, a “hunter’s cache/cabin”. Walls are pretty intact, and very impressive to me as you can still see the palms and finger lines from 800+ yrs. ago. We spied a nice black on orange pottery shard, ½ Metate, several rather bland, gray/brown pottery shards and lots of wasps! One of the roof timbers appears to be “freshly cut, within 30-40 yrs”, possibly Lange in 1980 for a core sample.
We spied several caterpillars of various shapes and colors, while going to and from this ruin…standby for the butterflies! That was the extent of the fauna on this trip.
In keeping with the Secret Society of Sierra Ancha Ruins (SSSAR), no track or waypoint data is provided for this hike; however, for the industrious and tenacious, rest assured, the information is all there if you hunt for it.
In one day, by starting out early, ie leave Phoenix @ 5:00a, you can drive to, hike to, find the ruins and be back to Phoenix in time for a late supper! However, we recommend spending the night in the Reynolds Creek area so as to facilitate a nice nights rest before the start of your Odyssey… |
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