Cathy's Ruin Photoset • LosDosSloFolks • 2019-11-23 • HikeArizona.COM

Cathy's Ruin, AZ

	2019-11-23
	15 by LosDosSloFolks

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Cathy's Ruin, AZ

Hiking	2.26 Miles	756 AEG

Hiking	2.26 Miles	2 Hrs 23 Mns		1.01 mph
	756 ft AEG	9 Mns Break	6 LBS Pack

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Hansenaz

Mrs. SloFolks has been having fun as of late using the zoom feature on HAZ satellite maps looking for areas of interest in our area. Earlier this month she located some nice Hohokam ruins which we explored and reported on here on HAZ. This settlement is her current find but it looked like a bush whack to get to. She declined the offer to check out her own discovery, so I contacted @Hansenaz with the coordinates and he replied that the site was not familiar to him and he kindly agreed to come along for a look-see.

It was a pleasure to make Steve's acquaintance and was my first hike with another HAZ member since joining. He soon learned the meaning behind of my HAZ name as this uphill rocky slog had him waiting for me to catch up on more than one occasion.

The ground was soft after the recent rains and the hill could be best described as walking on a memory foam mattress topper covered with rocks up to bowling ball size then overgrown with grass. Lot's of pointy, sticky, prickly things also. Not sure about Steve, but I gave up more blood than I wanted to! I learned in conversation that he used to do 14'rs in Colorado for fun and games so this climb must have been like walking into the kitchen for a beer to him.

He let me take the lead as we neared the location so I could see the ruins first...what a gentleman! He also insisted we name them "Cathy's Ruins" seeing as she found them. I'm sure they've been found before but it's probably safe to say that this site hasn't had many visitors over the years. The site consisted of at least 10 rooms and was much larger in scope than originally thought. With the grass and brush overgrowth many of the rooms can't be seen until you are right on top of them. Steve has a trained eye and showed me how the settlement was terraced down the hillside and pointed out rooms that I surely would have missed. Pottery shards were prevalent all around.

We found some burned rock in the center of a room that might have been from an ancient fire pit. It was much too severely blackened to have been caused by the Cave Creek Complex Fire of 2005 in my opinion. We came down on a more easterly route and found one more room about half way down the hill. Coming down posed it's own challenges and having three points of contact was a must to prevent a tumble. Trekking poles were becoming our best friends. This short but rough hike was much more difficult on me than it was for Steve but he agreed that this hill would hurt the average man.

We got mildly "cliffed out" near the end and had to detour and wiggle on our backs under a barbed wire fence to get back to the car...probably not a distinguished look.

Geology

Geology [ checklist ]

[ checklist ] Phyllite

Named place

Named place [ checklist ]

[ checklist ] Four Peaks

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