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| Hart Well Canyon Ruins Hunt, AZ | |
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| | Hart Well Canyon Ruins Hunt, AZ | | | |
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Hart Well Canyon Ruins Hunt, AZ
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| Hiking | 5.39 Miles |
1,671 AEG |
| | Hiking | 5.39 Miles | 7 Hrs 55 Mns | | 0.98 mph |
| 1,671 ft AEG | 2 Hrs 24 Mns Break | | | |
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| partners | | I heard that there were cliff dwelling ruins in Hart Well Canyon, so in a desire to avoid the busier canyons, like Boynton, I set off on a Google research hole to see what I could find. Turns out Jill wanted to do some ruins hunting too and mentioned maybe checking out Hart Well this weekend. Good thing I already had a route created, so we were all set for our adventure!
We met in North Phoenix at 7:30 am to carpool up north in my Subaru. The drive felt quick enough and Forest Road 525 was perfectly fine for my vehicle. We parked at the pull off past Taylor Tank and Kitterage Ranch, but before Loy Canyon TH. I’d say it’s not quite halfway between the two.
My route planned to take us up a drainage on the western side of the western wall of the canyon and spit us out on top of the Mesa-like section of the walls. This was in effort to avoid the Kitterage Ranch property, which I believe is private property, and get us on the right level to see some dwellings.
We were surprised to see social trails leading up to our drainage. We couldn’t help but wonder if this route was popular and we “discovered” something well known? It turns out the drainage we were climbing is part of a canyoneering route as there’s a small fork in the wash where you can see anchors high up on the wall. This part of the hike involved plenty of bushwhacking, route finding, navigating loose rocks, and crumbling walls. It took us quite a while to climb because we were too curious and *had* to check out the fork with the rappel even though it was off route.
Once on top, we were rewarded with great canyon views and much better (read: solid & flat) footing. From there, we worked our way north east along the canyon walls. Pretty quickly we spotted two sets of ruins in some alcoves in the distance. As we moved between the shelf and vegetation we tried to keep the ruins in sight as we aimed for the right “level” of rock. At one point we climbed a bit too high through some brush and cliffed out, but not long after we were back on track. Turns out we could have stayed a bit lower and approached via a rock ramp, but sometimes it’s hard to tell from the map vs seeing it with your eyes. We checked out the crumbling walls and then backtracked and scooted our way down the ramp. We continued down canyon following the shape of the walls and spotted the second set of ruins again. At this point we could see that we would spend significant time (that we didn’t have) and energy crossing a smaller canyon to get closer, so we decided to admire them from afar and turn around.
On our way back, we spotted a small section of narrows where the water pooled in several areas, kind of like seven sacred pools. It was pretty neat! Jill didn’t want to scramble back down the rock fall, so we agreed to see if there was another way down. I wasn’t too sure there was an option based on the map, but we tried anyway. Our potential problem was confirmed when we cliffed out several times. We worked our way clockwise around the rock formation that was next to our original entry point, being careful to avoid the repelling path, and connected back to the bottom of the bolder field. It worked out pretty well since those rocks were a PITA on the way up. We could see the car for a while while picking our way down along the social trails. We finished just in time for sunset.
Overall, it was a Type 2 fun kind of day. |
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