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| Pueblo de Las Mujeres, AZ | |
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| | Pueblo de Las Mujeres, AZ | | | |
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Pueblo de Las Mujeres, AZ
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| Hiking | 14.40 Miles |
600 AEG |
| | Hiking | 14.40 Miles | 6 Hrs 31 Mns | | 2.21 mph |
| 600 ft AEG | | 17 LBS Pack | | |
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| Partners |
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| partners | | Having seen bad dirt/mud roads, the first 6.5 miles of Bloody Basin Rd was great. Especially considering a couple on off rain storms the previous days. The 4 miles of the rd on top of the Mesa was a different story but I managed to not put the truck in 4WD until the Aqua Fria information booth (10.4 miles in). I also used that as an opportunity to ruin a pair of gloves as I futilely tried to wipe the mixture of cow dung and mud off my tires. We planned to drive another 4.5 miles down a rd off-shooting Bloody Basin and parking at the Brooklyn Ruins. From there we would hike to the impressive Pueblo de Las Mujeres, drop down to the creek from the ruins, and then casually appreciate petroglyphs on our hike back up the Mesa rim/creek to the truck.
We crossed a barely flowing Copper Creek and got just under a mile down the rd and found a mud puddle that looked to be 4 truck lengths. A stick probe of the puddle + my dung-wrapped tires was enough for us to park. We were 3.6 miles from our planned parking and had just driven 2.5 hrs to get where we were. Within 10 min we were walking, both of us also lightening our packs as this meant we would be doing an extra 7.2 miles - roughly doubling our previous plans. So much for our casual glyph hunting. 1/10th of a mile from the truck and 2 Jeeps charged the mud puddle (barely). As we walked off, we heard them agree to turn around. From there, it was easier for us to walk the side of the rd, at points largely cutting corners to save distance between the margins.
The Brooklyn Ruins were impressive sprawling piles of rubble. The ruins are so exposed to the elements that the walls have collapsed and vegetation has reclaimed the site. From the ground, the scale is imaginably impressive, but the ruins are crude in appearance. We decided to just blaze our own trail to the next site, cutting across a couple miles of grass prairie that has subtle rises, sparse juniper tree clusters, randomly placed cacti, and cobble to boulder-sized rocks scattered across it. The rock between the ruin sites appeared to be too porous for glyphs but we still hopped between a few outcroppings to check. As we closed in on the next site we found metates in a small juniper and boulder cluster. We pushed a little further and began finding glyphs on random boulders, and a small ruin site that was probably 500’ or so SW from the metates. From here we could clearly see the outer wall of the site's location and we advanced E, back to the Mesa's rim so that we could find glyphs on our final approach in. We separately explored the site for about 20 min, endless pottery shards (that was also the case at the Brooklyn site). There wasn’t a need to touch any of it as others had already placed small groupings, and the ground held plenty of large visible pieces. We regrouped on the SE side of the ruin's courtyard area and dropped below the rim for more glyph exploration. As my hiking partner worked to untangle himself from a bush 100’ of sloping boulder field away, I hugged the cliff face and followed a few foot holds down and around a corner of boulders to get to a little rock platform. From there I had a view of a mainly animal glyph panel maybe 15' away but separated by a 25' drop. The cluster was somehow carved on the massive vertically oblong boulder precariously attached to the cliff face. Glyph locations like this panel always make me wonder if there was ancient prestige in completing robust carvings on sketchy rock canvas locations. Not only do we hunt the best, but we also have the most huevos by carving this here.
The site has a commanding view of the watershed that it overlooks to its N, E, and S. Sitting 1000' above the creek with no direct or easily traversed section between them. The W side of the site has a wall running across the Mesa creating the appearance of a compound with a large courtyard between it and the multi-tiered gathering of rooms that run to the cliff's edge. This site also sits within the heart of the Mesa and seems like a strategically advantageous area, easily defensible simply due to how difficult it would be to reach. Those views of the surrounding watershed to the N, E, S also would serve as an excellent hunting hub. The creek slices southward down the canyon below, with the top of the E side of the canyon, across from the site, looking like the entry to good hunting land. Multiple smaller watershed washes converge down the larger mountains towards the creek with quite a few creating western-facing slopes prime for morning scouting of deer. The spreading finger-like rim ridges also offer plenty of terrain for deer to move back and forth over during the day as they graze morning and afternoon, but bed down mid-day on the cooler N side of the rim ridges. Everything described is visible from the site itself, and it would be easy to signal an outpost of hunters already on the opposite side of the canyon. The sheer volume of game animal glyphs carved on the Mesa rim directly below the PdLM site seems to mark this area as a prolific hunting region, and the people living there were highly adept at harvesting them.
We started our descent into the canyon below the ruin site and now got a good look at a section of the creek upstream from us and decided that due to our dwindling time, we needed to go back up and beat feet back to the Brooklyn site as we hoped to look at the glyphs there and still had another 3.6 miles to the truck from there. Back at the Brooklyn site, I explored the ruins further, as my partner tried to find some more glyphs along the rim. My feet did not want me to explore more boulders as the soft grass and rock prairie landscape had slid them into heel and toe blisters. Luckily the day of full sun had dried the road out to the point of it being easily walkable. I trudged ahead as my partner charged up a small hill to the NE of the Brooklyn ruin, finding a few glyphs but also barely having time to explore. He caught back up to me about 1 mile from the truck. Other than the Jeeps that turned around, and a Cessna pilot that briefly circled above us on our hike in, we didn’t see other humans. In total, I did about 14.4 miles, with my partner logging an extra mile of monkeying around the rim and charging up that hill. I kicked some dried mud off the tires and we slowly drove back out the way we came in, taking about an hr to get back to the highway. Overthehillsfaraway also posted a triplog and photo set for the hike. |
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