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| partners | | I always look forward to this, what has turned-out for the past few years to be an annual March week "Vehicle Camping & mostly off-trail Hike Exploration" adventure with Oregon Hiker in our Sierra Ancha Wilderness.
Our trip planning and always complicated (for me) logistics of these week long trips starts a couple months ahead of time with a number of interesting and challenging variables to work out including the cooperation of Mother Nature which is never guaranteed two months ahead of time, and with me, hopefully being up to the daily hike demands of our planned adventures..which is no longer guaranteed either 
To date we have never had a lack of available and interesting new locations in this Upper Cherry Creek (FR203) area to explore. For me, the planned agenda of explorations mostly comes down to needing a "base camp" to work out of, with hopefully a few day hikes right out of camp without needing to drive rough/slow Cherry Creek Road to reach a planned Park/TH Start location. For this trip we had planned four significant and new day hike areas to explore, two of which were right out of camp and two others which required moderate to significant FR203 driving times with a longer and more demanding off-trail hike to reach our intended destinations.
As all good planning would have it, of our four original planned hikes, we completed one of the four and attempted one other with two of four left for another time..then we added/completed together an additional three others only one of which- the lesser known and rewarding Billy Lawrence Cliff Dwelling site required driving time (I think this was what actually happened  ).
For those who might enjoy re-tracing some of our day outings and/or do other available explorations in this scenic, rugged, and historic area, this new "Camp Grasshopper - Sierra Ancha - FR203 Upper" offers an excellent primitive base camp location and I highly recommended it. Also, to this Hike Description we have linked most all our day hike explorations for this 6 night / 7 day trip (Fri-3/20 to Thurs-7/26/15)..Enjoy!! ..and wear long pants, a long sleeve shirt, bring gloves, and good hiking boots with gaiters. |
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Route Editor
Route Scout
Closer examination and some web research revealed that it was probably a 1930s vintage gasoline fueled stove with two burners and a small oven. These stoves were made for use in remote locations with no electricity or natural gas before the common use of propane. The unanswered question is why was it on this ridge. Maybe there had been a cowboy or hunting camp here. Or maybe this had just been the site of a trash dump for the PB Ranch cabin about 1 mile away. Or maybe there had been a mining camp here when this area was being prospected for uranium in the 1950s.
The ruin consisted of a single large room with a smaller possibly storage room on one side. The back wall was intact to a height of about 4 ft with adobe mud plaster still in place. Part of the side walls were still standing with adobe mortar still holding the rocks in place. The outer wall and probably the roof and been completely demolished by large rocks which had fallen out of the cliff overhang above. A quick search for surface artifacts was not successful. This was not a spectacular site compared to the major known cliff dwellings in the SA but any cliff dwelling ruins with adobe plaster still intact is a good find. This site is also not mentioned in Haury's 1934 report or Lange's "Echoes in the Canyons ...". Happy with our find we headed back for the Grasshopper Jeep and a bone jarring ride back up FR203 to our camp.
