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| Hiking | 6.72 Miles |
2,390 AEG |
| | Hiking | 6.72 Miles | 7 Hrs 33 Mns | | 1.44 mph |
| 2,390 ft AEG | 2 Hrs 53 Mns Break | | | |
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| partners | | It had been almost three and a half years since I last visited Devil's Chasm, and ishamod has wanted to see this one for a while...now that the snow melted, the timing finally worked out. We drove past Ellison Ranch and parked along the side for FR 302 just under a mile from the trailhead after inadvertently testing the skid plate on ishamod's vehicle and seeing rougher road ahead. As we hiked toward the trailhead, I zoomed in on the cliffs to the north and could see the Cooper Forks site in the distance.
There was one vehicle parked at the trailhead as we headed into the forest and followed the creek. The early part of the trail had more elevation gain but was easier to follow than I remembered...fewer leaves on the ground than there were in the fall on my last visit. It felt like another world once we got out of the trees and into the canyon, and I'd forgotten how spectacular the views are with the cascading waterfalls, the sheer walls, and the pools...one of my favorite spots in the Sierra Anchas. [ youtube video ]
We climbed up the first rope and through the hole, then bypassed the second rope at the larger waterfall by going up and round a ledge to the right, which is what I did last time, too...the ledge looked easier than going up the rope on the wet rocks. [ youtube video ]
Route finding seemed easier the second time around as we got back into the trees and continued up the canyon. Before going to the main "popular" site, we visited the second ruins site that I didn't see last time. It had two sections...the first was badly deteriorated, with just a few low, mortared walls and some wooden beams remaining. The other one was in much better shape, with several intact doorways and walls that were in pretty good shape, though the front sections were starting to lean away from the sides.
In one room, it looked like the Salado had walled off the front of a natural recession in the rock to create a storage area on the floor. Every piece of wood had core samples removed...sometimes three or four samples taken the same piece of wood, some refilled with putty, others not. Maybe different archeologists taking samples at different points in time, or amateur archeologists taking their own? Overall, this less popular ruins site was a nice one, and I was glad I got to see it this time.
We ate lunch at the main ruins site and enjoyed the incredible scenery and the impressive structure. The doorways in this site were narrower than I remembered, and I noticed the a large number of core samples drilled at this site, too. As we explored, we kept reminding each other, "Watch your head!" When I visited in 2019, one of my friends stood up under one of the low beams and took a hard hit on the head and had to hike out with a concussion, which was more excitement than we'd planned on that rough terrain.
Looking back at pictures from that visit, I noticed that one of the metates in the main ruin is gone, and a roof beam that was mostly intact is charred and broken at one end and now propped up with a branch, which made me wonder if there's been a fire at this site in the past few years. Sad to see the deterioration and theft in just a few years, but also not surprising given how traffic to this site continues to increase. It's almost entirely picked clean of artifacts--we only saw a few pot sherds below the site.
We eventually headed down the steep slope back into the canyon, which mostly consisted of slipping and sliding from one branch or root to the next while trying not to knock rocks loose. The ropes near the top of that section that were there in 2019 are gone now...without all the brush to grab onto, going up and down that slope would be a nightmare.
As evidence of this hike's growing popularity, we encountered four groups on our way out...we were lucky we had the ruins to ourselves. Closer to the trailhead, one hiker was carrying one of those gas station Polar Pop drinks with a straw sticking out the top...a likely candidate for one of the "woefully unprepared hikers" someone mentioned in an old triplog. I told ishamod that if that guy reached the ruins and hadn't spilled his drink or left it behind, he'd earned my respect  .
The sun angle was was much better in the canyon as we got back to the ropes, and we used the ledge to bypass the larger waterfall again and took our time in that section, enjoying the scenery and dipping our hats in the water to cool off. [ youtube video ] When we got back to the trailhead, there were now four vehicles and a campsite set up. I'd hoped to explore the cave today, but we ran out of time for that, though I think I spotted the entrance...but the first priority was to find the second ruins site, and that was a success. I usually prefer seeing new things over repeating hikes, but this is a place I'd gladly visit again. Even without the impressive ruins, Devil's Chasm would rank high on my list just based on the scenery. |
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