New group, new location. You'll recall that the
last time we did Spur Cross Ranch trails in Cave Creek (an hour away), we got a little lost. It was a good hike anyway, but we decided next time we'd go on a guided hike. When
we saw one that was supposed to be challenging, we decided today was the day. We headed for Elephant Mountain Fortress, ready to do a 7-mile loop...despite the fact that it was 41 degrees. I had on a thermal shirt, a long-sleeve running shirt, a long-sleeve sweatshirt, and a windbreaker. There - ready!
And off we went.
We had ranger/guide Kevin and a couple of volunteer stewards to do the same thing the
Fountain Hills/Sonoran group does - let us go at our own pace and learn as we go. As we were walking, Kevin pointed out a bunch of rocks that turned out to be ruins from the Hohokom Indians. We would have walked right past them, but once you stop, you realize that the rocks are arranged in squares.
Once you looked around the trail after that, you spotted old pottery shards (would be from the 1100-1400s). Again, we would have just thought they were flat rocks.
We had some rain last night - here's a quick deter to show you our skies from yesterday:
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so part of the trail was muddy. But not
any kind of mud - volcanic, clay-like mud. It really stuck to your shoes and was heavy. It was a very strange sensation. You sure wanted to make sure your laces were tied tight or your shoe would come right off! Luckily, it didn't last the whole way.
The trail wasn't too hard, although we were going to gain about 750 feet. There were lots of plateaus where you could rest.
After awhile, we could see that one woman was as antsy as we were and took off, leaving the slower folks behind. Since she'd done the trail about a dozen times, we knew she'd show us anything worthy, so we went with her. Are we there yet? Almost.
Once we were there, we immediately came across what's left of the retaining fortress walls.
They had quite the view up there.
No one's sure who used the forts and how exactly. There are hundreds, all following a northerly route. Not far on the other side of this invisible line were the Anasazi Indians, so it's possible it was a delineation, of sorts. The thought is that the warriors were living up there, while the families lived in the valley. Alerts could be sent down when necessary so everyone could flee to safety. Who knows?
We did wait for the rest of the folks.
And we even had someone take a picture of us, after we took a selfie, just to prove it isn't just our floating heads that go hiking. And note - I shed one of my four layers!
You can go back the way you came and cut some time/mileage off, but it was worth the extra mile. There were so many saguaros and quite a diverse terrain. Plus it was all downhill. If you go back the way you came, you have a few hills in there.
It took us about 4 hours (us, meaning the 3 of us; the rest took about 5 hours), which is a pretty long time for 7 miles, but we played around on the top for about 1/2 hour. When we were done, it was 59 degrees. I was still glad to have my last 3 layers on, but it was a nice hiking day. Next weeks looks like high 30s/low 40s at night, 60s during the day. Brr.
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