Woodbury trailhead is a good five miles west of the Roger's Trough trailhead where we would take forest trail 109 into the wilderness area. The road from Woodbury to Roger's Trough is too difficult to navigate with a big trailer, so we rode, Buster and I in the lead and Louie and the mule string following. This order was probably a mistake, since the pace Buster and I set was "slow and steady, steady and slow," because "that's the way I always go."

It took a lot longer than we figured to get into Reavis Ranch. I rode Buster uphill and walked him downhill, as is my custom (I hate saddle butt). By 4:00 in the afternoon we were still on the trail and I began to worry about getting to the ruin by sunset. Louie said he would go down into Reavis meadow and set up our camp and Buster and I could continue up to the ruin alone to get the pictures. We split up at 4:30 at the fireline trail (forest trail 118) junction.

Fireline trail is rocky and in places uncomfortably steep. The views to the north are spectacular, and soon Buster and I had climbed enough to be looking at the silhouette of Four Peaks on the northern horizon.

The "silhouette" is what worried me. The light was disappearing too quickly, and we still had over a mile to and 800 ft. elevation to go. By the time we reached the ridge approaching the Circlestone trail cutoff, the sun clearly said we would not make the final climb to the ruin before the orb disappeared for the nigh.

I asked Buster what he thought we ought to do? I don't know if he was just being cautious or if the 14 miles we had traveled that day was getting to him, but he thought Winter Solstice would come again in about a year, so maybe we could try again then.