Reavis Meadow Camp Under Ponderosa Pines

Reavis Meadow is one of the most welcoming places in the Superstition Mountains. Elijah Reavis settled here in the late 1800s. It's said he was a scholar, didn't let a woman ever enter his cabin, grew vegetables to sell down in Florence and Pheonix and the Florence paper reported he smelled so bad on one of his trips to town, no one wanted to get close enough to purchase any of his wares. His grave is alongside the trail where we began the climb up to Reavis Ridge and the meadow.

Reavis Creek on the east side of the meadow here almost always has water. At least I have never been there when water wasn't clean and moving. Dennis is examining blue butterflies here.  He had plenty of time while I rested to examine the flora and fauna of the lush sky islands of the Sonoran Desert.

Solstice

We climbed up to the ruin the next day. Dennis captured some of the best pictures of the ruin we have ever gotten. Since our main goal was solstice pictures, we got both sunset (left) and sunrise (right).

As on Summer Solstice 2003, there is no indication of a horizon marker or indication on the wall of Sunset. But the picture Dennis captured here of the Lintel and the sun going down is nice. The stick in the sunrise photo on the right marks where the sun rose looking from the center structure of the ruin to the sun. This point you can see on the Azimuth Map is at the north end of the flat wall.

The Dry Stacked Walls

Dennis took pictures of every portion of the outer circle, both from inside the ruin and from outside the ruin. The average height of the wall appears to have been about 3 feet. The thickness of the wall is about 3 feet also. The only distinct variation is the north-south allined flat portin of the east wall. Here the wall is as high as 5 feet. All dry-stacked tuffstone, the wall has crumbled in most places to some extent.

Dehydration Sets In!

The hike tasked me more than I realized. By the time Dennis and I made it back down to Reavis Creek from the work at the ruin, it became clear that I would not be able to hike out to the trailhead during the heat of the day. I had become just too dehydrated. While pumping water into my Camelback, I got dizzy and fell over. Our choices were: we could wait until night fall and hike out when it cooled off or Dennis could go to Reavis Ridge and call for rescue. Pinky would drive to Roger's Trough Trailhead to pick us up before sundown, and when we didn't come out right away would probably call for a search anyway, so Dennis decided to hike to the ridge and I decided to take a nap under the Ponderosas of the meadow where we agreed would be the best spot to land a helicopter.