Exploring Pivot Rock Spring Cave

My hiking group had already been to Pivot Rock Spring twice this year, once for an exploratory hike and again on a regularly scheduled hike of Pivot Rock Canyon from Forest Road 142 at Toms Creek to the Spring and back. During the scouting hike we had no idea that there was a rather extensive cave behind the spring. We learned about it from another group of hikers we met there during our regularly scheduled hike. However, we were not prepared for spelunking at the time, so we scheduled a return visit for today, 3 July 2014.

There are several forest roads one can use to reach the Pivot Rock Spring area from Hwy 260 or Hwy 87. I chose what is probably the most difficult route simply because I had been that way before when we hiked in Pivot Rock Canyon. I also wanted to drive through the area where Corduroy Wash ends at Hicks and Duncan Canyon. For me this is a confusing area because I have seen the canyon below this junction marked as Corduroy Wash. However, most maps call it Hicks and Duncan Canyon, implying that Corduroy Wash ended at the junction. Hicks and Duncan then continues on south to dump into Pivot Rock Canyon just above the Forest road 142 crossing. Adding even more confusion, The National Map, provided by the USGS¹, uses the name Corduroy Wash just above where it joins Pivot Rock Canyon and then reverts to Hicks and Duncan below that juncture.

To access the spring from Hwy 260 we exited onto Forest Road 144 at mile marker 249 and traveled for 1.9 miles before turning right on FR 149. We then followed FR 149 for 2.2 miles, past the Corduroy Wash/Hicks and Duncan Canyon junction, to its end at FR 616 and continued on FR 616 for another 1.6 miles to a small camping area above the spring. From there a well-trodden trail leads down the mountain to the spring.

One interesting thing that I noted on this drive is that Pivot Rock and Pivot Rock Spring are not located in Pivot Rock Canyon proper, but rather in a tributary canyon. This is illustrated on the following map which shows where FR 616 crosses the canyon at the very bottom, almost directly south of Pivot Rock. The red line shows our hike in the tributary canyon in which the rock and the spring are located.

Map showing where FR 616 crosses Pivot Rock Canyon and the
 tributary in which Pivot Rock and Pivot Rock Spring are located

We had never hiked on the short section of trail between FR 616 and the spring and were unsure about where the trailhead was located, but we had a GPS location for the spring and just drove until we were adjacent to it. The small camping/parking area we found there was large enough to hold several vehicles. I assumed that a rock cairn at the entrance to the area probably indicated the beginning of the trail we sought.

Driveway from FR 616 to parking/camping area

We parked and made our way down an easy to follow trail that came out at the spring. Once there, we shed our packs, readied our flashlights and crawled into the cave.

Spring flowing from cave entrance

Because one must crawl into the cave, wet knees are pretty much guaranteed. However, there is a large chamber, about 20 feet in diameter located about 10 yards from the entrance. There are three openings from the chamber. One of these leads under an overhang or ledge that forms a sort of balcony overlooking the main chamber. George is shown here standing on the “balcony.” One enters under the ledge he is standing on and then can continue on into the mountain or climb up to the ledge.

George standing on the “balcony” - one of the three passages leading away
 from this main chamber starts just below the ledge on which he is standing

We had been told that one must follow the stream to complete what was supposed to be a loop, leaving the chamber by way of one opening and returning by another, and this one looked dry.

Deciding that the opening under the ledge, being dry, was not the correct path, we chose to follow a more difficult and wetter route (right) that involved crawling up the stream flowing out of the mountain.

One member of the group, discouraged by a swarm of insects we encountered at the mouth of the cave, turned back immediately. George and I slithered on into the watery opening, trying our best to place our knees on dry rocks. Unfortunately, the roof soon became so low that I could no longer extend my arms to travel on my elbows and was reduced to traveling on forward-extended arms and the tips of my boots. Meanwhile, the rest of our party had turned back leaving George (below, left) and the author (below, right, photograph by George) to struggle on by ourselves. Luckily, we eventually reached an area that permitted us to stand upright. However, that section soon ended and we had reached a point where it would have been near impossible to go any further.

In these two pictures George and I are at opposite ends of the short section of passage in which we could stand upright. The below photograph by George shows the water (very cold water at that) we would have had to crawl through in order to go any further. It was now glaringly obvious that we had taken the wrong path.

The way forward was a watery trough

We agreed that this was far enough and turned back, inching our way once again along the watery path under the low-hanging roof. When we again reached the main chamber, somewhat the worse for wear, George climbed to the “balcony” and took a photograph of me in the main chamber below (left) to show just how bedraggled I was. Having had enough spelunking for this day, we hastened to escape the damp, chilly environs of the cave.

The bright sunlight outside was a welcome relief. The monsoons had not yet arrived in force and the humidity was still relatively low, so we dried quickly and were able to brush the worst of the dried mud from our clothing.

Some of our group had never seen Pivot Rock, so while still drying out, we headed on down the canyon to visit it. The hike from FR 616 to the spring had been only 0.1 mile and it was only another 0.5 miles to the rock; we were soon there. We paused at the eponymous formation only long enough to admire the finely-balanced rock and take a group photograph before heading back the way we came.

Left to right: Kwi Johnson, Anita Jackson, Daisy Williams, George
 Everman, Gordon Bice and Joyce Arregui – author not shown

Arriving back at the trailhead and finding the campsite now occupied by a man with two dogs, we drove a short distance further along FR 616 to a shady spot with a gentle breeze and stopped for lunch.

After lunch, as shown by the light green track on the attached map (below), we continued on FR 616 and came out on Hwy 87 in Clover Canyon. The dark green track shows FR 144, the dark blue track shows FR 149 to FR 616, the magenta track shows FR 616 to the trailhead, the red track is our actual hike and, as implied above, the light green track is FR 616 between the trailhead and Hwy 87. The yellow line shows the paved roads between FR 616 at Hwy 87 and FR 144 at Hwy 260. The way we drove to the trailhead was shorter but the way we came out was a much better road.

The hike distance was 1.2 miles, the highest elevation was 7114 feet and the total ascent was 243 feet.

1 http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/

Hike to Jeronimo's Cabin

The date was 2 July 2014 and this would be my third trip to Jeronimo's Cabin. The previous two hikes had both been close to six years ago. I had not written much in the way of reports for those two hikes, basically just directions for repeating them; one major objective of this hike was to produce a more comprehensive report. In particular I wanted to better describe the cabin remains, make a more accurate track of the “burro trail,” an alternate route to the cabin that I think was utilized by Jeronimo for hauling materials in and out with his burros, and revisit the site of the, now dry, spring that supplied water for the old woodcutter and his burros.

Leaving Cottonwood at 0700, we drove past Jerome on Hwy 89A to the top of the mountain and turned left on Forest Road 104. After traveling about 1.37 miles on FR 104, passing the Butterfly Spring Trailhead at the hairpin turn along the way, we turned right on FR 413 and followed it for about 2.55 miles, passing the turnoff to Cherry on the right and Burnt Tank on the left. Just after passing the tank we turned to the left on Forest Road 9003T into a camping area and parked about 100 feet from the road.

FR 9003T ends at a locked gate about 0.4 miles from FR 413. The gate, intended only to stop motorized traffic, is configured to allow passage for foot traffic and livestock (right). One simply walks through the opening between the post and the tree and then returns to the old roadbed. This photograph, along with all others except the group photograph, was taken in 2008.

The trail continues across the wash which is, by the way, a part of the Burnt Canyon watershed. As a matter of fact this entire hike is actually within the upper reaches of Burnt Canyon. Three major canyons run parallel from northwest to southeast along this slope of Mingus. As noted we are in Burnt Canyon. Gaddes Canyon is located across the ridge to the northeast and Black Canyon, positioned between Burnt and Gaddes, starts a little further down the slope. Meanwhile, to the northwest Little Yaeger Canyon and Yaeger Canyon, with Haywood Canyon feeding in from above, run from the northeast to the southwest.

Wild turkeys are often seen along the upper reaches of Burnt Canyon. I have seen flocks in a small grassy area just beyond the gate we passed through and also a little further to the southeast where FR 413 makes its way across the low ridge dividing Burnt Canyon from Black Canyon. But there were none to be seen today.

Jeronimo's Cabin is actually located in a side branch of Burnt Canyon and we crossed a wash flowing down it before turning to follow along its bank, at first following another old road. Soon, however, the old road disappeared and we were following a well-defined trail, traveled by cattle as well as the occasional hiker.

Approximately 0.2 miles after turning to follow the wash toward the cabin, where our trail passed along the very edge of the wash, we noted a section of steel cable anchored firmly to the ground (left). Directly across the wash is located the end of an ancient road, running up from below. Looking at this anchored wire cable in isolation, it was not immediately obvious what its purpose might have been.

About another 0.3 miles further up the wash we caught our first site of Jeronimo's Cabin.

Jeronimo's Cabin - August 2008

The cabin is constructed with a rock fireplace which has a metal chimney pipe enclosed within a rock casing. On entering the door, one finds the fireplace (left) straight ahead with a living, cooking and dining area in front of and to the left of the fireplace.

On the right is a smaller space that was apparently used as a sleeping area. The upper side of the structure consists of a rock wall hard against a bank that seems to have been excavated for that side of the house. The roof comes almost to the ground along this upper side of the cabin. The rest of the structure was built using upright timbers and rock, basically rock near the upper side and timbers nearer and along the lower side. The back wall of the relatively large stone fireplace actually formed a significant part of one wall. There are large cracks showing between the upright timbers and the door has, since a visit I made in 2008, been ripped off and partly destroyed.

In 2008 an informational poster was posted on the inside of the door. I am told that the door was intact and that the poster was still there in May 2014. Obviously, vandals have struck since then. The poster as shown below in a 2008 photograph included the following information along with reproductions of old photographs of Jeronimo Pena and his burros.

Poster at Jeronimo's Cabin – August 2008

The wording on the poster, not very legible in the above photograph, reads as follows:

As the population (of Jerome) grew, so did the demand for firewood. Woodcutters were forced to travel further up into the mountains as supplies diminished.

Jeronimo Pena began cutting firewood on Mingus Mountain about 1920. Throughout his life he shunned life’s conveniences. No running water. No electricity. He never owned a truck and refused to use a chainsaw. He preferred his burros and a crosscut. But he could always be depended on to deliver a full, tightly packed cord of wood at a fair price. At over 80 years of age, the last of this hardy breed died in his cabin in the fall of 1957.

I have seen a few reports of hikes to the cabin by others. These reports all provide sketchy details about Jeronimo, but they provide no sources for their information and they spell his name with a “G” rather than a “J.” Largely disregarding these sources I have chosen to rely on the information provided by the, now missing, poster.

If you examine the area around the cabin carefully you will find, a few yards away from the

northeast corner of the cabin, a large firmly-embedded rock with the remnants of a wire cable wrapped around it (left).

Taken together with the wire cable anchor we had noted, about 0.2 miles “as the crow flies,” back down the trail, this could mean that Jeronimo had rigged up a highline of some sort to haul supplies up the steep slope to his cabin. Or, perhaps, he even used it to transport wood down the mountain to a loading area where the road ended at the wash. The only wire cable we actually saw were the pieces at the two anchor sites. However, that means little as any cable strung between the sites would long ago have been harvested for other uses.

We returned to the open area in front of the cabin and posed for a group photograph by George, using time delay.

Left to right: Terry Johnson, Phillip Sullivan, Kwi Johnson, George Everman,
 Anita Jackson, the author, Daisy Williams, Joyce Arregui and Dolly Yapp.

Just to the right of where we were posed for the group photograph, below the rock wall seen here and accessible only by ducking under a low-lying limb, is located the beginning of a faint trail that runs northeast from the cabin on up the canyon to Jeronimo's Spring. Although the trail is now largely overgrown, it is quite obvious that a great deal of effort was expended to build it. Rocks have been removed and, in some places, the lower side of the trail has been reinforced by a low rock wall, basically just a single layer of rocks alongside the trail.

Not far up the trail from the cabin we came to what appeared to be a newly-made trail running down the mountain directly toward the wash. This “trail” was marked by several fresh cuts of relatively large branches, three to four inches in diameter, and by the clearing away of ground debris and low-lying undergrowth. White ribbons were also placed along the way. We were puzzled as to why anyone would construct a trail running in that direction and it didn't occur to me until later that it was actually the boundary of a prescribed burn conducted by the Forest Service last November. We had encountered the eastern boundary of the same burn during a hike on Gaddes Canyon Trail at that time.

We continued on up the canyon to the spring and found that, as it had been when I was last there in 2008, it was bone dry. I had been greatly disappointed to find no water during that previous visit, but knew better than to expect any now. There is a great deal of healthy-looking plant growth, including a lot of poison ivy, around the old site (right), but absolutely no other sign of moisture.

After retracing our way to the cabin, we started looking for the beginning of Jeronimo's Burro Trail. George and I had both hiked this trail in 2008, but we remembered it as starting at the cabin and running at first along the contour of the ridge.. After an abortive start, we discovered that it actually starts just below the cabin and descends steadily in parallel with and never more than about about 100 yards from the trail we had come in on. In common with the trail to the spring, this trail is overgrown and seldom used. However, the old well-worn track is discernible in most places and one can easily follow it with a bit of care.

When we arrived at the bottom of the side canyon that contains Jeronimo's Cabin and rejoined the trail we had followed on the way in, we stopped for lunch in a grove of ponderosa pines. A light breeze was blowing down Burnt Canyon and it was a most pleasant spot.

Jeronimo's Cabin is a place known to a lot of people, each of whom seems to think it is a secret. Apparently they all want to keep it a secret as none of the visit reports I have read provide any guidance as to how to get there.

As for me, I don't consider the location a secret and have attached a map (below) showing the cabin, the spring and the trails leading to them. The red line is our GPS track from Forest Road 314 at Burnt Tank to the cabin and on to the spring. The blue line shows the alternate route to the cabin. I have called this the Burro Trail.

The hike was a total of 3.6 miles round trip, the maximum elevation was 7196 feet and the total ascent was 860 feet. The distance from FR 413 to the cabin was 1.1 miles and the distance from the cabin to the spring was 0.2 miles.