Lo Lo Mai Indian Ruins

Seventeen Skyliners hiked to the Lo Lo Mai Indian Ruins on Saturday, 7 January 2012. Most of the group met at the Safeway Shopping Center in Cottonwood and drove north on Hwy 89A to the Page Springs Exit. There we met the rest of the group who had traveled from Sedona. We turned onto Page Springs Road and drove about 0.28 miles to a parking area on the right, directly across Page Springs Road from the Hidden Valley Road turnoff.

After parking we followed a Forest Service Road up toward the crest of the ridge that runs parallel and to the west of Page Springs Road. The ruins are atop this ridge, just across the road from the Lo Lo Mai trailer park at Page Springs, about 1.5 miles south of where we parked. About 0.4 miles from the trailhead, we came to a wide circular area, apparently used for turning around, in the road; from there the road appeared to lead downhill to the west, descending from the top of the ridge. We chose to leave he road and bushwhack closely along the crest from there. Much to our chagrin, we soon found ourselves back on the same road after having made our way for about 0.3 miles along the top of a cactus-infested ridge that closely paralleled the course of the dirt road. We followed the road for a short distance south along the ridge until it came to an abrupt end, and once again we were bushwhacking our way along the crest of the cactus-infested ridge.

The ruins are divided into two separate parts, each reaching from edge to edge of the very narrow ridge; we came first to the north ruins, just 1.5 miles from where we parked (about 0.7 miles from the end of the dirt road), and found ourselves looking down on the Lo Lo Mai Trailer Park just across Page Springs Road from the ruins. From the ruins, indeed for most of our hike, we had great views all around, Page Springs and the fish hatchery to the east, the Black Hills with Mingus and Woodchute clearly outlined to the west.

Leaving the north ruins we were faced with a double saddle between our vantage point and a mesa to the south against which the ridge ended. Lila described it as one large saddle with a camel’s hump in the middle. Her description paints a pretty accurate picture of the formation. The south ruins, nestled atop the hump in the middle of the saddle, are about 0.1 miles away. The trail, if such it can be called, leading from the north ruins to the south ruins and on down the slope toward the mesa beyond is tortuous -- rocky, steep and indistinct. Two of our hikers turned back at this point, keeping in touch by cell phone until they reached their car.

It was still short of noon when we finished with the south ruins and most of the party wanted to cross the saddle (the second half of Lila’s “large saddle with a camel’s hump in the middle”) and climb to the top of the mesa on the other side. Three of our hikers, however, never having intended to go farther than the ruins, decided to wait there until the main group returned.

Now numbering twelve, we climbed down the rocky slope, crossed the saddle and ascended to the top of the mesa. After pausing there for a short rest, we checked the time and saw that it was still only about 1030. It was entirely too early to eat lunch, so we decided that we would circumnavigate the mesa. We did this in a counterclockwise direction by continuing west along the rim before turning south and then east. We found that, although the rim of the mesa generally formed a circle, the southwestern quadrant was badly deformed by an eroded section that had us turning back north then to the southeast before turning north again in order to follow reasonably close to the rim. For the final leg of our trip around the mesa we were headed directly west again. The approximate distance of the path we took around the rim was 1.5 miles.

About two-thirds of the way around the mesa we had stopped for lunch, a nap and a group photograph:

Left to right: Ellis Price, George Everman, Colleen Maktenieks, 

Daisy Williams, Donna Goodman, Dolly Yapp, Karl Buckendahl, 

Anita Jackson, Mary Gavan, Linda Tovar, John McInerney, Becky Fowsky 

– photograph by George with time delay. (NOTE: hikers not 

shown include Lila Wright, Larry and Michelle Stover, Miriam Sterling and 

Virginia Driscoll)

Never one to overlook a good opportunity, I got in a twenty-minute nap (right) while everyone else enjoyed the view. From our position they could look out over Page Springs Fish Hatchery to the east and the country traversed by Willow Point Road as it wound its way through the hills to Mormon Crossing to the south.

Before resuming our hike, actually even before eating lunch or taking a nap, I reviewed the number of hikers still with us, determined that we had enough drivers and vehicles among us to provide transportation from the trailhead and called the hikers waiting back at the ruins to let them know that they were free to return without us. Cellphone service is available in most areas where we hike and we use it frequently for such purposes. The group heading back would call us again when they reached the trailhead. We were taking a lot longer than anticipated because we had only decided to circumnavigate the mesa after we left the other group at the ruins and it seemed unreasonable to ask them to continue waiting.

We had spread out a bit on our way around the mesa, using portable radios carried by John and George to keep in touch, and somewhere in the southeast quadrant, John and Linda found what they identified as an old Indian grinding and grain storage site. Then later, as we neared the point of descent from the mesa, they discovered a circular manmade ring of rocks with extensions pointing northwest, southeast, northeast and southwest. We couldn’t decide whether it had been created by Indians or by some new-age group; it did look to be of fairly recent vintage to me, but perhaps it was an old artifact that had been restored. In any case it is located about 75 yards south of the point where had first topped out on the mesa and where we would begin our descent. The picture below shows several hikers gathered around the ring and me doing the calibration dance (i.e. turning slowly two full circles to calibrate my GPS compass). The calibration was performed because it just seemed illogical that the four spurs extending out from the ring didn’t point east, west, north and south. They didn’t:

Hikers gathered around the ring while the author calibrates the compass 

on his GPS – photograph by George

After viewing the mysterious ring of stone, we quickly descended from the mesa the way we had come and headed back to the trailhead, making our past the south and north ruins and picking our way carefully through the cactus along the ridge crest until we arrived back at the end of the dirt road. From there it was an easy eight-tenths of a mile hike to the trailhead and the comfort of our waiting cars.

I classify this trail as difficult; primarily because of the steep rocky slope from the north ruins to the second saddle beyond the south ruins. The hike on up to the top of the mesa is steep but not otherwise difficult; the hike around the rim of the mesa is flat and easy going; and I have already described the path along the cactus-infected crest of the ridge where no road exists.

According to my GPS this hike was 5.8 miles in length, the highest elevation was 3954 feet and the total ascent was 1051 feet.

See the included map (below) for a GPS track of the hike.