Nine Mile Canyon: Cottonwood Ridge

I almost stayed home and took this weekend off from hiking, which would have been only the second time that happened since late May, but I caved in to the urge and went to Nine Mile Canyon this morning. I decided to climb the ridge rising from the east side of the mouth of Cottonwood Canyon. I thought that, maybe, I could see a very faint stone circle on the ridgetop in the satellite imagery. My confidence level was quite low about such a stone circle actually existing but I was just looking for an easy and simple hike, so this would suit my needs in that regard. During the drive there I saw an elk grazing in a field, which is a rarity for me. There are very often deer grazing but hardly ever elk, and unlike the deer, this elk was skittish and ran off when I stopped to take a photo. I started hiking at 8:00 AM, only about 15 minutes after the official sunrise, and for some reason seeing the amount of daylight shrink every weekend has been more disheartening this year than in the past. The climb up was steep and rugged in places but still much easier than some of the ridge climbs I’ve done in the area lately. There were game trails to follow for all but the last couple hundred feet, and that part I just climbed straight up.

Blurry elk

View up Nine Mile Canyon

Petroglyphs on the climb up

Steep climb ahead

Small two-point antler

Steep and rugged terrain

View down Nine Mile

Butte with ruins on top

Faint game trail

Almost on top of the ridge

I reached the top of the ridge and found no circle of rocks. I was neither surprised nor disappointed. I tried continuing up the ridge but reached a dropoff I couldn’t get down, so I had to backtrack quite a distance until I could drop down to one side of the ridgetop and proceed up from there. I reached a natural gas pipeline that feeds from the wells on the plateau above into a larger pipeline down in Nine Mile Canyon, and followed it up until the ridge got steeper and turned around there. On the descent I just followed the same route back and reached the truck right at noon, just in time to eat lunch.

Ridgetop

View into Cottonwood Canyon

The truck 1,000′ below

Cliffed out on the ridge

Below the ridge

Cairn

Nearing the pipeline

Car axle with a cable attached

Pipelines

Old pipeline

Nine Mile Canyon near Fremont Village

View down Nine Mile

Next I drove up Cottonwood Canyon to find a ruin I’d seen a photo of online. It’s right along the road and pretty high up. There were some faint petroglyphs on the cliff just above the ruin but I couldn’t get a good photo of them. It didn’t seem possible to climb up from below, and I followed the cliffline around the corner and couldn’t see a way up from there either–it’s crazy to think that something made it worth all that effort for food storage or hunting or defense–whatever the purpose may have been! I returned down the canyon and did a short hike to a large horse petroglyph I’d noticed on the way up. I’m guessing it’s a white man glyph, as opposed to Ute which probably would have looked better. There were a couple of petroglyphs nearby, probably Fremont. I also drove up Dry Canyon a few miles searching for a petroglyph I’d also seen an online photo of, but before finding it I ran into a huge mud bog in the road that I didn’t want to attempt driving through, so I turned around and headed for home.

See the ruin up there?