Unfortunately for those who tried to make the ranch work, it was never particularly accessible. Until the late 1940's the only way you could get there was via horseback or pack train over a trail from the southern part of the Tonto National Forest. In the 40's the owner of the ranch at the time hacked, blasted, and chopped a 12 mile road from the Apache Trail (to the north) to the ranch house (which sat in the southwest part of the valley), a road which clung to the sides of ridge lines and mountains as it rose over 2500 feet from the desert floor to reach the high valley, but this road was difficult and expensive to maintain due to frequent land slides and washouts, and was not drivable by large vehicles due to its narrowness and (at times) steepness.

Over the years the ranch's owners tried many things to try to make the ranch pay for itself. The climate was relatively mild during the summer compared to the low desert, so old Reavis grew vegetables there in the summer and packed them down to Phoenix, which couldn't grow fresh vegetables in the summer due to the stifling heat. But when fresh produce started being shipped in by rail from California, that would not produce a profit, especially considering the difficulty of getting produce out via mule train. So later owners tried apple orchards, a "wilderness adventure" resort that required adventurers to come in via mule train (prior to the road being built -- alas, the concept was 70 years ahead of its time, it would be very popular today), etc. Finally, after 60 years of struggling to find a way to make the ranch pay for itself, its last owner sold it to the U.S. Forest Service, keeping nothing except the cattle concession (cattle being the one thing that was profitable, but not requiring a full-time presence in the valley). Shortly thereafter the road to it was abandoned and closed to traffic (it is now the main trail to the valley), and it was added to the Superstition Wilderness.

I set out on September 1, Labor Day weekend, to hike into the valley, after a call to the Mesa Ranger Division asking about water conditions there. The lady at the phone said she didn't have that information, but that there was always water somewhere in the valley year-round. September 1 is very early in the season for hiking in the Superstitions, but I hoped to be up and out of the desert into the cooler high altitudes before the temperature got too bad. I must admit that I was worried when I went over Tortilla Creek (right past Tortilla Flats on the Apache Trail) and there was no water. There is almost always water in Tortilla Creek, so seeing it dry was ominous. Fish Creek was dry too. This is normal for Fish Creek, but did not bode well. By the time I reached the Reavis Trailhead, I was beginning to worry, but between the Mesa lady and a guide book which said something similar to what the Mesa lady said, I decided to risk the hike.

To get to the trailhead, you go down the Apache Trail, a very scenic -- and dangerous -- 2-lane (occasionally 1-lane) road that was originally built to service the various dams along the Salt River. The worst part of the road is down the side of a mountain to Fish Creek, where it is 1 lane (with occasional 2-lane pullouts) with lots of blind corners, where you may possibly meet 5,000 pound pickup trucks towing 5,000 pound boats blasting towards you at ridiculous speeds (and don't forget the 40 foot long motor homes, doing the same thing).

Once past Fish Creek the road mostly widens back to 2-lane highway again. Past the state highway depot (on the right) you'll pass a small ranch on the right (which has a sign above it, on a ledge chopped into the mountainside, advertising pack trips), and then shortly afterwards to the right you'll see FR212. I don't remember whether there is a sign saying that this is the way to the Reavis Trailhead. FR212 was once part of the old road that went to the Reavis Ranch, and is the only part of the old road which is still road. It is passable by most vehicles that have any kind of clearance (there are a few small washouts, and a few low rocks of maybe 4" height max). Only low-slung vehicles will have problems here. Certainly any pickup truck or SUV is not going to have a problem, even the two-wheel-drive ones. At the end is a small parking lot capable of holding perhaps a half-dozen horse trailers and a dozen cars. You are now at the Reavis Trailhead. The trail continues off down the old roadbed from here.

The old road turned trail can be basically chopped into three sections for our purposes. The first third goes basically east, edging around the Lewis-Pranty/Fish Creek drainage along a east-west ridgeline. The second third goes basically south, along the ridge that seperates the Lewis-Pranty Creek and Reavis Creek drainages and then up the eastern flank of Castle Dome Mountain (one of several Castle Domes in Arizona, BTW, so don't get confused if you try to find it on the map) to Windy Pass. The final part edges around to the southeast again, through high valleys and along saddles and edging around ridgelines, until finally it drops down to the east into Reavis Valley.

There's not much to say about the first third. It goes up, and up, and up. It's morning, and it's going east, so you're facing into the sun. Supposedly shortly after the end of this first third there is a trail which crawls around a saddle and drops down into the Reavis Creek drainage and thence onwards to Reavis Falls, but I did not look for or explore that area.

The second third goes up, and up, and up. It's still morning, but because you're hauling 45 pounds of pack, food, and water (LOTS of water, this is a very hot and dry trail in September) up and up and up, the sun high enough and to the south enough to be almost in your face.

Finally you reach a saddle and see Castle Dome ahead of you. An old ranching road leads to the right, and there's traces of an old ranching trail leading to the left, but you want to go up and straight onto the old road chopped into the side of Castle Dome. You're still going up and up and up. There are two places where the old road is covered by avalanches and the trail detours slightly westward to go over the upper part of the avalanche. When you reach the second one, you know that Windy Pass is near.

Windy Pass has one main feature: A tree. A fairly large tree (for this altitude), providing much-needed shade for generations of hikers to take a breather on its large exposed roots as they recover from all the miles of up, up, up, up that they have hiked. This is a good place to take off your boots, shake out your socks, and change to a dry pair of socks, as well as a good place for a snack prior to the final part of your hike.

From here you're less than 2 hours from the end of your journey. You're looking almost straight down into the Peters' Canyon watershed, and thinking ohshit I gotta climb down into that and back up. But you don't. The trail instead crawls around a ridgeline to the east, and falls into a high valley that drains into the Reavis watershed. The trail briefly leaves the old roadbed here, and you're on a hillside above where the old roadbed has washed out. The trail is easy to follow -- this is not a trail where your GPS skills are going to be tested -- but you'll need to pay attention because this is not like the prior virtual Interstate of wide, impossible-to-miss trail.

Once the trail drops back down to the old roadbed, you cross a unnamed creek (which has been dry every time I've been here, but the fact that it has washed away parts of the road proves that it can be deadly in a rain), and then climb up slightly onto Plow Saddle. This is a fairly flat spot. You'll see an old fenceline, and there was a post with a sign pointing to trail 287 (alas, I forgot its name, and its name is not on my particular map). Trail 287 goes down a steep slope about 3/4 mile to Plow Saddle Spring (which is probably dry but I did not go down to see, because I had no desire to do more up up up to get back up from that) and in turn joins the Frog Tanks Trail, which goes down the Rogers Canyon watershed. There are supposedly some ruins down this trail, but because of the heat and lack of water I did not attempt the trek.

From here it's back to up, up, up. For a while you're marching up and east towards a high ridgeline, and you're saying "oh shit, I gotta go all the way over that?!". Then the trail veers south to edge over a saddle, and once over that saddle you drop eastward down into Reavis Valley. You're still looking down on the Roger's Canyon watershed, and can see the Frog Tanks Trail (or, rather, the old ranching road that it follows) climbing up from that watershed. You, however, continue eastward over an unnamed saddle that drops into the Reavis Creek watershed. Once you pass the Frog Tanks Trail, you enter Reavis Valley, and are almost there.

My first priority was finding water. I had my directions mixed up and thought that water was at the southern end of the canyon, when it appears now that water is mostly at the northern end of the canyon. There were unnamed trails down into the valley from where the old roadbed turned back southward, that probably lead to the lower orchard and water, but I followed the old roadbed southward instead. You are under the treeline now, and it is pleasant and shaded and at least 5 degrees cooler than the surrounding areas (probably because of the evaporative cooling done by all the greenery). After a while you can look down into the creekbed. I was starting to get worried because I didn't see water there, though there were occasional dark splotches that may have been puddles.

At an old sycamore there was another unnamed trail down into the valley, this time there was a meadow. I followed it into the meadow and saw two trails down into the creekbed. At one there was water but it was clogged with water hycinth. At the other there was a small pool shaded by the roots of an old tree that was relatively clear due to being shaded, but not quite deep enough to use my filter. I used a cup to dip it into my Nalgene bottle, let it settle, then pumped from the Nalgene bottle into my other bottle or into my Camelback, but water definitely was not in large supply.

I set up camp back up in the meadow, under the shade of some trees, making sure that there were no sycamores above me (sycamores are notorious for dropping branches in strong winds). I was probably too close to the water, but I was too tired from up-up-up-up in 95 degree heat to go much further. There was one other person in the area. I saw his boot prints on the way there, and he passed by coming back from the upper orchard and old home site (I saw his boot prints at the upper orchard), but he was apparently camped down at the lower orchard (in the northern part of the valley). I never made it down that far.

All the up-up-up in high heat had pretty much exhausted me, and after brief exploration I settled down with the latest edition of Fantasy and Science Fiction (the big double-sized November edition), and waited for nightfall so I could get some rest (it was 85 degrees, with a slight breeze, but the sun had moved and found my tent so my tent was too hot for a quick nap). The bugs were out in force. A few clouds came over so I put the fly on my tent so my stuff wouldn't get wet if it rained. I wasn't happy about that because my tent, a Eureka Rainier, does not ventilate well with the fly on, meaning that escaping the bugs by going into my tent was not a very viable option. It was about 85 degrees, so while not uncomfortably hot, the lack of ventilation made the tent stifling. I really cannot recommend this tent for hot conditions.

The next day I went to the old home site. This structure had burned down in 1991, but pictures from immediately after the fire showed the stone walls still standing. They're not still standing. Apparently they were unstable and dangerous, and were demolished. You can still see the slab and the outlines of the walls though. Even the interior walls were stone, stone being one of the things definitely *not* in short supply in Reavis Valley. The floors themselves were concrete. The living area floors had red concrete tiles on them (the red was dye added to the top layer), a technique that is only recently becoming common in the "real world". Sadly, some vandals have pried up some of the concrete tiles and used them to build fire rings nearby.

The old home site is on a slope looking down into the valley, apparently to keep it out of the way of any floods. To the south is the old pond/stock tank. Apparently it required a wind mill/well to keep it full, because it is now dry and the current route of the Reavis trail drops down into it and goes back up the other side. The base of what must have been a water tank/windmill stands above both the house and the stock tank. I can't imagine what it must have been like, living here in 1963, so far removed from the modern world. No electricity, only barely having running water (thanks to the windmill/stock tank), having to take the kids down a 10 mile winding road to the Apache Trail where they could catch a bus (since this was prior to the advent of widely-accepted home schooling), no telephone, no television, no radio other than shortwave, I can see why in 1963 they might have decided to accept whatever offer the Forest Service made to sell the ranch. Especially with how much it must have cost to maintain that road, due to the frequent washouts and landslides.

Going back I checked out the upper orchard. There were no apples, and no signs of future apples. I also noticed that the black walnut trees that are planted all throughout the valley had no walnuts on them, a bad sign -- usually this time of year they should have green lumps on them representing growing walnuts. There was no water in the creek near the orchard, it was dry as a bone. Apparently our hot dry summer (very little monsoon, lots of clear skies) has hit things hard. The lower orchard, which is in the wetter northern part of the valley, may have some apples this year, but I did not go down there because I was not confident enough in my navigation to venture across the creek to the other side to follow the old road to the lower orchard. I'd experienced some incipient heat exhaustion the previous day and still felt pretty wiped out.

I made an attempt to find the Reavis Gap trail just to follow it to the other side of the creek and back. This is a very hard to follow/find trail. I followed a likely looking cow path from the sign that said "Reavis Gap Trail" until it hit the creek bed, which was dry as a bone. Looking at my map now, I see that I should have gone upstream up the dry creek bed a bit after it hit the creek before the trail veered off to the left. At the time I just stood there in the middle of the creek bed, seeing no trail on the other side, shook my head, and went back to the main Reavis Trail. When you're solo, without the support of fellow hikers, you have to be very careful because a misstep will mean death. Given the lack of water, I wasn't about to go bushwhacking in search of the trail.

I spent the rest of the afternoon finishing up the double issue of F&SF. The bugs were not bothering me as much by this time. I think it was a combination of the fact that I had been slathering sun screen and bug repellent all over myself for two days straight and frankly reeked of it, and just plain getting used to having gnats in a cloud around me.

Around 4:30pm I heard something behind me, looked back, and there was a 4 foot long snake. It saw me move, decided I was too big to eat, and slithered away toward an old sycamore tree. At first I thought it was a black snake, but then it gave a couple of dissultary warning rattles and I noticed no, it was a rattlesnake, and it had some faint diamond markings on its black back. Once it reached the old sycamore tree, it decided it was going to just coil up there and wait me out. After about 15 minutes I was tired of watching it sit there, only 20 feet from my tent, and started throwing rocks at it from a safe distance. After I managed to graze it a couple of times, it decided that coiling there was not a good idea, and slithered around the tree toward my tent, into the hollow of the tree, where it once again coiled. Bad move, snake. I waited another 15 minutes to see whether it was going to move again, nothing happened, I gathered another collection of rocks (some of them quite large/heavy), and this time the hollow of the tree served to funnel the rocks right to where the snake was coiled. After pouring rocks onto it until it was thoroughly brained and confused and immobilized, I jabbed it with my trekking pole, then grabbed an old metal fence post that was in the hollow of the tree and pounded the thing with this heavy metal utensile of death until I saw bloody snake meat. This was one snake that was not going to take up camp under my tent to surprise me in the morning.

The next day I broke camp at about 6:45am and was back at my car by 11:15am. This was the downhill from hell. Towards the end it was 100 degrees, and I was sweating faster than I could absorb water through my digestive system (I know this because after I got into my air-conditioned car, I had to stop twice to relieve myself of clear urine from water that'd been sitting in my gut waiting to be absorbed). Not much to say about the hike out, except that going downhill is a lot more fun than going uphill. I never saw the other guy again. I suspect he was going to hike out the other end of the Reavis trail (the southern end), because he did not leave a car at the northern end.

Lessons learned:

1. Don't hike this trail in early September. The heat will punish you. Late October to early December is probably the best time, that's when any apples in the orchards will be ripe. In December you may get snow flurries.
2. That uphill slog is a real bummer. Spend a month or two on the stair stepper in the gym, combined with weekly assaults on Squaw Peak or Camelback, with weight on your back. You'll feel a lot better at the end.
3. Instead of a sleeping bag, a blanket would have been more appropriate for the conditions (my little thermometer said it did not get below 60 degrees at night). A sleeping bag under such conditions is always either too hot or too cold, depending upon how far you zip it. Temperature regulation is a pain in the rear, you're either sweating or shivery.
4. My 3/4 length Thermorest Ultralite is Good Stuff.
5. The wicking Cool-Max shirt that I was wearing did an excellent job of keeping me cool, but is not suitable for bush-whacking -- like most synthetics, it pulls badly.
6. I carried one trekking pole, which did help balance on the tricky downhills. It was nice having that third point of contact with the ground available. I mostly kept the tip of the pole between me and the falloff into the abyss, so that if I did lose balance, I could push myself uphill with the pole. I'm not sure whether carrying two trekking poles would have been worthwhile or not.
7. Wicking socks don't. I have yet to find a sock combination that will work well in hiking boots in 100 degree weather. I'm nursing a few blisters from that last segment of the hike back home, when my socks got totally overwhelmed by my sweat production and rubbed my feet raw.
8. I'm still ambivalent about my Eureka Rainier. This is basically the one-door version of the Zephyr. It is about 1 pound lighter than the Zephyr II because it does not have the second door, associated zippers, and vestibule, but because it doesn't have the second door it also has poor ventilation. Even though I had my fly pitched as high as I could in order to improve ventilation, conditions inside were quite still. This would be good for cool weather, but could get rather stuffy with two people in it. The Rainier with associated pegs, stuff sack, etc. comes to about 5.5 pounds, or about 1.5 pounds heavier than a Kelty Clark Tent with associated stuff sack etc, but is very spacious. It was nice to be able to bring my pack into the tent and distribute things like flashlights, clothing, etc. around my "bed" where they were near at hand for the 2 nights I was going to spend there. On the other hand, given the poor ventilation and the weight, I may decide to invest in the Wanderlust Nomad Lite-N-Airy which would save 3 pounds and give much better ventilation. Its only drawback is that it's not freestanding -- but for this hike, freestanding was not necessary (there's plenty of soil to plant tent stakes in Reavis Valley).
9. Getting my pack weight below 40 pounds would have made things a bit more comfortable. I was really overstuffing my little Kelty backpack, and its hip belt was somewhat overstressed hauling that much weight. I could have chopped 3 pounds off my weight by going to an ultralight tent, and another 2 pounds by going to freeze-dried rather than ready-to-eat foods, and another pound (at least) by dumping the Gore-Tex rain jacket and going to a plain coated nylon rain jacket. By going to a lighter backpack (this thing weighs close to 8 pounds empty! I was absolutely shocked to put it on the scale and find that it was so heavy empty) I could have saved another 2 or 3 pounds. That would have brought total weight, including over a gallon of water, to under 40 pounds.
10. CARRY LOTS OF WATER. I was carrying around 10 pounds of water (water is 8 pounds per gallon), so do keep that in mind when I talk about my pack weight. And yes, I needed most of that water -- by the time I set up my base camp after hiking uphill in 95 degree weather for close to 10 miles, I had about 16 ounces of water left in my last water bottle (the one I'd tossed into my pack at the last moment after considering how dry everything was, thus evicting my raingear to a roll strapped atop my pack). Note that if you attempt this hike in more appropriate weather, you probably can make do with a 70oz camelback pouch and a 48oz Nalgene bottle, which is what I used for an earlier hike over a similar distance in more appropriate weather. Since this is desert, it's dry, so you must carry more water than if you were in, say, Oregon, even if you're hiking in late December.
11. DON'T HIKE SOLO. This hike would have been a lot more fun with other people along, not only because of the companionship, but because we could have done more exploring of the valley. As a solo hiker I had to be too careful to explore the valley the way I would have liked. For example, I did find and follow the old road to the lower orchard for a ways, but turned back when it hit a meadow and I lost the road. If I got confused or turned around and could not find my way back to base camp (my only known water supply) I could die. That knowledge was there in my head, and there was no going around it. I knew that I wasn't thinking as straight as I could because of recovering from incipient heat exhaustion from the 95 degree uphill slog, so I had to factor that in on the side of safety too. Remember, you don't think straight when exhausted. Drill that into your head *before* you get out into the wilderness and put yourself into a position where you can make a mistake, especially if solo -- because you can, and will, die if you make too many such mistakes.
12. The best part about hiking out into the wilderness is going back home. You better appreciate things like clean water instantly out of the tap, warm showers, and comfortable beds. Half the time I was out there I was muttering "Never again", mostly because of the heat, bugs, and lack of water (which kept me pretty much tied to my base camp, because as a solo hiker I could not risk going too far from my only known water supply).