The Davis Wheel

I can’t really find any official documentation on this, so it could be a hoax, or a less than historically significant recent reproduction honestly, but the general consensus is it is an ancient Native America Medicine Wheel. Considering I randomly stumbled upon petroglyphs in the area recently, I am inclined to believe this is authentic.

A Medicine Wheel, or Sacred Hoop is typically a large structure made by laying stones into a pattern of a wagon wheel, often with the spokes facing cardinal directions.

It sounded fascinating. I heard about this in the fall of last year, made one attempt, and then had to wait winter out to make a second attempt. Due to it’s remote location, that is really hard to get to, and the fact that there is no trail to it, this one is really rather well preserved and I would like to do my part in keeping it that way.

First things first. There is no trail to this. You just have to know where it is, climb up a rather steep hill and hope for the best. This is way out of my comfort zone, I like to explore, but also like to avoid having to be rescued. I guess I just really wanted to see this! If you do attempt to find this, hike at your own risk, and please, please do your part in preserving it. Do not disturb it in any way.

Cool rock outcropping.

When we got there I determined 2 possible routes. One had a trail part of the way, so we opted to do that. Not long after this we had to abandon the trail and just wing it.

Random boulder field and .. wait a minute, we’re here! I don’t think I noticed it when I took this picture. Do you see it?

And here it is. Spring might have been a good time to come as it looks pretty overgrown.

I scrambled up the hill a little ways in an attempt to get a from above shot.

Couple different angles.

We counted 9 spokes (radius, center to outside). Or 4 that cross the entire diameter, and one extra one that only goes to the radius.

To show size. I would guess it is about 20 feet in diameter.

It’s actually large enough to make out on Google maps satellite view. (screen shot from Google maps). Huh, now that I am looking at this I didn’t notice that line on the outside. It seems to coincide with where the “missing” spoke was. I wonder if that is significant.

We decided to try my alternate route down, which wasn’t going to work, so we ended up just hoofin it down the steep mountain slope. Eventually, we came across this boulder field.

The grass was all laying down. my guess is the snow and water slide down the steep slope and bend it over.

Well this was really cool. I am glad we visited. I’m not sure if it was cool enough to warrant all the stress involved in finding it, but it was really cool and I like to see history.

Now, seeing as this was not a trail I can’t really rate it. Your route may differ greatly. I will say it was a lot of work, with the constant nagging voice in the back of my head to stay vigilant, don’t get lost or cliffed. Sometimes I feel I may be overly cautious, but like I said, I don’t ever want to get myself into a situation where I would get hurt, or need to be rescued.

As for difficulty I am going with a DR5. It was very steep, very rocky, there would be bush whacking much later in the season, and again, no trail. Hike at your own risk.