The canyon below 110 foot Reavis Falls is a wild place of transcendent beauty.
With the afternoon in front of me, the trip back to camp was a slow pleasure. On the way in, I noted several stopping points to capture photographs. Here a natural rock sluice offers a foot tall waterfall, mirroring Reavis Falls, bracketed by white igneous stone.
This same stone offers a screen, the bright spring sun throwing the sparse leaves into sharp relief.
Reaching Reavis Falls, once you find the canyon mouth, is three-fourths of a mile of boulder hopping and bushwacking over and around landslides, deep pools and fallen trees. Odds are you will be the only person in the canyon for weeks, if not months. Expect to be surprised. In this chapter you will (finally) visit the falls themselves.
A Camp in the Canyon
Click me for the chapter about the environment around the mouth of Reavis Canyon below the falls.
The Last Mile
Here is an overview of the last third mile of Reavis Canyon. You can see the wall of the falls nestled in the folds of ridges towards the top, just off center.
On the lower right is a large landslide and, below there, it is complete chaos.
The vegetation grows shoulder to shoulder with interleaved branches. You will not get through there. The solution is to find a way around, usually over and around house-sized boulders.
The image was captured from Google Earth
After almost two hours of picking my way, there was a flicker of light. The fall waters were sparkling in the sunlight high above the cottonwood trees, in full Mach bloom, and the still leafless Arizona Sycamores.
This was my view of Reavis Falls from the canyon on a March day before the Arizona Sycamores have leaved. The falls are the tiny patch of white to the left of midline where the earth meets the sky. Jumbles of infallen boulders and thick growth of sycamores, oaks and fully leaved cottonwoods cloak the falls.
Another 30 minutes of canyoneering brought me to the foot of the falls.
At the Foot of Reavis Falls
Looking up at Reavis Falls from a 20 foot tall mound of talus.
These are boulders washed down at flood time.
The rock wall is thick with microorganisms, fungi and mosses.
After clambering around the talus pile I found this angle….
An Arizona Sycamore, before the spring leafing, at the Foot of Reavis Falls
Talus at the Foot of Reavis Falls
The Reavis Falls talus is large boulders carried down Reavis Creek and washed over the falls at flood time as well as blocks fractured from the cliff face. You can see the base of the Sycamore from the previous photograph.
The falls are formed where Reavis Creek flows over a solid mass of rock. The talus is composed mostly of this red rock. From the edge of this cliff to the base, where the falls hit the canyon floor, is all of 140 feet. This is a far as you can proceed into the canyon without some serious climbing skills.
It is possible to climb around the canyon by climbing up the ridge from which I captured the Cedar Basin Hoodoos. See my posts below for this location (you need to work it our for yourself).
This is NOT the last post of the series. From here I will focus on the beauty of Reavis Falls and the canyon that holds them.
It was a four-day expedition so there are a few chapters covering the approach to the Falls:
The Superstition Wilderness was born from volcanic eruption and in some places (Peters Mesa) the earth still rumbles.
Here in Reavis Canyon it is the huge spring runoff that builds the environment, grinding and scouring the canyon. In my chapter The Mouth of Reavis Canyon is the story of this aspect of the canyon.
The history of this spot is written on these volcanic and igneous rocks and boulders, the uprooted tree roots and fresh water.
The tire must have washed down from Reavis Ranch.
A Canyon of Wonder and Beauty
In this chapter I present, in the header, the lovely dawn sky of that day, and a tiny corner of a rock jumble in Reavis Creek. There is a large format version of the sky in my previous post, “The Mouth of Reavis Canyon.”
Rivulets and Rocks
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Here is the same view, in daylight. As I hiked toward the canyon mouth below Reavis Falls, looking up I saw this prominant cliff against the sky.
Here is the path I took toward the falls. The campsite is to the lower right, the falls are toward the center and left. My approach to the camp is on the right, moving toward the top. For another view of this location see Reavis Canyon Camp.
The mouth of Reavis Canyon below the falls is choked with vegetation and infallen rocks and boulders. The far slopes are thick with the poles of young saguaros. There are hoodoos, as well. In the photograph, below, one hoodoo is catching morning light. See the chapters Hoodoos on the Descent to Reavis Falls and Cedar Basin Hoodoos for more views of the hoodoos around Reavis Falls.
Hoodoos visible from the mouth of Reavis Canyon below the falls. Look toward the far slope.
Flood damage in Reavis Canyon below the falls. Note the scouring at the base of these trees and the broken limbs. This is NOT a place to be in spring thaw.
Massive spring flooding scours the canyon floor.
Flood damage in Reavis Canyon below the falls.
There is beauty to be found, as well. Freshly fallen rough rocks contrast with water smoothed boulders and the water surface.
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Here is an overview of my route through Cedar Basin on the way to Reavis Falls. There are two paths in the following image from Google Earth. The red path brings you into Cedar Basin and straight up a ridge and down to the campsite. The red path is incorrect in the approach to the ridge and, rather than repaint the path, I created the green path as the gradual and accurate description of how I climbed to the ridge point where I captured the photographs Hoodoos on the Descent to Reavis Falls.
No Path to Reavis Falls
You need to understand there is NO path through this terrain. It is necessary to follow a faint trail marked out by the footsteps of those before you and an occasional rock cairn placed at the most difficult points. The following image is misleading in that what looks like a road next to my green path is actually a creek bed from the Lime Mountain spring.
Huge Boulders
What looks like a road is the resting place of huge boulders fallen from the surrounding mountains. Since there is water, thick brush and trees grow everywhere in cracks and spaces between the boulders and rocks. Getting through the creek bed with an 80 pound pack and not getting lost is close to impossible. The solution is to hug the ridge slope, following the contours and navigate around boulders.
Reavis Canyon below the falls is filled with boulders of this size held in place by friction.
View of Reavis Canyon and Campsite
From the ridge small portions of Reavis Canyon were visible. I even spotted a campsite.
The mouth of Reavis Canyon below the falls opens into a sandy bottom. This camp, surronded by house-size boulders fallen from the slopes above, has a patch of grass bright green and fresh.
This camp, 1,636 feet below Lime Mountain peak, surrounded by house-size boulders fallen from the slopes above, has a patch of grass bright green and fresh to the right. In the center of the photograph is a tree trunk on rocks to serve as a bench next to a fireplace. With an 80 pound pack on my back, I was still an hour or so away from this spot. It was March, so sunset was around 6 pm, enough time to find a way down before darkness to overtook me.
Looking down from a ridge above the canyon that holds Reavis Creek and the falls.
This is an overview of my progress, with the Lime Mountain and Reavis Canyon campsites marked. Landforms are marked on the left: the Prominent Cliff , in the background it says “White Formation on Cliff.”
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Another blog from my four day solo expedition to Reavis Falls in the remote eastern Superstition Wilderness. Here we will descend briefly to the canyon of Reavis Creek, below the Reavis Falls.
Shadows rising on the canyon walls are from Lime Mountain and Castle Dome. In the far canyon, below Two Bar Mountain, is a shadow from the notable cliff and prominence to the right, that rises above Reavis Falls, fall below and out of sight in the canyon.
Here is that prominence from that same day, late afternoon when the sun is just starting to be low enough to throw the cliff into relief. This is a single shot with a canon 200 mm lens. This day I had climbed out of Reavis Creek, up to to this point on the slopes of Lime Mountain. Here I enjoyed an afternoon, evening, night and early morning of the following day.
The second day of the solo expedition, I hiked into the canyon of Reavis Falls from a camp at the canyon mouth. Looking up from the creek this same cliff was prominant against the sky.
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Two Bar Mountain is only part of this view taken the evening of Day Three, my solo expedition to Reavis Falls in the Superstition Wilderness of Arizona.
The view encompasses most of the four day expedition, being the climb into the lower Reavis Creek Canyon from which I camped. I spent one entire day walking up the valley to the falls.
The patches of yellow on the far slopes to the left and into Reavis Valley are Mexican Poppy (Eschscholtzia californica) blooms.
To find lower Reavis Creek Canyon, look for the prominent cliff formation in the very center of the image. Follow the end of the cliff down to a dark shadow. The western canyon wall creates the heavy shadow. As you move to the right, in the image, the shadow becomes wider because the canyon wall becomes higher.
The view also encompasses a 2005 solo expedition over Two Bar Mountain using the Tule and Two Bar Ridge trails into the Superstition Wilderness around Pine Creek. See my blog “Racing the Sun” for an image Two Bar Mountain with the path of (most of) two days of that expedition.
An interesting feature of the full size image (lost in the small-scale reproduction of this blog) is the host of enormous saguaro cactuses marching up the sides of the canyon to the left, thinning out and ending on the western walls of the canyon (the slope directly beneath my viewpoint). Our course, each cactus is perfectly still, casting a huge shadow, and seems very tiny. The nearest is a mile away. We are seeing in this thinning host the lower Sonoran in transition to the upper Sonoran life zone.
All of this in one view from Lime Mountain. Here is another, taken just as the sun set.
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Two Nature Abstracts, macros of Reavis Creek below the falls
The light of a early spring desert afternoon on a broad rock shelves along the creek.
I spent a day hiking in, two days hiking out and a day of canyoneering to the foot of Reavis Falls. The featured (i.e. “header”) photograph is a view of the inner canyon, the raw material for these abstracts.
Michael Stephen Wills Photography 
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