Round Trip Distance: 2.6 miles
Difficulty: Moderate
Elevation: 6091 - 6247 feet
Cellphone: 0-3 bars
Time: 2 hrs.
Trailhead: 35.08700, -111.30475
Fee: none
Attractions: pueblo ruins
The Padre Canyon Ruins are located south of Twin Arrows, Arizona on a peninsula of land that juts out into the canyon. On the south side of the ruins where the saddle of the ridge joins the peninsula with the rest of the mesa there are 2 defensive walls built one inside of the other. As there are no trails whatsoever, getting to the ruins requires expert level route finding skills. The hike isn't at all difficult in itself. You just can't always easily tell where you are headed.
For turn-by-turn directions enter the GPS coordinates 35.08700, -111.30475 for the trailhead into your driving app. They will have you take I-40 Exit 219 and drive south on the Twin Arrows Road, FR 126, for 5.6 miles. At that point you will need to make a sharp right turn onto a 4WD track that heads back the other way.
Follow this road which has a 'Designated Route' sign for about 700 feet and park. There is a spot here that looks like it may have been a natural spring or well.
After parking the problem that presents itself is that you can't see where you want to go because of all the tall brush. We had a general idea from the waypoint on our GPS but that was it. To keep from zigzagging all around the brush we picked a tall tree that could be seen a little over a quarter mile away and made a beeline for that.
Once we reached the tree, which turned out to be a big gnarly juniper, we adjusted the course and headed off at an angle toward the northwest where the waypoint on our GPS device seemed to indicate.
A half mile later we came to the fenceline that forms the boundary of the Coconino National Forest. The nice thing here is that the bottom wire wasn't barbed but slick. We were able to find a spot with enough room below the bottom wire to scoot beneath it.
After crossing under the fence we could spot the ruins out on a point across the canyon so we could finally see where we were headed. All we had to do was drop down through this first shallow canyon and make our way over to the saddle of the ridge.
After crossing over to the opposite side of the canyon the route dips down onto the saddle of the ridge where the main branch of Padre Canyon is on the left. Climbing out of the saddle to get out onto the point of the ridge that juts out into the canyon you come to the remains of a fairly high wall that seals off the ruins from the ridge.
After getting around that wall there is another wall that is a little shorter in height. Just like some of the old Roman fortifications in the Old World that had 2 walls around them.
The ruin at the very top of the ridge is actually pretty big.
Further out on the point above Padre Canyon there are even more rooms and a few more yet on the sides of the point. So basically, there is the large ruin in the middle, surrounded by ruins along the sides, and then the two walls below that on the saddle side of the peninsula. Pretty cool!
To make it easier for the return hike we had placed a small cairn of rocks where we dropped over the hill that we could see from below and we also placed a rock on two of the posts to mark the spot where we had crawled under the fence. That way we didn't have to keep staring at the GPS allowing us to make much faster time.
The Padre Canyon Ruins turned out to be not only the hardest ruins in the area to get to, hiking wise, but also the funnest and most extensive of all the ruins up to that point. The views down into Padre Canyon from the ruins adds a lot to the scenic aspect of the site. It must have been quite the citadel back in the day.
If you would like to see it for yourself then all you have to do is 'Take a hike'.
