Mesa Verde National Park

Hi Blog!

We arrived in Cortez, Colorado on Tuesday, September 20, 2016, just in time to meet our friends, Duane and Jean, for Happy Hour and Thai food. On Wednesday, we had a long list of chores to get done in anticipation of the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta. That said, we also wanted to get out and explore the area. Our campground was just seven miles from Mesa Verde National Park. We made a quick visit to the Visitor's Center to gather maps and information and then went to wash Great White who was looking more gray than white after our trip to Alaska.

We had learned from our Boomer/Balloon friends, Dave and Leslie, that Mancos, Colorado was hosting a Balloon and Art Festival this weekend. Mancos is just a 20 minutes drive east from Cortez. Duane and Jean planned to crew for them and would also be staying in Mancos. What a bonus!  They invited us to join in the fun.

On Thursday, the whole balloon gang came to Cortez for lunch and we made plans to meet up with them again on Saturday to help. After lunch, it was back to chores!

The weather on Friday, September 23, 2016, was looking a little iffy for a balloon launch, so we chose Friday as our day in Mesa Verde National Park. We had already booked tickets for two tours, but with all the rain and wind Friday morning, we stopped again at the Visitor's Center and exchanged our 10:00 a.m. tour ticket for a 2:00 p.m. tour. We then drove the 20 miles into the park to Chapin Mesa.

Our first stop was the Chapin Mesa Archeological Museum. We learned that Mesa Verde National Park is a World Heritage Site. It protects some of the best preserved Ancestral Puebloan archaeological sites in the United States. With more than 4,300 sites, including 600 cliff dwellings, it is the largest archaeological preserve in the U.S. Just outside of the museum we got our first glimpse of one of the cliff dwellings. Spruce Tree House was closed due to rock fall, so this is as close as we got.

There are two loop roads on top of the mesa. Our first tour was the Balcony House located on the Cliff Palace Loop. As we walked back to our truck from Spruce Tree House, the weather began to lift. Here we got our first look at Soda Canyon.

Balcony House is set on a high ledge facing east overlooking Soda Canyon. Its 45 rooms and 2 kivas would have been cold during the winter. We had to climb a 32 foot ladder to get in. Here Kathy demonstrates her ladder skills.

As if climbing a 32 foot ladder wasn't challenging enough, we then had to crawl through a 12 foot tunnel and up another ladder and through a tiny, square, stone porthole. Here Dave shouts encouragement as Kathy's hips were snuggly wedged inside the narrow tunnel.

Here we get our first look at the balcony that Balcony House was named for. While no one really knows for sure why this cliff dwelling has walls along its balcony, many scientist believe it was a defensive fortification.

Ranger Larry, who led our hike through Balcony House, had lots of great information to share. For example, the earliest construction was the most exacting. Later construction was a little haphazard, as if done quickly. Once we knew what to look for, it was easy to see all the additions made to the original structures. Ranger Larry gave us a real window into what life must have been like for the Ancestral Pueblo people and why they built in this location and constructed their pueblos as they did.

All of the cliff dwellings have one or more kivas, which are subterranean rooms used for religious ceremonies.  The kivas resemble the pit homes of yet earlier ancestors, and people theorize that many of the ceremonies were familial- or clan-based and looked back toward practices of their ancestors. Mesa Verde-style kivas included a feature from earlier times called a sipapu, which is a hole dug in the north of the chamber that is thought to represent the Ancestral Puebloans' place of emergence from the underworld. In the photo below, the large hole in the center is a fire pit and the small hole is the sipapu.

It is not clear why the Ancestral Puebloans left their established homes in the late 13th century or early 14th century. We discussed with Ranger Larry a number of factors, including climate change, prolonged periods of drought, topsoil erosion, environmental degradation, deforestation, hostility from new arrivals, religious change and infighting over scarce resources. But it seemed pretty obvious from the way this entrance was bricked up leaving only a small passageway that the residents were afraid of someone getting in.

As if squeezing out wasn't bad enough, we then had to scale the cliff face to reach the mesa above. Lucky for us, the Park Service put up a chain link fence along the very, very narrow toe holds.

In case you were wondering, this was the view from the so-called stairway!

After reaching the top, we high-fived Ranger Larry and drove over to Cliff Palace for our next tour. Cliff Palace it thought to be the largest cliff dwelling in North America. It contains 23 kivas and 150 rooms and had a population of approximately 100 people. Because of the large number of kivas, it is thought that Cliff Palace was a social, administrative site with high ceremonial usage. It certainly is impressive when you see it from afar.

As we got closer, we felt dwarfed by the large tower structures. Ranger Patrick covered a few of the same topics as Ranger Larry, but it was not repetitive. We probably would have enjoyed the Cliff Palace tour better if it was not so crowded.

One of the towers still has some of its original plaster inside. As we looked up, we could see a number of original paintings.

We finished our tour with another exciting climb up and over the ledge of the canyon. No photos this time, if you've seen one scary cliff climb photo, you've seen them all.

On the ride back down the park road, we stopped at the Mancos Valley overlook to catch some of the fall color on the flanks of Silver Mountain and its sister peaks.

As with so many of our stops, we wish we had more time to explore. There were several hiking trails and petroglyph trails that we'll have to leave for next time.  Until then, stay thirsty my friends.