Cliff Dwellings

2018-09-25
Mesa Verde National Park, CO

Last night it was windy. It blew hard all night, which is pretty noisy when you're in a tent. I will admit I slept very poorly and although the wind subsided just slightly at 5:00 AM it was still challenging getting packed up. On my way out of town I asked the nice fellow at the gas station "Does the wind always blows that way?" He told me "Nope. Sometimes it blows the other way."

I headed over to Mesa Verde National Park early in order to pick up tickets for the tours. Of course, due to the month, they were down to only touring one of the dwellings instead of the three or four they usually offer. The flip side of that is that traffic was light and parking at the various points was easy. At any rate, I was able to get tickets for 10:00. Because the tour is at the very back of the park (why run the roads beyond?) and that was an hour and many switchbacks away, I had little time to spare getting there.

The tour was listed as "strenuous" because it has some ladder climbs and tunnel crawls in addition to a bunch of steps at the beginning. The tunnels/doors were the most challenging; it was a tight fit and I had to pack my camera and push my pack in front of me to get through. I also helped a guy up the first ladder; I don't think he was a fan of them. But enough encouraging words and keeping focused on his hands got him to the top.

It was indeed cool to walk around in a house built about 800 years ago. It's amazing how much of it remains, and just the sense of history. They do not know why people moved from the mesas down to the cliffs, but I'll throw out my theory. One of the signs on a mesa dwelling explained how they had to repair the roof every year, and essentially rebuild it every ten. Living in the cliffs you have a roof that won't leak or need to be repaired. It seems obvious to me.

This is the balcony for which Balcony House is named. You can see one door at the far end, and there is another just out of the shot at the close end so you could walk between those rooms. Carefully.

All of the dwellings have kivas. These are a pit that is used for religious rituals. These things are big, on the order of 15 feet or so in diameter and maybe 10 feet deep. They would have had a roof back in the day, made of branches supported on the columns around in sort of a spiral and then a layer of adobe so that it was flush with the ground and you could walk on it to the ladder in the center, for instance. This is a vast amount of effort to put in to create these and so many seemed to be needed (one per family) that I hope there were other uses for them.

One of the kiva's in balcony house. They had to haul in all this material through tiny passages and small handholds.

If you leave a Kiva alone in the dark, you may end up with two. Sort of like computer power cords.

I went to see Cliff Palace, which is the largest dwelling on the cliffs. The tours were done for the winter, but you can still take a look. It is in the shade most of the day which seems like a good idea in the desert. Note how many Kivas there are. That is a vast amount of space and effort.

Another view of the dwelling from across the canyon

There are plenty of ruins from the people that lived on the mesa before or during the time that the cliff dwellers were living down below. The bigger villages seem to have towers, as well as lots of storage rooms and of course Kivas.

Above ground they could take up a lot more real estate

I was easily able to cover the park in a day because there was no traffic or lines, except for the occasional tour bus spewing a stream of camera-toting seniors. I suspect that may be different during the season; I don't know. The park is right in the middle of the pack for visitors per year with about 600k. Doing a second tour would change the dynamics too. I did love the history of this park plus it combined engineering as well, albeit mostly civil.

Hiking distance: 3 miles (in short bursts)