Human Ingenuity at Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado [April 26-27, 2019]

Cliff Palace - a construction marvel

Over the course of 700 years, Ancestral Puebloans evolved from being hunter-gatherers to constructing elaborate stone buildings in alcoves high up on a cliff face.  They left remnants of beautiful pottery, clothing made of turkey feathers, and elaborate villages that suggests a sophisticated social life and rich spiritual life.  They left Mesa Verde at the end of 1200s, likely moving on to establish some of the Pueblos that exist still today.

Remains of a Pit House with an anteroom, likely used for storage

Mesa Verde is Spanish for “Green Table” and the mesa is green with trees and shrubs growing on its sides and top.  This must have attracted the early people.  Archeologists call people from this early period Basketmakers, because of the baskets that they made, they had not learned how to make pottery yet.  They farmed, hunted wild animals and foraged plants.  They lived in pit houses, dug into the earth with wooden roofs.  We saw examples of these homes on the Mesa Top Loop at the park.

Coyote Village pueblo construction

Far View Tower

Eventually, they started building above ground, and innovated sharing walls between rooms of the building, the origin of what we know today as pueblo construction.  The walls were thick with two sides of stone and rubble between them.  The structures were sometimes built to be two or three stories tall.  They retained the concept of the original pit houses, making them round kivas, places where men gathered to work on their weapons, to weave, and perhaps to engage in spiritual rituals.  Clusters of these communities have been preserved in the Far View Sites, where we were able to walk into the remains of the rooms in the Coyote Village. 

Villages were close together

Reservoir used to collect water from rain or snow melt

Cliff Palace from across the canyon

These Ancestral Puebloans agricultural fields were around their communities.  There is a reservoir where they collected water, probably from rain run off or snow melt.  They also built check dams across dry washes, to collect water and rich soil rinsed down after storms.   

Ruins everywhere

The mesa is ribbed with steep sided canyons.  No one is sure why they decided to move their homes into huge alcoves on these cliff faces.  It could have been for protection from the elements.  It could be that they needed to cultivate all arable land and their population had outgrown the small communities.  We will never know.

A 4-story tower

A village in a cliff

The cliff dwellings are a marvel.  Stones were collected from stream beds and carried up the cliffs.  Water for mortar was carried up or down the cliff (depending on the location of the source).  Hand and foot holds were pecked out of the rock of the cliff face as they climbed up to the fields, to carry food or water, or to visit other cliff communities.  The communities have kivas, and public spaces.  There are storerooms and granaries to store the harvest for the winter.  Some of the towers are 3 stories tall.  There are remains of more than 600 of these communities in the park.

Spruce Tree House

Square walls and round walls

Built all the way to the roof

Spruce Tree House is behind the Museum Visitors Center.  It is the third largest in the park, and has been partially restored.  You usually can walk by it and look at it up close, however, the trail was closed because of damage to the trail over the winter.  We were able to look at it from the other side of the cavern.  The Spruce Tree House community is estimated to have included 60-90 individuals who lived in 19 households.  It has 120 rooms, 8 kivas and 2 towers.  Some of the interior walls are plastered and have the remains of geometric decorations drawn on them.  These were not primitive cave dwellers!

This was likely a grainary or storage area, above Spruce Tree House

As we drove along the Mesa Top Loop, we stopped at several overlooks, where we could see dwellings built into alcoves on the cliff on the opposite side of the canyon.  Once you get used to seeing them, it seems like every alcove has a wall, a few rooms, or a sizeable village built in it.

Inside Cliff Palace - kivas in the foreground

Small rocks were stuck into the mortar to support and straighten the stones

We took the ranger led tour of the Cliff Palace, a village of 150 rooms, 75 constructed open areas, and 21 kivas.  It probably housed 100-120 people.  It has a lot of rooms that do not have hearths that archeologists do not designate as “living” rooms, which might have been used for some kind of governance or other purpose for the region.  The entry stairs for tours to the palace were closed, so we entered by way of the exit, climbing down 3 10-foot ladders, and then followed a narrow, windy set of stone stairs down to the ruins from the cliff top.  We returned back up to our cars the same way.  You could see some foot and hand holds on the cliff face.  While we were there, we were allowed to walk among the ruins, peer in doorways, and look out at the view across the canyon.

Amazing

There are two other sets of ruins that you can visit with a ranger led tour, those tours start being offered in the end of May.

Double walls with rubble in the middle supported multi-story structures

White plugs were inserted where samples were taken for tree-ring dating of the wood used in construction

The Ancestral Puebloans were prosperous.  They had leisure time to create beautiful things.  They were able to shape stones and use them to build straight walls high up on the side of a cliff.  They did not have a written language and little is actually known about them.  The Navajo word, Anasazi, that used to refer to the people of Mesa Verde is no longer used.  Instead they are tied to the modern Pueblo peoples of the Southwest who revere the ruins as the places of their forefathers.  Much of what archeologists surmise about the Ancestral Puebloans is derived from current day Pueblo people, their social structures, beliefs, stories and legends. 

One question for which there doesn’t seem to be an answer is “why did they leave?”  Over the course of two generations, they moved away.  Tree rings in some of their wooden construction beams, tell us there was a 20+year drought, so perhaps food and water became scarce.  This could have led to fights between villages over resources.  No one knows, and legends say that they just left.  What they left behind is wonderful, mysterious, and awe-inspiring.

Toe and hand holds pecked out of the cliff rock

Statue at the Visitors Center

Mesa Verde is very near the 4 Corners Monument where Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona all meet in a corner.  The Monument is on Navajo land and is operated by the reservation.  You pay $5 a person to get in and take your picture standing at the 4 corners. Local artists have booths around the perimeter selling jewelry and other crafts.  We visited the 4 Corners Monument as we drove in to Mesa Verde.  We arrived 10-minutes before it closed, and most of the artists had left already.  

Standing in 4 states at once

Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona

Happy cliff visitors!

Grandeur – Grand Canyon National Park [April 22-24, 2019]

That green color is vegetation

The Grand Canyon doesn’t look like its pictures and videos.  They don’t capture how big it is, how deep, how wide.  You hear that it is a mile deep and 10-18 miles across.  You say to yourself, yeah, that’s a lot.  But really, it is REALLY a lot.  At Yosemite and Zion we looked up at the beautiful structures of stone.  At Bryce we looked down at the hoodoos.  At the Grand Canyon you look out, way out.  When you look down, you can’t see the Colorado River except in a few places where you catch a tiny patch of green.  The stone structures left behind during the erosion process, but still well below the rim of the canyon, are blocking your view.

We visited the South Rim, the North Rim was still closed for the winter.  There is a wide paved Rim Walk along the edge with an extensive overlook at Mather Point.  Our first morning we walked along the Rim Walk oooing and aaahing until we got to the South Kaibab trailhead.  South Kaibab is one of the two most used trails for descending below the canyon rim and, perhaps, on to the river.  We had lunch there, enjoying the beautiful view and watching hikers huffing and puffing their way to the top, it is a very steep trail.  We also got a chance to eat the dust (quite literally) of a mule tour returning to the top.

That green splotch is the river...

...here it is zoomed in

Like the other major parks we visited recently, Grand Canyon has a shuttle system to transport visitors from lodgings to viewpoints and trailheads.  We took the shuttle back to the Yavapai Point Geology Museum where they had wonderful exhibits in front of plate glass windows describing what we were seeing.  Best yet, there was an informative geology Ranger Talk which taught us even more.  Since we have been giving lots of geology details in previous posts, suffice it to say that the Grand Canyon is also on the Colorado Plateau along with Zion and Bryce and so has the same horizontal strata of stone that were lifted up to high elevation by a tectonic event.  The same event created the Rocky Mountains.  The Colorado River rushes down from the Rockies to the Gulf of California and over millions of years has carved down through the plateau revealing a geologist’s history of layers of different rocks.

On the second day we went early to the Bright Angel trailhead, the other most frequently used trail to hike below the canyon rim and down to the river.  We hiked the first 1.5 miles down to a rest area with pit toilets, and then we hiked back up.  In that 1.5 miles we went down 1,200 feet of elevation change through constant switchbacks.  That is roughly the same height as the Empire State Building.  The steep hike was difficult for us (and for many of our many fellow hikers), but the scenery and views were fabulous.  We were fascinated hiking down through some of the rock strata that we had learned about the day before.

Wouldn't you love to stay in this house?

The rim was a long way up on our hike

Bright Angel trailhead is located in the Village, a bustling complex of hotels and gift shops.  There is even a train that can deliver you to the park!  We wandered around the Village for a bit, and stared down into the canyon some more, mesmerized by the view.

 

This suspension bridge was made under in very difficult circumstances in a very remote location in 1928

Something else that is hard to get used to is how very popular this park is.  The parking lots are massive.  There are busloads after busloads of foreign tourists.  At times it felt like we were walking through a big city.

We stayed in a town about 50 miles south of the canyon, and over 1,000 feet less in elevation.  Conventional wisdom would say that a town to south and/or with less elevation would be warmer.  Instead, the canyon rim was easily a full 10 degrees warmer.  On the first morning, we woke up to temps in the 30’s and didn’t believe the predicted highs in the 80s at the canyon. We were very overdressed in our flannel shirts and long pants.  The second day we wore lighter clothing and were much more comfortable.

Bright Angel Trail

Looking down as the trail continues

Everyone should visit the Grand Canyon.  It is a natural phenomenon and it is a place of unique beauty.  That said, be prepared to be surprised.  It is so much MORE than the pictures lead you to believe.

Lovely strata

Lining up the strata from the Bright Angel trail with the same strata on the North Rim

Happy Grand Canyon hikers

Hoodoo You Love? – Bryce Canyon National Park [April 20-21, 2019]

We love hoodoos!

Bryce National Park is about hoodoos - everywhere

Bryce Canyon is all about hoodoos, ornate stone walls, fins, windows and spires carved as the side of the Paunsaungunt Plateau erodes away through the relentless thawing and freezing of water in tiny cracks in the stone.  The fanciful, bulbous features are brightly colored in orange, red, pink, and buff.  They have the largest collection of hoodoos in the world - though they aren’t called hoodoos in the rest of the world - literally thousands of them.

Snowcapped

Can you see trickster Coyote's stone people?

We were told many versions of the origin of the name “hoodoos”.  The one that we heard, and liked, the most is a Native American legend.  Apparently, there were some annoying people (some versions say they were greedy, others say they were loud and argumentative), so trickster Coyote brought them all together and turned them into stone.  Consequently, this is a place of mystery and a bit of fear.

Aquarius Plateau 15 miles away - same strata as our hoodoos

Boat Mesa

Bryce is part of the Colorado Plateau.  Millennia ago, it was at sea level and over the millennia sea beds ebbed and flow, depositing lots of organisms.  Under the weight of all of these layers, the deposition was compressed into stone.  There was a tectonic event, and the area we know as the Colorado Plateau was lifted from sea level to 8,000 – 9,000 feet of elevation.  The layers of rock were not disturbed, it just lifted up.  This was the same tectonic event that formed the Rocky Mountains.  At some point, a shallow, algae filled huge fresh water lake formed.  Again depositing lots of debris.  Another tectonic event broke off a few plateaus, forming the Paunsaungunt Plateau, where Bryce is located, and the Aquarius Plateau about 15 miles away, and draining the lake.

Sinking Ship Mountain

Lines of strata along the hoodoos

Bryce Canyon isn’t really a canyon, it would need to have two sides to be a canyon.  It is a plateau whose sides are eroding away in a unique way.  The erosion is more localized in some places, forming amphitheaters or scooped out areas of the plateau’s edge all filled with hoodoos.

An amphitheater of hoodoos

The area has about 180 days of freezing temperatures.  While we were there it was around 30 degrees every morning as we got up.  It also gets a lot of snow.  Snow melted water seeps into tiny cracks in the stone and re-freezes, expanding the crack.  Summer monsoons, wash away the sand and bits of stone that have broken off.

A fin

Windows

Dolomite limestone capstone or "hoodoo helmet"

Eventually, fins or walls develop.  Windows, or holes, start developing in parts of the fins.  The top of the window chips away until it too collapses, separating the two sections of fin.  These sections are the hoodoos.  The top layer of strata is hard dolomite limestone.  The dolomite serves as a “hoodoo helmet” (phrasing from Ranger Emily, who taught us about this) that protects the hoodoo.  Gradually, the softer sandstone beneath the capstone erodes away until it can no longer support the limestone at the top.  From there, the hoodoo erodes away into a mound of sand and gravel.  

These hoodoo have lost their protective capstones and are eroding away

Old Rim Trail that has started eroding away into a hoodoo

This process is still continuing at a pace of 4 feet every 100 years.  In fact, a part of the Rim Trail recently had to be rerouted, because it “fell in”.  Several trails among the hoodoo were closed this spring because of mudslides over the winter, or perhaps the natural progression of erosion, had blocked them.  Other parts of the park and trails were closed because of snow.

Hoodoos come in many shapes

We think this capstone looks like an alligator, do you?

Our first stop was to hear a Ranger Talk about hoodoo geology overlooking hoodoos (of course), fortuitously scheduled at the time when we arrived at the park.  Afterwards, we walked the short paved Rim Trail from Sunset Point to Sunrise Point gazing down at the hoodoos along the way.  We went to the Visitors Center for the video.  From there we took the shuttle back to Bryce Point, and decided to walk the recently opened mile and a half Rim Trail from Bryce Point to Inspiration Point.  This trail was not paved and about half of it was either snow covered or muddy from snow melt.  The hiking books we looked at later rated this hike as moderate to difficult – when it is dry.  The views were spectacular, and the hike well worth the effort.

Natural Bridge

Hiking part of the Rim Trail in the snow

Like other National Parks in this region, Bryce Canyon has a shuttle system that picks you up at a few locations outside the park, and continues throughout the northern section of the park, picking you up and dropping you off at vistas and trail heads along the way.  They also offer a free 3-hour bus tour to the southern part of the park that is not served by the shuttle.  We took that our second day.  The southern-most, and highest elevation at 9,000 feet, section was still closed due to a very heavy snowfall that they were still working to clear from the roads.  We did get to see Natural Bridge, which really isn’t a bridge (there is no stream underneath it) but a very big window.  Pretty none-the-less.  As a consolation for missing parts of the tour, we visited Fairyland, which is in the northern part of the park, but is also not served by the shuttle.

Heading down the Fairyland Trail

Past a hoodoo capstone being formed

We returned later to Fairyland in our car, to hike down among the hoodoo.  The hoodoo helmets that look so tiny and precarious perched atop the spires are actually massive blocks of limestone.  The hoodoos are very tall, some 200 feet high, and substantial, when we are next to them.

This is what the stone looks like up close - many tiny crevices to collect water and ice

We even had a pile of snow at our campsite

We stayed at a place called Ruby’s Inn and Campground, 2 miles outside the park entrance.  Reuben (Ruby) and Minnie Syrett had ranch land on the plateau, and recognized the beauty of Bryce’s Canyon (as it was then known, named after Mr. Bryce who had a ranch below it).  They built a tourist guest house near the rim to feed and house visitors to the hoodoos.  When the area was made into a park, they moved their operation to their ranch that coincidentally was located adjacent to the new park.  Still a family run company, the complex is now called Bryce Canyon City, housing a huge campground, several hotels, a bunch of restaurants, a gas station, specialty shops, a rodeo (in season) and several park shuttle stops.  Location, location, location.

Such pretty colors

Happy hoodoo hikers