Vista Home or Desperate Lookout?
Monday, October 28th, 2024: Blue Range, Hikes, Indigenous Cultures, Society, Southwest New Mexico.
I drove two-and-a-quarter hours to the most spectacular viewpoint in our region, and climbed a rocky slope to a prehistoric site. My knee was already hurting from a hike three days earlier, and today’s adventure would add insult to injury. But these are desperate times.
Yet again, we had clear skies and the afternoon high in town was forecast to be at least 80. I’d wanted to explore places at lower elevation but they were forecast to reach 90 – at the end of October! Today’s destination is over 7,000 feet and the temps should be mild.
The drive north used to be one of the loneliest roads in the U.S., but in the past year it’s become some sort of mysterious commuter artery. From where to where, I have no idea, but this morning, most of the southbound vehicles were giant RVs. Tomorrow was forecast to be the last day of our fall heat wave, and it’s as if all the snowbirds decided to head south at the same time.
Finally, I reached the turnoff for the backcountry road west, and left the crowd behind. The single-lane dirt road traverses a maze of ridges and canyons between 6,000 and 6,500 feet, forested with ponderosa pine and Gamble oak, up and down around hairpin turns. RVs, fifth-wheelers, and pickups with camper shells were sporadically tucked away under the pines, and I passed at least one group of camo-clad hunters setting up camp.
The final climb to the high saddle is world-class, emerging from the rolling basin to a south-facing slope with forever views. Parking at the top, I had a chat with a retired couple from the village an hour south. I said this is an undiscovered gem, and they replied “Not anymore!”
As they drove off, I set out on my short hike up to the bluffs. I expected it to be less than half a mile, but the slope gets increasingly steeper and the ground is covered with big sharp rocks. This cliff dwelling is actually marked on Google Maps, but the person who recorded it only viewed it from afar with binoculars. From the road, it looks inaccessible, perched in an alcove way up in a sheer cliff. But you never know until you try.
Picking my way through those rocks was even harder than I expected. But cattle had been all over this area, and I followed their tracks where I could, walking slowly and carefully to protect my knee. At several points I had to climb steep sheets of exposed bedrock, lined with loose rocks that were constantly rolling out from under me. I was ascending an outlying shoulder with a deepening ravine at my left, and I could see that when I reached the foot of the actual bluffs I would need to traverse left up the steep side of the ravine toward the cliff dwelling.
Finally I emerged on a ledge below the bluffs with a 180-degree view of the eastern, southern, and western landscape.
The ledge lies at 7,500 feet and the ravine at my left hosts tall ponderosas and a dense understory of shrubs and grasses hiding bigger and sharper rocks – basically a vegetated talus slope. I had to traverse this upward at the foot of the bluffs – more slow going – but found occasional segments of a narrow trail. I’d entertained fantasies of being the first modern human to explore this site, and still hadn’t seen any footprints.
Finally I emerged from the scrub at the foot of the cliff, with the crumbling wall of the prehistoric structure about twenty feet above me, behind an overhang. The cliff curved outward at right, where a partial, primitive rope ladder was suspended, a dozen feet above the ground. I walked closer and saw it was made from nylon rope.
Pushing my way through more brush around the crumbling foot of the bluff, I discovered there was no way up the cliff. The prehistoric structure is inaccessible until someone finds a way to extend or replace that rope ladder. But below the hanging ladder is a small alcove with a sandy floor covered with recent footprints, and at the back of the alcove I found a tin box full of notes from previous visitors, as recent as six days ago. So much for my romantic fantasy.
When I first explored cliff dwellings in Utah 35 years ago, they seemed so exotic, and their locations so beautiful, that I didn’t really question why they’d been built or what life might’ve been like for their residents. It took decades of hard lessons for me to realize these were last-ditch hideouts for desperate people living in constant fear of attack – the prehistoric equivalent of today’s doomsday preppers. They were likely only inhabited briefly during times of known threat.
The wall above me had been incredibly hard to build, and has tiny windows that would be perfect for shooting arrows through. Unless there’s a spring inside the alcove – highly unlikely – whoever was using the shelter would have to traverse down a mile and 900 vertical feet to the nearest seasonal stream for water, and carry their supplies back up that difficult slope. To me, this appeared to be a lookout, from which scouts could scan a vast area of strategic terrain on a route between fertile river valleys in the east and west.
Now came the hard part – the descent of that difficult slope on my already hurting knee. When I reached the ledge below the bluffs, I saw another man approaching, and we exchanged waves as I moved to the side to get a better panorama.
Farther down, descending one of those stone sheets lined with loose rock, I finally stumbled and had a “soft” fall that hurt nothing but my already injured knee. Served me right – I would just end up taking more pain pills and enduring a slower recovery.
Late lunch in the tiny county seat to the north was so mediocre that despite my hunger, I couldn’t finish it. And the drive home on that previously lonely road was made stressful by an endless series of city people in Japanese sedans, tailgating me, imagining themselves race drivers on the tight, steep curves. Where did they come from, and where were they all going?
