Mesa Verde National Park is home to a unique collection of over 600 well preserved, multi-storied cliff dwellings, dating from A.D. 550 to 1300. There are also remains of mesa-top pit houses once occupied by ancestral Puebloans. In 1888 two cowboys discovered the walls and towers of a large cliff dwelling across the canyon. They named it Cliff Palace. It turned out that these ruins had been uninhabited for roughly 600 years, after the cliff dwellers mysteriously left in 1300. Some speculate that they left due to a drought, or possibly warfare in the region at that time, but the true reason will likely never be known.

Once we arrived in Cortez and set up camp, we drove 10 miles to the park entrance to purchase tour tickets for the following day. After doing some research I decided to get tickets for the adventurous Balcony House Tour and it did not disappoint. More on that later.

The visitor center is new and beautiful.

We were happy to find that they had tickets for the 2:30 Balcony House tour for the next day so we bought two, at only $5 each. The next morning after breakfast we drove back to the park and after going through the entrance station, drove about an hour to the Chapin Mesa Archeological Museum. We stopped at a couple of overlooks along the way to take in the valley vistas.

Once inside we watched a short film about the park and walked through the museum to see some of the artifacts that had been collected from the various sites. I thought the dioramas were cool.

There were good views of Spruce Tree House from behind the visitor center but access to the site was limited due to a recent rock slide. This was our first peak of what was to come.

We still had time before our tour so we decided to drive the one-way Mesa Top Loop to visit some of the sites. From the loop we got great views of Cliff Palace, Square Tower House and several other cliff houses. So cool!

 

We ate our picnic lunch and then it was time to meet at Balcony House for our tour. We were warned that we would need to be able to climb a 32′ ladder and crawl through an 18″ tunnel. Yikes, that’s about the width of Richard’s shoulders!

There were about 45 of us in the tour and as Ranger Kayla led us down a steep path to the foot of the 32′ ladder, there was a lot of nervous excitement in the air. Richard and I climbed the ladder side-by-side and made it to the top without any trouble, along with the rest of the group.

At the top of the ladder we walked through a short tunnel, up another small ladder and then we were on the balcony of the house.

We climbed another short ladder and wound up on the other side of the house where we could see two kivas where Ranger Kayla explained the families spent their time around the central fire. When they lived there the kivas were covered with a wooden roof to protect them from the weather.

The final challenge was fitting through the 18″ tunnel on hands and knees. I took a picture of the man in front of me so you can see how truly tight it is. Then I got Richard coming out at the other end. Ha-ha so funny to see his face! Don’t do this tour if you are claustrophobic!

We were near the end of the tour but still had a couple of challenging ladders to climb to get back to the parking lot.

This was a fantastic tour and I highly recommend it if you are ever in this unique and interesting park.

After that we headed out of the park and back home, both agreeing that this had been a fun day that we would never forget.