Mesa Verde: Petroglyphs and Predators

We pulled into the Mesa Verde visitor center at 2:41. We raced inside. Lisa went to obtain a park map from a ranger while I (I collect these) purchased a National Park coin. Lisa used the restroom, causing me to miss her when I turned from the cashier. I hastily looked around every corner inside the center; meanwhile she came out of the restroom, didn’t see me and went to look for me outside. Act V of this comedy of errors climaxed when I exited the center to find Lisa turning circles, looking for me. She threw up her hands in exasperation. This entire comic skit had taken only four or five minutes, but time was not our friend at the moment. It was ten of three in the afternoon, and we had about two and a half hours to make the most of a 52,485 acre national park before we had to be back in Mancos for dinner with Ryan, our host.

On the drive up

Map in hand, we drove the winding park road, making a few short stops to enjoy stunning views of the surrounding landscape from the mesa. Twenty minutes later (we may have played a little loose with the speed limit), we walked into the park headquarters atop the mesa. We approached a ranger. Already aware that we would not be able to join one of the guided hikes through Cliff Palace (one of the most impressive cliff dwellings in the park), Lisa set about grilling the hapless woman on best-hikes-to-do-if-you-can-only-do-one. Her advice: Petroglyph Point Trail. At slightly under three miles, we were sure we could bang it out in an hour flat, leaving time to at least see Cliff Palace from an observation point along the road. The ranger looked skeptical. “In this heat?” We assured her that we had this. We left, the concerned ranger calling out warnings about heat, hydration, and not pushing too hard in the afternoon sun. (All valid points.) We were back at headquarters in an hour nine … but who’s counting?

The Petroglyph Point Trail departs from the park headquarters and is paved with asphalt for the first several hundred yards. Along this first leg one can see, on the other side of a shallow, narrow canyon, Spruce Tree House, one of the many Pueblo cliff dwellings for which Mesa Verde is so famous. Once past the paved section (and the trail register), the trail turns to a dusty terra cotta and continues to descend into the canyon. A fork in the trail offers two options: Petroglyph and Spruce Canyon. The Spruce Canyon Trail veers off to the right and down into the canyon. We went left, double-timing it for the petroglyphs.

The trail descended into the shallow portion of the canyon before gently climbing the opposite wall. Never quite reaching the top, we traversed a ledge on the east side of Spruce Tree Canyon. The track roller-coastered along, sometimes barely two feet wide, while the canyon floor sank lower and lower, the view opening up to the west. There were small flights of narrow stone steps and large boulders to circumnavigate, but nothing too strenuous. The trail would have seemed quite easy had we not been moving at a breakneck speed.

Soon the western view was panoramic. At times, we could see up and down the canyon, at others, our view was across. We were on a precipice with a great Navajo sandstone cliff behind us, its face reaching to the top of the mesa 100+ feet above. When not blocked by boulders or gnarled pines, which clung defiantly to the cliff’s edge, the vista was expansive. The opposing canyon wall stood in stark relief to the cerulean sky, its greyish stone and green foliage shadowed in the afternoon light. Our side of the canyon was in full sun and was, well, hot. We were hot.

At one point, the trail passed through a narrow fissure in the rock, capped by a boulder that must have weighed 20 or 30 tons. The whole arrangement looked precarious, but we slipped through unscathed. Even Lisa had to turn slightly sideways to fit. Farther on, we arrived at a deep hollow in the cliff face that held the remnants of a Puebloan home. A mud-and-stone wall blocked our access, while a “Do Not Enter” sign reminded us to keep our curiosity in check – this was an archeological site. We approached the wall, marveling at the ancient structure. The foundations of three separate rooms were visible, the farthest containing what looked to be a small storage area. “Pueblo” is the Spanish word for “village” and was used by the Spaniards to refer to the natives of the American southwest who built complex villages of adobe. Unlike Cliff Palace, which comprises dozens of rooms and structures, the ruin at which we gazing was not so complex. Still, it was a pleasant homestead. We wondered where the inhabitants had to go for water. The bottom of the canyon seemed the likeliest spot. The return trip must have been arduous, but oh, the view from the front porch!

A little more than a mile and a quarter from the trailhead, we arrived at the petroglyphs. Here, on a particularly smooth section of cliff, was a dense collection of carvings, bright against the dark, weathered surface of the stone: spirals, zigzags, crude representations of animals, and etchings of several human hands with fingers splayed open, as if they had been traced. There were human figures as well, some of whom had their arms curiously raised in the “don’t shoot” position. I chuckled at one particular carving that looked exactly like a well-coifed poodle. No one knows for sure what these ancient pictures mean, but the scientific consensus is that they are more than mere doodles (or poodles).

Quite a few visitors who made the trip to the ancient cliff-side canvas expressed their disappointment in the archeological attraction on TripAdvisor. Some felt misled by the trail description and warned that it was absolutely not “mostly flat”. We felt that, at a paltry 234 feet of elevation over 2.8 miles, “mostly flat” was pretty spot on. What really gob-smacked us were the reviews that felt the payoff was not worth the effort. Says amilschen from Colorado Springs, “The petroglyph panel itself is rather small, so you have to enjoy the hike itself, or the petroglyphs won’t be worth it.” This left us scratching our heads. There were 15 or 20 square feet of perfectly preserved petroglyphs here. Exactly how many 750 year-old rock carvings are needed to validate a 3-mile hike? None of the disenchanted reviewers revealed their minimum requirements. If TripAdvisor had been around in 1922, when Howard Carter discovered King Tutankhamen’s tomb, perhaps we might have unearthed this:

“A friend of ours discovered an Egyptian tomb and recommended we take a look. The trip through the desert was hot. Then we had to climb down a wooden ladder and walk through some dusty tunnels. When we got to the burial chamber, there was ONLY ONE three thousand year-old Pharaoh ensconced in a golden coffin. Oh yeah, and a few gaudy trinkets and clay pots. Disappointing after such a long camel ride. If we had known, we would have stayed in Cairo and gone shopping.” – Harold P.

With our internal clocks ticking away, we spent a criminally short amount of time at the carvings before dashing off down the trail. “Dashing” may be a bit of a stretch – past the petroglyphs the trail reversed direction and quickly climbed to the top of the mesa. This was the steepest and most strenuous section of trail; it only spanned fifty or sixty yards and required some light scrambling. Atop the mesa, our path was unencumbered by the small steps and slight inclines that we had traversed along the cliff’s edge. We were headed back towards park headquarters now, with the canyon to our left. Emerging onto a large expanse of bare stone, we gazed around. On three sides the stone bald was circumscribed by the knobbly pines through which we had been trekking. The remaining side fell sharply off into nothingness. Once again, and without obstruction, Spruce Canyon spread out before us, but now we were more or less level with the western rim. Fluffy clouds shrank away to the distant horizon and the canyon floor was speckled with sage-colored shrubs. Birds circled above, riding the thermals in the afternoon sun. We continued on.

There were multiple breaks in the vegetation but no apparent signage. We chose the trail that looked the most like a trail. We chose poorly. A few yards down the trail, the trail was … no longer trail. The pines were closing in, so we turned back, retracing our steps to the open area. This time we found the right path. Our course now corrected, we were able to make good time. Despite our misstep, we were still on target to complete the circuit in our allotted time, but our pace and the oppressive heat were beginning to take their toll. At least once Lisa asked that I ease up on my speed. I did, and we continued steadily on, winding among the pines, passing spiky yucca plants and the occasional prickly-pear cactus.

Near the end of the loop, we rounded a bend. A large dead tree loomed ahead, its leafless branches stark against the Colorado sky. Now, we were dragging a bit, hot and tired and looking forward to the cool air-conditioned cabin of our rental car. We had nearly depleted our water, and the last thing we had eaten was the nuts and dried mango at Sharkstooth Pass some five hours earlier. What we were not, by any stretch of the imagination, was near death. We weren’t emaciated, our clothes in tatters, crawling pitifully on our stomachs down the dry gravel trail. No feeble croaks of “water” issued from our dust-clogged throats. No oasises (oasi?) were being hallucinated. Yet despite our relative good health, there were one, two, thr- …

Five.

There were five turkey vultures hunched in that skeletal tree, as if auditioning for the death scene of a spaghetti western. They leered down murderously as we passed, their featherless heads wrinkled and grotesque in the glare of the afternoon sun. We passed almost directly under the predatory venue, and I suspect they experienced sharp pangs of disappointment when we failed to expire on the trail and provide them with a bird-of-prey buffet.

Slightly disconcerted by our scavenging stalkers, we continued around the head of the canyon and back to the park headquarters, where we found the ranger from whom we sought advice, greeting visitors under a tent just off the trail. She caught our eye and gave us the opportunity to brag about our timely completion of the hike. “Wow!” she exclaimed, “you were fast!” We used our rapid return as an excuse to chat with her for a few minutes. She wished us good travels and once in our car, we high-tailed it for Cliff Palace, the A/C on full blast. Checking the rear view, we breathed a sigh of relief. The vultures were not in pursuit.  ♦

Note: Several online maps listed the site of the ancient rock carvings as “Pictograph Point,” others “Petroglyph Point”. We find this a little baffling, considering pictographs are paintings (or some other application of color to rock) whereas petroglyphs are etched into the rock itself. What we saw were definitely glyphs and not graphs. Unless there are some pictographs in the area of which we are unaware, we believe this labeling to be incorrect. Also, the plural of “oasis” is “oases”.

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Date: July 17, 2018
Location: Mesa Verde, CO
Trailhead: 37.184293, -108.488578
Distance: 2.81 miles
Elevation Gain: 234 feet
Difficulty: Moderate