Mesa Verde Tours and Hikes: Exploring the Colorado Cliff Dwellings
If you're both a hiker and lover of all things ancient, you need to head to Mesa Verde National Park in southwest Colorado. This park is one of the most archeologically diverse in the country. It's not only home to a vast amount of hiking trails along the bluffs within its borders but also contains countless "cliff dwellings" or expansive cities built into the canyon walls by the Ancestral Pueblo people thousands of years ago. Spend the day at Mesa Verde to trek along the top of the canyon to spot these dwellings from afar. Or if you want to burn some calories, tackle one of the many trails, some of which run down the walls of the canyon, to understand what life was like for these ancient people. Mesa Verde tours are also available to see a multitude of cliff dwellings up close.
Choose One of the Mesa Verde Tours
One of the unique parts about Mesa Verde National Park is how much more of it is accessible via a guided tour. We're not typically guided-tour people, especially at National Parks, since my fiancee and I prefer to tackle hiking trails ourselves without having to wait around for a larger group. However, the Mesa Verde tours are unmatched because they allow you to descend and walk through cliff dwellings that would typically be entirely off-limits for visitors.
Tour tickets are $5 per person with different options depending on the length and ease of the trek. An important thing to note: tickets cannot be bought online ahead of time (much to our dismay). They must be purchased in-person (up to two days in advance) at either the Mesa Verde Visitor's Center or the Durango Visitor's Center in nearby Durango, Colorado (which is where we were staying).
For the tour options, Cliff Palace is a one-hour, reasonably easy trek to the most popular and most substantial cliff dwelling in the Park. It's also the largest cliff dwelling in North America. It involves climbing three 10-foot ladders. Balcony House (which has a tighter schedule and wasn't open when we visited) is a more adventurous tour, requiring a 32-foot ladder-climb and well as squeezing through tight spaces. Both Cliff Palace and Balcony House are located on the Chapin Mesa, a section of the Park that is a roughly 30-40 minute drive from the entrance and visitor's center. On the Chapin Mesa, you'll find many other cliff dwellings and hiking trails. The proximity to so many activities makes Chapin Mesa an ideal location to traverse if you only have one day to visit the Park.
Further from Chapin Mesa is Wetherill Mesa, which is home to the Long House dwelling tour. This 2-hour trek is the longest tour offered covering almost 2.5 miles. This tour is a perfect option for the serious history buffs who want more time to learn from the park ranger guides.
We chose to visit Cliff Palace since we only had a day in the Park. As the most popular tour, it conveniently runs every hour on the hour, allowing us to plan our visit so that we could still fit in time for hiking and further adventuring. The walk to Cliff Palace involves descending steps and a trip up a ladder. Once the entire view of the dwelling comes into view, you automatically realize how special these archeological sites truly are. Sprawled in front of us was a literal city, wholly carved from the cliff and built with the surrounding sandstone.
By studying the wooden beams that are part of the construction, it's believed that Cliff Palace was continuously being built up from 1190 CE to 1290 CE. However, most of that work seems to have occurred within the last 20 years, leading many researchers in the past to believe that the people living here mysteriously disappeared. However, the park rangers of Mesa Verde are trying to dissuade that belief, explaining that it's likely people simply moved out of the area due to resource depletion or drought.
Walking through Cliff Palace, you can see the intricate work that went into buildings that housed homes and hearths and protective areas that held grain and food supplies. You can even peek inside one of the structures and see an original mural! Approximately 100 people lived in the 150 rooms in Cliff Palace at any one time, and the area was likely most commonly utilized for ceremonies and holidays. Having first been "rediscovered" by cattle ranchers in only 1888, it's astounding what excellent condition the sites are still in.
Drive Along the Mesa Top Loop
After you finish the Cliff Palace tour (or Balcony House tour), drive the nearby Mesa Top Loop road, with multiple stops along the way to see even more cliff dwellings. At Sun Point View, you'll be able to look to the other side of the canyon and spot many homes scattered across the cliff's edge. I also highly recommend stopping at Sun Temple and walking along the path to see the full stretch of the gorge, as well as a fantastic view of Cliff Palace from across the canyon.
Pick One of the Many Mesa Verde Hikes
There are also many great hikes you can embark on while in Mesa Verde National Park, our favorite being the Petroglyph Point Trail. Head to Spruce Tree House on the Chapin Mesa, which is a dwelling that allows for self-guided tours, and tackle this 2.4-mile loop trail. The first 1/2-3/4s of the path is a gorgeous walk along the edge of Spruce Canyon and Navajo Canyon. You'll trek under steep overhangs of rock formations and walk sideways through a couple of tight spaces while maneuvering around steep drop-offs and rocky terrain.
About 3/4's of the way in, keep an eye out for a large panel of petroglyphs on your left. We honestly would have walked right past them had we not seen the small sign pointing them out at the last minute. The next portion of the trail is a bit of a rock scramble up the side of the cliff, so if you've started climbing boulders without seeing petroglyphs, you've walked past them. Once you make your way to the top, the rest of your hike is easy-breezy on flat ground, with remarkable views of the canyon from above the whole way back to your car.
A few things to note about this trek: it took us roughly 2 hours, and sometimes you may feel like you've accidentally wandered off the trail. Don't worry; there are number markers all along the way to reassure you that you're going in the right direction. We saw a couple of people turn around ahead of us because they felt like the trail would never end, and in doing so, completely missed the petroglyphs and the rock scramble. Stick with it, and you'll be rewarded in the end!
Other notable hikes include Point Lookout Trail, a 2.2-mile loop that stretches across the top of the mesa with stunning views of Montezuma Valley below, and Spruce Cayon Trail. Starting at the same trailhead as the Petroglyph Point Trail, the Spruce Cayon Trail is the same length but takes you along the lower portion of Spruce Canyon. Note that Petroglyph Point Trail and Spruce Canyon Trail are not always open, and therefore it is required that you register to hike it at either the trailhead or the nearby museum, so they don't close the gates on you.
We loved Mesa Verde National Park and felt like it was different from any other National Park we've visited. Even the drive into the Park was impressive. As you wind further and further up the mesa and away from the visitor's center, there are many pull-off points for marvelous views of the Colorado valley below overlooking the nearby towns of Cortez and Mancos. The beauty of the Park mixed with how much we learned about history made Mesa Verde one of our favorite U.S. National Parks.
