Canyon de Chelly
Oct. 28th, 2022 06:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ilanaramaLast year Britt signed us up for an REI group trip to Canyon de Chelly, a National Monument in Arizona about three and a half hours' drive from here. Normally when we go to sites like this, we go on our own, but Canyon de Chelly is on the Navajo reservation and travel there is very heavily restricted: in order to go below the rim one needs a registered Navajo guide, so the idea of going on a small group trip that already had all the guides and permits arranged was attractive. Originally it was going to be a backpacking trip, this past springtime, but because of covid restrictions, the spring trip was canceled, and we were offered instead a September day-hiking trip out of the historic Thunderbird Lodge.
(Thunderbird Lodge is the only lodging actually in the National Monument. It's fairly bog-standard American Motel, and the attached cafeteria serves huge portions of very bad-for-you American diner food, massive amounts of calories and fat, without even beer or wine to wash it down as the reservation is dry. Also one morning the coffee machine didn't work, that was dire; fortunately our REI guide drove to town and got a thermos-ful!)
The rest of the group flew in to Phoenix and got in a passenger van for the drive up; we'd arranged that we would meet the group at the Thunderbird Lodge, since it is between us and Phoenix. There were seven other hikers from all over the western US, plus the REI guide. The next morning, we met up with our Navajo guides, Elsie and Eleanor, who had grown up in the canyon, and drove in their 4WD trucks to an inconspicuous spot along the rim where we turned off onto a network of rough sand roads. Our GPS maps showed no roads at all, but after a short time we stopped at a pull-out, piled out of the trucks, and followed Elsie into the canyon. It wasn't a trail so much as it was a route, but here and there the rocks had been moved to make more of a path, and logs and debris were piled up to make bridges that were a bit nerve-wracking to cross. As we descended into a side canyon we could see ancestral Puebloan ruins tucked into alcoves.
The bottom of the canyon was beautiful, with green fields and flowers under impressively vertical high red sandstone walls. We had been asked not to take any pictures of people or their houses, but it's still occupied, still being farmed.
Elsie took us to a pictograph site that was just above the house of a friend of hers:
Then we hiked through the canyon to a well-known and well-preserved ruin site called White House Ruin. It used to be accessible from the rim via an overlook and maintained trail - the only route open to unguided hikers - but because of "safety and law enforcement concerns" it's been closed since March of 2020. Which is a pity, because it's a spectacular site:
And the trail back out was pretty amazing as well:
The next morning we drove to another unremarkable spot and hiked across what seemed like trackless scrub-covered hills until a set of steps hewn into the sandstone magically appeared. Elsie told us that when she grew up in the canyon, she used to hike out here to catch the school bus.
Despite the arid air and forbidding stone walls, there were beautiful flowers tucked away at the bottom of the canyon, wild four-o-clocks and sacred datura:
We hiked along the bottom of the canyon to some rock art panels. These contained both ancestral Puebloan images, human(?) figures and birds and spirals, and more recent (17th-19th century?) Navajo images, which feature horses.
Evidence of the long occupation of this canyon was everywhere we looked.
The 4WD trucks picked us up at the bottom of the canyon, and drove us back out to Thunderbird Lodge. After an early dinner, we piled in the van and drove out along the rim to the Spider Rock overlook. According to Navajo legend, Spider Rock is the home of Spider Woman, who wove the web of the universe and taught the Navajo how to weave. It's also a beautiful place to watch lit up by the setting sun:
Our last morning we had time for only a short hike. We met Marlin, Eleanor's son, at the top of a metal stairway that led to a second stairway cut into the rock, bringing us down into the canyon. Along with a small tabby cat that joined us as we walked along the trail at the canyon bottom (and stayed with us for miles!), Marlin showed us more rock art and more ruins.
Climbing back out of the canyon:
After a picnic lunch at the Canyon de Chelly visitors center, we said goodbye to our fellow hikers and our helpful guides and drove back home.
46 photos at Flickr (more than are here, but no captions or text)
Looking back into the canyon as we left:
(Thunderbird Lodge is the only lodging actually in the National Monument. It's fairly bog-standard American Motel, and the attached cafeteria serves huge portions of very bad-for-you American diner food, massive amounts of calories and fat, without even beer or wine to wash it down as the reservation is dry. Also one morning the coffee machine didn't work, that was dire; fortunately our REI guide drove to town and got a thermos-ful!)
The rest of the group flew in to Phoenix and got in a passenger van for the drive up; we'd arranged that we would meet the group at the Thunderbird Lodge, since it is between us and Phoenix. There were seven other hikers from all over the western US, plus the REI guide. The next morning, we met up with our Navajo guides, Elsie and Eleanor, who had grown up in the canyon, and drove in their 4WD trucks to an inconspicuous spot along the rim where we turned off onto a network of rough sand roads. Our GPS maps showed no roads at all, but after a short time we stopped at a pull-out, piled out of the trucks, and followed Elsie into the canyon. It wasn't a trail so much as it was a route, but here and there the rocks had been moved to make more of a path, and logs and debris were piled up to make bridges that were a bit nerve-wracking to cross. As we descended into a side canyon we could see ancestral Puebloan ruins tucked into alcoves.
The bottom of the canyon was beautiful, with green fields and flowers under impressively vertical high red sandstone walls. We had been asked not to take any pictures of people or their houses, but it's still occupied, still being farmed.
Elsie took us to a pictograph site that was just above the house of a friend of hers:
Then we hiked through the canyon to a well-known and well-preserved ruin site called White House Ruin. It used to be accessible from the rim via an overlook and maintained trail - the only route open to unguided hikers - but because of "safety and law enforcement concerns" it's been closed since March of 2020. Which is a pity, because it's a spectacular site:
And the trail back out was pretty amazing as well:
The next morning we drove to another unremarkable spot and hiked across what seemed like trackless scrub-covered hills until a set of steps hewn into the sandstone magically appeared. Elsie told us that when she grew up in the canyon, she used to hike out here to catch the school bus.
Despite the arid air and forbidding stone walls, there were beautiful flowers tucked away at the bottom of the canyon, wild four-o-clocks and sacred datura:
We hiked along the bottom of the canyon to some rock art panels. These contained both ancestral Puebloan images, human(?) figures and birds and spirals, and more recent (17th-19th century?) Navajo images, which feature horses.
Evidence of the long occupation of this canyon was everywhere we looked.
The 4WD trucks picked us up at the bottom of the canyon, and drove us back out to Thunderbird Lodge. After an early dinner, we piled in the van and drove out along the rim to the Spider Rock overlook. According to Navajo legend, Spider Rock is the home of Spider Woman, who wove the web of the universe and taught the Navajo how to weave. It's also a beautiful place to watch lit up by the setting sun:
Our last morning we had time for only a short hike. We met Marlin, Eleanor's son, at the top of a metal stairway that led to a second stairway cut into the rock, bringing us down into the canyon. Along with a small tabby cat that joined us as we walked along the trail at the canyon bottom (and stayed with us for miles!), Marlin showed us more rock art and more ruins.
Climbing back out of the canyon:
After a picnic lunch at the Canyon de Chelly visitors center, we said goodbye to our fellow hikers and our helpful guides and drove back home.
46 photos at Flickr (more than are here, but no captions or text)
Looking back into the canyon as we left:
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Date: 2022-10-29 12:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-29 01:24 am (UTC)