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New Mexico's Mysterious Stone Towers,
Part V, continued...
(Travel/Explore #6b: June 14, 2001)
Trip Three
I left Rockledge for Yabis in early May. The weather was
cool and crisp and I was in a good frame of mind. My body, though, was still
suffering from the overloaded pack episode. I was feeling something new,
arthritis in both knees and lower back. I'd also picked up an annoying ringing in my ears.
I left my little Subaru wagon at the Albuquerque airport and rented a 4WD Ford Explorer. This was another goal, to learn to drive an RV. The trip to La Reina was easy; I was euphoric. The Ford was fun to drive. Even though the current trend is to erase ruins locations from government publications, or at least to avoid adding new ones, some ruins were clearly marked on my map of Spider Cañon (the Perdiz River). I had intended to visit them on my second trip. But that hike hadn't materialized. This time I decided to visit one of them, a cliff dwelling called "Castle of the Cliffs." Rangers at the La Reina station told me there was a path to "The Castle," but it and the ruins were rapidly disintegrating. It would be a risky hike. As I left the station the resident archaeologist mentioned some definite towers I could see on "Ridge Y," and he showed me the location of the ridge on the national forest map. He also gave me two excellent posters of the Walnut Cave Dwelling and reminded me that it was on public land. In other words, no collecting! The castle ruins were in the cliffs at the edge of the Columbine Plateau. It was near Yabis, and it was a long ride, but easy to locate. The truck had no trouble on the steep gravel roads up the mountain to the plateau. On the way up I noticed blue flowers growing out of the road. The top of the mountain was shrouded in a clammy haze which obscured the sun. I climbed out and walked around the rather small, flat road junction. The blue flowers were here, too, pushing right up through the hard road surface. I stopped to look closely at one. It was, I think, a mountain crocus. I remembered that in La Reina I had purchased two ounces of raw saffron for five dollars. Saffron is the pistils of crocus flowers. That saffron was obviously local, probably from these flowers, which seemed quite common in the area. I took a GPS fix and looked at the map. This was not the Columbine Plateau, but it was very near the plateau. To reach it I would have to take a very narrow unimproved road which snaked downhill to my right. Saddle up! The little road was not hard, like the one I had just climbed the mountain on. It was muddy, deeply rutted, and only one car wide. It clung precariously to the side of the mountain, at the margin of a cliff which dropped straight down about a hundred feet into a line of pine trees. I stopped the car and engaged all four wheels. Then I began to creep forward. My first concern was the possibility of meeting an oncoming car on the narrow road. There was no shoulder on this road. I started using the old trick of sounding my horn at every turn, but this was only whistling in the dark. I was still nervous. As I crept downward the road ruts became very deep and confused. The haze had turned into a fine mist, and the road had become very slimy. At one turn to the left I turned the wheel, but the truck didn't follow. Instead it spun halfway around to the right, pointed its nose exactly at the cliff edge, and began crabbing down the road. I stopped in terror. I was in a real fix! The road was very narrow, and I was completely blocking it sideways. If I misjudged anything, if the truck tires suddenly got a good grip, even momentarily, I'd jump right over the side. Somehow I managed to realign the truck with the road and start again. Once again the truck rotated ninety degrees and began crabbing. I was getting scared now. The road ahead was only getting curvier, and the surface was a slippery quagmire formed where runoff from the cliffs pooled in low, soft spots in the road. The rangers' brochures had warned of unimproved roads in bad weather. They were right! The mist had turned to snow as I realigned the truck and stopped to consider my actions. The road ahead was an unknown factor, but probably getting worse at every turn. This would be a difficult trip in dry weather; in wet it would probably be suicide. The sensible thing to do was to get off the mountain now, while I could still see the road. I eased the transmission into two wheel drive and reverse and very gingerly backed up the road to the flat area with the flowers.
In the valley the snow was falling heavily. I could barely
see the road I had come in on, but I made it, in two wheel drive, back to the
Yabis highway.
 Snow was hiding the road
I realigned the truck with my course. That's when I became
aware that it was now snowing very heavily. The road ahead was gone, replaced
with a featureless blanket of white. I had food and water, and I wasn't in
real trouble yet. But I could get into trouble quickly if I kept going. I
eased the truck off the road into the oak grove and turned back toward Yabis.
But the road back was gone, too, buried in snow!
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Snowed in
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The roads stayed iced over for three days. I didn't trust
the truck in the deep show, so I stayed in the motel room reading. I'd brought a copy of Frank Hibben's Digging Up America, and General Norman Schwarzkopf's It Doesn't Take A Hero. Both were long enough and
interesting enough to hold my attention as I sat by the small window waiting
for the snow to melt.
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Chaco Canyon
My time in La Reina was running short. When the blacktop
outside finally peeked through I grabbed several water bottles and my camera
and jumped into the truck. I had decided to ride up to Chaco Canyon.
Chaco Canyon is one of the finest and largest of the Anasazi ruin sites. It had been in the news. Visitors to the ruins and local Indians were becoming ill, were even dying, from an unknown disease. My mother, my aunt, and all my friends had been careful to point that out to me before I left Florida. "People are dying out there! How close is Chaco Canyon to where you're going?" "Fairly close." "Well, you be careful. They don't know what's killing them!" "I'll be careful." "And watch out for rattlesnakes, too!" "I'll be careful." | ||
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In the period between the first news articles and now, the
CDC had determined that the cause of the disease was a hantavirus, a
virus very much like legionnaire's disease. The theory was that the virus was
in the soil of the ruins. Dust kicked up and breathed by visitors was
infecting them. Was it a centuries-old virus in the soil or something else?
Nobody was quite sure at that time.*
Chaco Canyon was not too far from La Reina. I traveled to the canyon turnoff on the highway and turned west onto the graded dirt road that led to the canyon. Northwest New Mexican graded road beds are quite hard, composed of rocks and a hard clay called caliche. The desert soil is composed of the same materials. In dry weather the surfaces are hard and durable; it is easy to leave the road and drive well out into the scrub to explore. There is no loose sand as in desert areas farther south or in the movies. In wet weather the caliche turns soft and slimy, like potter's clay. In a light rain the soil absorbs water and becomes semi-liquid. In a heavy rain the surface water simply washes away the caliche, causing ruts, deep washouts, and road cave-ins. The road leading to Chaco Canyon had just spent three days under melting snow. It looked firm, but for the entire drive to the canyon it felt like driving on grease-covered glass. The truck slid, slithered, rocked, and generally seemed determined to leave the road surface for the desert muck alongside. In low spots (and there were many of them) even moving dead slow plowed axle-deep ruts that pretty much took control of the truck's direction. I hated to think what these chopped-up low spots would be like when they dried out. It was a long, unnerving ride, but nothing like the last turn, downward, into the canyon. The road twisted like a snake and dropped steeply, spiraling between fantastic, contorted red sandstone boulders. As in Canyon de Chelly, the stone didn't look like rock—it looked alive—almost like the spilled bowels and exposed ribs of some gigantic demon. I wanted to stop and look closely, but the road was in charge, and I was going down! I hoped I'd be able to climb out at the end of the day.  The Chaco Canyon valley
Chaco Canyon is a very wide plain surrounded by cliffs. Ruins are peppered around the plain and the cliffs. Many of the ruins have been expertly reconstructed, and it is possible to study several transitions in the history of the ancient ones who lived there. In the spring this would be a beautiful grassy valley. In the summer it would be unbearably hot—there were almost no trees in the valley. Today was not quite yet spring; it was bitter cold and very windy. 
Beautiful Chaco Canyon masonry; apartment walls, great kiva
I visited several of the more elaborate ruins and took
photos of the excellent masonry work. The piercing cold and the arthritis in
my back prevented me from bending and stooping enough to climb into some of
the smaller ruins passages. This soreness and inflexibility destroyed a lot of the enjoyment I'd have normally got from these beautiful ruins. And I now had to face another truth about myself: I wasn't really a student or tourist; I was an explorer. Reconstructed ruins with guided tours were interesting me
less and less. Chaco Canyon wasn't leading me toward The Towers.
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*Since my visit to Chaco Canyon hantavirus has been thoroughly studied. It is now known that it is found in the droppings of local rodents: squirrels, deer mice, prairie dogs, etc. CDC technicians have been able to predict when outbreaks of the virus are likely to occur by surveying the abundance of piñon nuts, a major food of the rodents. Big harvest, big rodent population, big danger!
In my observation Piñon nut harvests are usually plentiful in this area, and Piñon cones are always empty when I examine them. I now take dust or surgical masks, goggles, and gloves with me when I visit ruins. |
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