Pueblo Alto Trail
We started out our day at Chaco Culture National Historical Park at the trailhead for the Pueblo Alto Trail. it is considered a backcountry trail and requires registration at the trailhead. The trail goes up a sandstone mesa and then loops to the Pueblo Alto Complex. Part of the trail overlooks the Pueblo Bonito and Chetro Ketl pueblos down in the canyon where the park road is located. We decided to just do the overlook portion.
The trail starts with a scramble up 100ft. From the bottom, it is not apparent at all how the trail leads up to the mesa. But, it turns out there is a sandstone path up that while a bit tricky in places is easily done. Luckily, in the morning, only the lower portion was in the burning hot sunlight. The remainder was through a crack in the sandstone that was nice and cool.
After reaching the mesa top, things opened up quite a bit. Unfortunately, there is no tall vegetation and thus it was blazing hot under the sun. We slowly made our way to the overlooks via a cairn marked path.
The view of the pueblos from above gives you a sense of the scale of these communities. They are significantly larger than anything we've seen at any other National Park Service units. And they are in close proximity to each other, giving a sense of how heavily populated this small area was 1000 years ago.
The last photo in this set is of the trail up the side of the mesa. The 4 photos before it show portions of the path upwards. The one prior to those shows the trail from the mesa top - it is the crack in the middle of the photo.
Read MoreThe trail starts with a scramble up 100ft. From the bottom, it is not apparent at all how the trail leads up to the mesa. But, it turns out there is a sandstone path up that while a bit tricky in places is easily done. Luckily, in the morning, only the lower portion was in the burning hot sunlight. The remainder was through a crack in the sandstone that was nice and cool.
After reaching the mesa top, things opened up quite a bit. Unfortunately, there is no tall vegetation and thus it was blazing hot under the sun. We slowly made our way to the overlooks via a cairn marked path.
The view of the pueblos from above gives you a sense of the scale of these communities. They are significantly larger than anything we've seen at any other National Park Service units. And they are in close proximity to each other, giving a sense of how heavily populated this small area was 1000 years ago.
The last photo in this set is of the trail up the side of the mesa. The 4 photos before it show portions of the path upwards. The one prior to those shows the trail from the mesa top - it is the crack in the middle of the photo.
