Pullin' Chocks: Balcony House

We ended up visiting the Mesa Verde National Park three times while we were in Cortez, Colorado. This day we signed up for the Balcony House tour. This was one of the guided tours that you must sign up for and pay an additional fee, so a bit more planning is required. This particular ruin site is built in an alcove in the side of the cliffs. That fact, made this tour the most physically demanding in the park. To enter the ruin site you must climb up a 30 ft wooden ladder. To exit the ruin site you must crawl through a narrow, 12 ft long tunnel and also climb up and out on a 20 ft wooden ladder.

We stopped at a few overlooks on the way to the tour. The Mesa Verde landscape is like a comb, where several mesas, that are flat on top have steep canyons up to 1,000 ft deep dividing them. The ancient peoples built many defensive dwellings into these steep cliff faces, which had only one entrance/exit access. Balcony house is an excellent example of this type of dwelling. The picture below is at Cliff Canyon Overlook.

As we waited for the tour to gather, Steve got a picture of the tile display at the entrance to Balcony House ruin site.

The tiles preview what we will see on the ruin tour.

The group begins to gather.

Richard, our NPS Ranger and Guide leads us down the stairs into the canyon.

Down, down, down we went.

The group makes their way up the 30 foot wooden ladder at the entrance to the ruin site.

The site is divided into two areas, and no one knows for sure why this is. You can see Gari talking with Kim, an author and photographer from the Netherlands that offered to send us some pictures of Gari climbing the ladder. To Gari's right you can see the balcony for which this ruins site is named.

This is one of the shots that Kim sent to us of Gari & Steve climbing to 30 ft ladder when entering the ruin site. It really gives a good perspective of the height involved in getting into the Balcony House.

The shot below is a bad mosaic of the namesake balcony seen at the Balcony House ruin site. One of the many things the NPS guide pointed out was the additions and renovations that can be seen at the site. Just as we change and redecorate our homes today. On the balcony the construction to the left used double log timbers for support, thought to be constructed at a different time, the balcony to the right used only single log timber supports.

Below is a view of the construction of the underside of the "balcony".

There was originally a door where this small window is. It is this wall that separates the two areas of the ruin site. The group has moved ahead while we continued to linger in the first area.

It was splendid scenery from this ruin site. The people that lived here farmed the mesas and hunted the canyons.

Below you can see on of the kivas. They were dug into the ground for coolness in the summer and warmth in the winter. The kivas were also used as ceremonial or religious spaces. You can see the very small hole, or Sipapu in the floor where the ancestral spirits were thought to enter the kiva. The larger hole in the floor is for the fire, and the hole in the wall was for bringing fresh air into the kiva. A basket-weave type roof was constructed out of small logs, and a hole in the center top of the roof was the entrance and exit via a ladder.

Gari leads us to the second area of the ruin. A small pathway ran behind the structures at the cave walls.

Richard provides description at the corn milling area. The rocks in the foreground were used to grind the grain.

Some of the doors, but not all, had this keystone shape. Perhaps a man lived there? No one knows the reason for sure.

In this shot below you can see the overhanging cliff above the dwelling area.

This is the view of the second area as we were about to leave.

Below is the way out. First you crawl through a narrow 12 foot long tunnel. This was the only way in or out of the site originally. The park service added the entrance stairs and ladder that we took to get in.