Ruin Canyon East Rim-North

Ruin Canyon is visible along the west side of County Road 10 in Canyons of the Ancients National Monument in southwest Colorado. The canyon head is southeast of the developed Lowry Pueblo Ruins site and it flows southwesterly, parallel to Cow Canyon and Cross Canyon. There is an access at an old drill site that has some green tanks, about 14 miles north of the Hovenweep National Monument Visitor Center.

 I tried hiking along the east rim of Ruin Canyon, northeast toward the canyon head. In the vicinity of the green tanks trailhead, there are at least two small Ancestral Pueblo ruins site near the deep canyon bottom, and a large site directly west across the canyon. The hiking along the rim is very close to County Road 10 for the first ten minutes, and then stays behind the irrigated hay fields the rest of the way. I tried to stay as close to the rim as possible, stopping frequently to scan the west side cliffs and looking for ruins sites along the east rim.

I saw at least two, maybe three small sites along the east rim in the first 1:10 hours of slow hiking. The most interesting was a D shaped site on the rim. It appears to be about the size of the circular kivas that Mesa Verde features, but is only a semi-circle. It looks like it has been worked on somewhat.

This structure appeared to be isolated, nothing else near it that I could see. The other site that I noticed was a shelter under a rock overhang with some rockwork in front. I also saw a very small rubble pile, but it didn’t appear to be big enough to be a structure.

After about 1:45 hours, about 2.5 miles, there is a large rocky outcrop on the west side with a mild slope down to the canyon bottom. Scanning the many large boulders with binoculars, it looked like there was some rubble near one of them. At the canyon bottom there is a small creek to cross.

Climbing up the other side, I passed another small shelter site in a small rock alcove.

This site looked like it could have been a tower perched on the boulder, and all the material has tumbled off, piling up along the sides. Except for the small shelter, I didn’t see any other structures near this site.

The area north of the rubble pile site has several forks of the head of Ruin Canyon and a wide sagebrush field on the canyon bottom. There is a trace of an old road leading to the west. I followed the old road trail for about 0:15 minutes and spotted another rubble pile near the top of one of the mesa areas.

I didn’t climb up to view the second rubble pile site. It is just below the rim and didn’t appear to be part of a large site. I turned around after about 3:00 hours of exploring and my return hike took 1:50 hours for a total hike of 4:55 hours for about 6 miles. It was a blue sky 58 F degree early October day and I drank two of the three liters of water I carried.

Ruin Canyon to Cow Canyon

Cow Canyon and Ruin Canyon run parallel to each other in the western part of Canyons of the Ancients National Monument in southwest Colorado. Cow Canyon starts near the excavated Lowry Ruins site and Ruin Canyon starts a little to the southeast. Both of these canyons lie to the east and flow parallel to Cross Canyon.

I started my hike at the place I call the Green Tanks trailhead. This old drill site is about 5.5 miles north of the marked east turnoff to the Painted Hand Pueblo Trail along County Road 10, and about 14 miles north of the Hovenweep National Monument visitor center. From the parking area, about 100 yards south there are notches in the steep cliffs that allow a descent into Ruins Canyon. (In 2012, this drill site has a gate blocking the entry. You can still hike here but it is tricky to find a good parking place.)

There isn’t a marked trail but it is feasible to walk down the slope. The elevation change is about 400 feet. On a previous hike I visited a boulder based small Ancestral Pueblo ruins site that is visible from the rim, a short distance up the west slope from the canyon bottom. On this hike I went past this site again and climbed up to the mesa top area above. It took me about 1:00 hour to cross Ruin Canyon.

Only two minutes of hiking west from where I arrived on the mesa top there is a side canyon with a large ruins site on the west side. Here, there is a choice of crossing another canyon or hiking north around the canyon head. I chose to take the relatively easy level walk around, arriving at the site 1:40 hours into my hike.

This site extends for a relatively long distance along the canyon rim and spills over below the rim. It appears as mostly large rubble piles with a few wall sections holding together. There are notches in the rocky canyon rim to get views from below the rim.

There were several vertical rock surfaces below the rim, but I didn’t see any rock art. The pottery shards visible in the ruins area were mostly the corrugated style.

On a large boulder below the main rim structures it looked like a circular tower once stood. From this site, I navigated west using a compass across the mesa top, looking for the east rim of Cow Canyon. It took me about 0:45 minutes to cross.

Along the way I passed one mesa top archaeology site. It appeared as some low sagebrush overgrown mounds with a concentration of pottery shards and some rock work visible, but didn’t look like a village where people would live. Some of the pottery I saw had painted designs rather than all corrugated styles. The Pinon Pine and Juniper forest is mostly open enough to walk through easily with some zig zagging around fallen trees and shrubs.

I arrived at a point on the east rim of Cow Canyon that overlooks the junction of Cow Canyon with Cross Canyon 2:45 hours into my hike. There is a large sky island in the middle of the canyon junction area. I scanned the area with binoculars but didn’t see any large ruins sites along the canyon rim areas.

Looking north up Cow Canyon, the mesa top area where Lowry Ruins sits is visible about 3 miles away. Many of the ruins sites in this area are below the canyon rims and aren’t visible from a distance.

I recrossed the mesa top, and the side canyon, navigating with a compass, and arrived at the west rim of Ruins Canyon about 400 yards north of where I had originally crossed. As I was descending from this different angle, I was lucky to spot another ruins site near the bottom. This site is very hidden by the forest and would be hard to spot from an angle other then directly above it. It appears as a circular cone and is hollow in the middle like a dead volcano. On the east side, there were two lines of low walls between the ruins structure and the creek at the canyon bottom.

My total hike from Ruin to Cow Canyon took 5:30 hours for about 6 miles on an 80 F degree late September day. I carried and drank 3 liters of water.

Ruin Canyon East Rim-South

Ruin Canyon is one of the southwest Colorado canyon areas preserved in Canyons of the Ancients National Monument. This area is part of the Cross Canyon Wilderness Study Area. There aren't many developed trails in this National Monument and it is left to the visitor to explore on their own. There are often old roads or cow trails that are helpful.

I found a place to park off of paved Road 10 about 5.5 miles north of the marked road leading to Painted Hand Pueblo, and next to some old green tanks. Finding a reasonable place to park is one of the challenges in exporing these canyons. This area is north of the Hovenweep Visitor Center and also north of the Hovenweep outlying sites. I approached from the area near Lowry Ruins in the north part of the Monument.

In this area the paved road is very close to the canyon rim. I walked south along the canyon rim for about 0.25 miles, scanning the scenic area below for signs of any Ancestral Pueblo ruins sites. The view here is to the south toward McLean Basin.

From the distance, one of the large boulders on the west side of the canyon appeared to have some rubble scattered on the top. It wasn't clear that this was a ruins site, but it gave me a destination to hike towards and explore.

There were some steep ledges in the area where I went down, but with gaps that allow a descent. The cows that graze here seem to be good route finders, and I was able to follow the cow trails to the canyon bottom, where, in the spring, a small amount of water was flowing.

There wasn't much still standing at this site, but it was worth the effort to get there. It was something of a castle rock site with rubble piles around the base and a few fragments of wall sections wedged between gaps in the rocks.

It isn't unusual in this area to find ruins built on the tops of large boulders, though usually not much is left on the top. I scanned the surrounding area but didn't see any more obvious structures, though I tripped over a hidden one the way up.

My hike back to the top was more back to the north near where I parked and was less rocky going up. The canyon rim area here is very broken and has many nooks and joints that looked like good potential ruins site locations but I didn't see anything definite. My hike in this area was about 2:20 hours.

On a later hike in the fall, I started at the same point and continued south down Ruin Canyon toward the junction with Cross Canyon. The west side of the canyon has a shelf area between the creek bottom and the cliffs on the west side. I went down canyon for about 2:00 hours, maybe 2.5 miles, to a point near a side canyon junction, well before Cross Canyon. On the down canyon hike I stayed closer to the cliffs and returned up canyon closer to the creek.

There aren't any trails in this area, but the walking through the Pinon Pine and Utah Juniper forest was reasonable. The going was slower than with a good trail. There were some large boulder areas near the cliffs where I noticed some pot shards and a small rock wall, but it didn't amount to very much. In the area where I turned around it looked like there was an old road approaching from the south that led to a drill hole with a pipe still sticking up. A short distance north of the drill hole I noticed a circular rock structure overlooking the creek, hidden in the trees.

I was lucky to see this small site as it isn't visible unless you walk right past it. The Ruin Canyon in this area seems to lack sagebrush fields that would have been farming fields and, in the fall, there wasn't much water flowing at the canyon bottom. I spent 4:30 hours on the second hike and revisited the two sites I had spotted earlier, plus the two more small ones.