Colorado Hiking: Southwest Safari Camp - The Other Mesa Verde - 7 Days
Colorado Hiking: The Other Mesa Verde - Overview
Experience a real sense of discovery as you enjoy hiking in Colorado in Mesa Verde National Park as you explore undeveloped ruins where artifacts still lie scattered through silent, stone rooms. Mancos Canyon is located across the southern boundary of Mesa Verde National Park on the Ute Mountain Indian Reservation. This relatively unknown canyon is an archaeological gold mine, with more than 20,000 Anasazi and Ancestral Puebloan sites. Cliff dwellings, petroglyphs, solstice sites, towers, pottery shards, and other remnants of the past are found in abundance here. Offered in conjuction with the Four Corners School of Outdoor Education, you’ll stay in a specially permitted deluxe tent camp on the reservation’s Ute Mountain Tribal Park. National Geographic Traveler selected the Ute Mountain Tribal Park as one of “80 World Destinations for Travel in the 21st Century”—one of only nine places in the United States to receive this special designation.
Colorado Hiking: The Other Mesa Verde - Itinerary at a Glance
- Meet in Durango, CO and transfer to our private campsite for welcome dinner and orientation
- After breakfast drive and hike to Red Pottery village and Kiva Point to see a large rock art panel and numerous unexcavated ruins dating from 500AD to 1250 AD then visit Atlatl Point to see some of the oldest rock art in the canyon
- Hike to Two Story ruin, the first cliff dwelling ever photographed by William Henry Jackson who carried over fifty pounds of camera equipment up a one-thousand foot slope to record this site in 1876
- Visit North and South Lion Canyon to see a large cliff village called Lion House with 46 rooms and 6 kivas and climb a 30-foot ladder to view Eagles Nest tucked beneath a yawning overhang with its 13 rooms and one kiva plus some rock art
- Hike to canyon bottom sites, petroglyphs, and towers. Discuss the Hayden Survey’s work in the canyon in 1876
- After breakfast drive out of the Tribal Park stopping at some Ute pictographs painted by Chief Jack House, the last chief of the Ute Mountain Utes
- Shuttle to Mesa Verde National Park to visit Cliff Palace, mesa top villages, and the Museum at Spruce Tree House
- End in Durango to spend the night in the Starter Hotel with a final celebratory dinner at a Durango restaurant
- Following breakfast, depart for airport for return flights home
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