venturing4th: Falls Trail & Tsankawi Village Trail

We enjoyed Bandelier National Monument so much yesterday that we returned today for some more hiking. A Ranger at the Visitor Center recommended the two trails that we hiked today - one was from the Visitor Center, the Falls Trail, and the other trail was located in another unit of the Monument 12 miles away.

We borrowed a "loaner" copy of the Falls Trail guide from the Visitor Center. We had a loaner copy for the Main Loop Trail yesterday. While yesterday's trail focused on the cultural aspects of the Monument, today's trail and guide was all about the geology and the flora. First up in the guide was a description of the Tent Rocks alongside the trail.

We had to cross the Frijoles Creek a number of times.

Our favorite wildflower - Paintbrush.

As we proceeded along the trail the canyon, with the Frijoles Creek at the bottom, got deeper and deeper on our left.

The little guide mentioned water-loving trees that grow along the creek bottom. Cottonwood and Box Elder were both mentioned. The Box Elder (the name of our town of residence in South Dakota is "Box Elder") has leave formations similar to poison ivy, three leaves.

The trail we were on used to go all the way to the Rio Grande, the milk-chocolate colored ribbon at the bottom center of the picture. But the trail was washed out a number of years ago so it is now closed off.

The viewpoint of the Upper Falls is the last site on the Falls Trail.

Tsankawi (sank-ah-WEE) is located 12 miles from the more heavily visited section of the park, Frijoles Canyon. In the 1400s, Tsankawi was home to the Ancestral Tewa Pueblo people who built homes of volcanic rock and adobe, and cultivated fields in the open canyons below. Tsankawi is located on the Pajarito (pa-ha-REE-toe, "little bird" in Spanish)Plateau.

A little over a million years ago, a volcano erupted several times, covering the surrounding area in a thick layer of volcanic ash. Once compacted, the ash formed rock known as tuff. The thick layers of tuff created a plateau that was easily cut by streams, leaving the flat mesas and steep-walled canyons.

From the trailhead, we hiked a short distance and then had to climb a ladder to ascend to the...

flat beginning of the mesa.

The trail crosses the soft volcanic tuff.

Generations of Ancestral Pueblo people carved routes across this landscape. Walking barefoot or in sandals along these routes from their mesa-top homes to the fields and springs in the canyons below wore deeper impressions into the soft stone.

Present-day visitors with hard-soled shoes cut the trails even deeper, some trails are now waist-deep trenches.

From the mesa-top we had a spectacular view of the surrounding area.

The village of Tsankawi has not been excavated. It contains about 275 ground-floor rooms that were one to two stories high. After the Ancestral Pueblo people moved from here the elements took their toll on the stone masonry of the pueblo. With passing time, roofs caved in and winds covered the walls with dirt. In the picture above, Frederick is standing in the central plaza of the village.

Here we are descending a 12-foot ladder to several narrow paths that lead to cavates that provided additional space for dwellings.

The people here took advantage of the benefits of building stone structures against south-facing walls.

Most of the caves carved into the stone wall had small masonry buildings constructed in front of them

Narrow trail to the cavates.

The thick stone walls captured the heat from the sun in the winter, keeping the buildings and cavates much warmer than the air outside.

Inside the cavates, the inhabitants may have built small fires. In the summer the walls insulated the stone rooms, keeping them somewhat cooler than the air outside.