Yesterday the group worked with Kathe Hays and the infamous David Kill at Painted Hand, an ancient ruin that's part of Hovenweep National Monument in Canyon of the Ancients.
In order to protect the fragile environment, they explained to us the importance of maintaining a proper, visible trail. With many massive boulders, it's easy to lose the trodden path.
We worked to build karens, a simple structure comprised of a wooden post in the center of a 24" tall cage. To make them more visually appealing and to keep them stable, we scavenged for flat rocks to fill the cages along the trail to Painted Hand.
While hiking we were able to see more ruins and even some preserved wall paintings and petroglyphs, some as old as 800 years.
After finishing the trail work, we finally took our hike to Cutthroat Castle! Mr. Kill, an archaeologist, explained to us that the [many] structures had not really been preserved by modern man at all. Only minor structural work as been done. It was so cool to think that the bricks and mortar still standing were the original for the walls left standing!
After lunch and lots of pictures, we hiked back to the vans (which handled the rough, unpaved roads like champions). Kathe and David pointed us in the direction of more ruins to explore.
Rather than going straight to the ruins, we took a quick trip to Utah when we found out we were only 15 miles from the border! We drove for about 200 yards and decided there was more to see in Colorado…and much better roads.
Stay tuned to hear about our trip to the Anasazi Heritage Center on Thursday!
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