One fine summer afternoon I was sitting, pouring over my USGS topographic maps I noticed, yet again, those fascinating words - "Cliff Dwelling", demarking a place where the ancients have left their dwellings. Doing some examination of the map seemed to show that these particular ruins off of the San Juan River would be easy enough to get to with a car. Pitching the idea to Ely, she agreed, and so the next weekend we set out for the land known as southeastern Utah.

Finding our way around this imposing pour-over was probably the trickiest part of the trip.
Arriving near our "trailhead" (there is no trail), things started off easy enough. A broad slickrock valley seemed to offer the easiest access to the canyon, and we followed it until we came to an overhanging pourover. Ely was uncertain as to if we could continue, but I thought that the talus slope to the south, despite being steep, would be negotiable.

View from the talus slope into the canyon.
Sure enough, it went. There was a lot of scrambling to find rocks that weren't going to roll and crush us, but once we got to the canyon bottom, it was pretty easy going. I checked the topo. According to it, there was supposed to be a ruin right around the talus slope, but we searched and didn't even find a petroglyph. Undetered, we set out downcanyon for another possible ruin.

Approaching the ruin.
We popped down to the canyon bottom for a bit, and then headed back up to an alluvial bench. Back in 1280 or so, the bench was in fact the canyon bottom - arroyo cutting hadn't hit full strength yet. There'd be no point in being in the canyon bottom today, because no Anasazi would have ever been able to get down there. Sure enough, as soon as we got back on the bench, Ely said, "I see something!" She's taller than me, so I had to go a couple steps more up the slope before I saw it - the tops of some walls.

Cloud House from in front of the midden.
It was a small site, probably just home to an extended family or some such. It also looked like it had been pothunted - not surprising considering its location. It wasn't so much a traditional cliff dwelling as it was, say, a cliff shelter. It was built on the same level as the bench in front of it, with the alcove used to form the back wall of most structures. It was in fact similiar to the Gallo Wash cliff dwellings in Chaco Canyon.

A pictograph resembling modern Hopi cloud symbols.
One of the most obvious features of the ruin was a pictograph on the south side of the alcove that resembled modern Hopi cloud symbols. Since we were in undocumented territory, and as far as we knew the site didn't have a name, we decided to call it Cloud House.

View of the inside of Cloud House.

Another view of the inside of Cloud House.
There were still some artifacts laying around, but some people before us had piled sherds, cobs, and even some bones on some of the walls. The bones always bothered me - how do they know they're not human? Another interesting facet of the ruin soon came to light as we walked around the back of the alcove. There were petroglyphs all along the back wall, showing various wild and crazy things. Most seem to be executed in a Basketmaker/linear fashion. I wondered then, was this place an ancestor shrine, worshiping the holy images from the pact? Or did its residents just like to have walls with decorations on them, like we do?

One of the many designs along the back wall of the alcove.

Close-up of the previous image. It appears to show some sort of flying animal and the top, and some crosshatched creature below/connected to it.
Some of the images appeared to be done in the later Pueblo III style, though. I'm no rock art expert, so I can't really say when precisely the images were made, but from my limited knowledge, it appears that most of it predates the Pueblo III occupation.

A set of handprints, in negative, above a dwelling at Cloud House.
There was more rock art in addition to the petroglyphs and the cloud symbol. There were also negative hands. They were obviously done by someone standing on top of the dwelling, because they're far to high to be reached from the modern ground surface. What was the purpose? Beautifying the alcove? Claiming the site for a clan/family? Who can say now? Not me, that's what I know for certain.

A well-preserved structure at Cloud House.
Looking at the topo again, I realized this wasn't the other site on the map - we were too close to the side canyon. We decided to press further on. Sidewalking the canyon wallss to stay out of the deep pools at the canyon bottom eventually proved to be too time consuming and possibly dangerous for Ely (who wasn't wearing hiking boots), and so we turned back. Before we left the canyon, though, we did make one other discovery - a bighorn sheep petroglyph not far from Cloud House.

The lone bighorn petroglyph.
Climbing back up the talus slope was obviously harder than climbing in, but we survived, and once we reached the car again, we were back on the road, headed for Sand Island and Bluff, for food and the Utah Navajo Fair.

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