Sunday, June 21, 2020

Bandelier National Monument/ New Mexico/ June 2009 and March 2017

Volcanic rock here, a respite from the sedimentary stratification of the Colorado Plateau. Bandelier National Monument is located on the Pajarito Plateau, the very toe of the Jemez Mountains, the southernmost extension of the Rockies. The Parajito Plateau was created by two violent eruptions from Jemez Volcano one to two million years ago, eruptions that covered a 400-square mile area with ash up to 1000 feet thick. Over time, this ash solidified into a tan and pink rhyolite tuff that has eroded into cavity-pocked cliff walls pervasive throughout the greater Bandelier region.

Bandelier Tuff


Once emptied of its content, Jemez Volcano collapsed into an enormous bowl-like depression called a caldera. The remaining walls of the caldera rim comprise a ring of mountains over 10,000 high, part of which constitutes the northwest border and highest point of Bandelier National Monument. Streams from these high slopes have cut canyons 300-500 feet deep through the soft tuff of Bandelier on their way to the Rio Grande some 12 miles away and five thousand feet lower in elevation. Forested mesa tops above these canyons comprise the bulk of the monument’s land surface.

Frijoles Canyon (March 2017)

Most of Bandelier’s canyon streams are intermittent, with high flows following infrequent storms and lesser flows seeping into the permeable volcanic soils the rest of the time. The exception is Frijoles Creek, a spring-fed stream that runs year-round, and it was along this reliable water resource in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that people from a prehistoric civilization now referred to as Ancestral Puebloan constructed a significant urban-style settlement, the ruins of which provide the centerpiece of Bandelier National Monument.

Frijoles Creek


A Little Archeology
This urbanized settlement came quite late in Ancestral Puebloan pre-history, four centuries after the renowned architectural and cultural explosion began in the upper San Juan Basin at Chaco Canyon. Though just on the other side of the Jemez Mountains, the Parajito Plateau remained remote during this intense cultural development. People did not begin settling in the Bandelier area until around 1150, just about the time that Chaco Canyon was rapidly losing population. Whether these early settlers were part of the exodus from Chaco or simply part of an expanding and dispersing population, they were a part of the historic migration pattern that would eventually empty out the population centers of the San Juan Basin and generate new ones in and around the northern Rio Grande valley.

The early migrants to the Parajito Plateau settled mostly on the mesa tops above the canyons, in small clusters of single-story pueblos consisting of one to twenty rooms. They found the previously uninhabited area rich in the native plants and animals they needed to supplement their agricultural sustenance. Times were good and population grew steadily for over a century, with people moving around the plateau in an effort to recapture the relatively pristine environment their very presence had begun to degrade. As population continued to grow and hunting and gathering conditions continued to deteriorate, the people of the Parajito Plateau were forced to increase their reliance on agriculture, this just as climate conditions began to shift and droughts became more frequent. After peaking at an estimated 3,600 people around 1290, the population in the Bandelier area began a slow decline.

Those who remained at Bandelier began to what we might call urbanize, forming large aggregations of multi-storied pueblos ranging from 40 to 600 rooms. Several such settlements sprung up across the plateau, but what would prove to be the densest and most long-lasting was along the perennial stream in Frijoles Canyon. Large-scale construction began there in the mid-14th century, centering around a three-story, 400-room creek-side village known now as Tyuonyi. The people also built a mile-long row of masonry houses up against the canyon wall, utilizing the cavities in the Bandelier tuff to create expanded interior dwellings, a unique combination of cave and excavation archeologists call “cavates. The village featured fully enclosed plazas and large subterranean kivas that reflected a more intense level of social organization than the Parajito Plateau had yet witnessed, though far shy of what occurred in Chaco Canyon, by this time almost entirely uninhabited..  

The community along Frijoles Creek made a good run of it. Between 1325 and 1440 the population increased from 200 to 550, peaking around 760 by 1500. By this time most of the people who still lived in Bandelier were living in Frijoles Canyon. But soon this population began a decline that would prove total and permanent. By 1600 everyone was gone, the uninhabited homes still filled with personal belongings.

Frijoles Canyon had little to no human occupation from 1600 until the middle of the 1800s, when Spanish land grant recipients ranched the area, using the masonry from Tyuoniy for their own buildings and the wall cavates for work space and sheep pens. The ranchers were gone by the end of the 19th century when residents from nearby pueblos led pioneer archeologists to the cliff house rubble and still-prominent cavates of Frijoles Canyon. This was a time when archeologists and artists were joining forces with the railroads in rallying the United States government to protect some portion of the many ancient ruins being discovered throughout the Southwest. In 1916 President Woodrow Wilson signed legislation creating Bandelier National Monument.


II
Juniper Campground sits on a mesa some 600 feet above Frijoles Creek. A hiking trail crosses the mesa top and then switchbacks steeply down the cliff face, providing an overview of the circular remains of Tyuonyi as well as some close looks at the pink pocked cliffs of Bandelier tuff (3651). The cliff trail joins the Main Loop Trail as it passes along several segments of cliff-house remains, their fronts nearly all collapsed in rubble, though the park service has reconstructed one for display. Holes high on the cliff walls (viga holes) indicate where the fifteenth-century builders ran timber beams for roof support, making evident the expanse of this condominium-like architecture.

Bandelier Tuff

Tyuonyi




Windows and Viga Holes


By this point in my travels I had visited several Ancient Puebloan sites and while I never tire of the settings and the story, I am no connoisseur of masonry rubble. But the cavates dug into the glittering white tuff cliffs at Bandelier are something special. The park even provides ladders for visitors to access a couple. In quiet times the setting can evoke times long gone. Even in busier time poking around these rooms while admiring the shapely erosional tuff formations known as tent rocks is a lot more fun than pondering piles of collapsed rock.








Fun with Cavates

 
Another half-mile of trail leads to Alcove House and the highlight of the loop, Not Alcove House itself, but getting to it, at least for the sufficiently nimble, via four wooden ladders and a series of stone steps climbing a total of 140 feet. Alcove House was two-stories high and held 23 rooms but to my eyes it takes a back seat to the surroundings. The ascent ends in an alcove cave and a kiva, reconstructed for public access but closed indefinitely pending roof repairs. Visitors cluster at the top or bottom of ladders waiting their turn, providing opportunities for socializing. It must be a mob scene in high season.




tent rock


enclosed kiva

Frijoles Creek
The inhabitants of Frijoles Creek found the holey cliff walls suitable for building, but they remained here as long as they did because of the year-round creek and its rich environs. I was with them on that. The cliff cavates were edifying and entertaining, but after several months of desert and cactus the leafy breezes of Frijoles Creek seemed like a miracle. A corridor of oak, box elder, cottonwood, and ponderosa pine! I had been moving northward and up altitude to elude the rising desert heat and though it was already June this was my first encounter with spring. Higher up the mountains were just barely shedding winter, and with mid-elevation national park land a rarity I was feeling very grateful for Bandelier National Monument. It would make a fine park even without the cliff dwellings but obviously it would never have been a park without them. Their existence and protection opens up a rare perennial creek to the public, a fine thing indeed.






I continued with the creek past the Visitors Center and down the gently sloping Falls Trail, a more solitary walk as 95% of the park’s hikers stick to the Loop Trail. Here the canyon narrows through a riparian area between the creek and a low tuff wall, leaving less room for habitation and no evidence of ruins. The sun was now high enough to penetrate the foliage and I found temporary refuge beneath a shady little alcove along the creek, my first solitary dawdle along freely running water since Big Bend in February. Entranced by the sun-dappled spring green I might have walked belly-on into a bear for all I was watching where I was going. Instead I came upon one of the more unusual trail signs I’d ever seen.

 
Upper Falls is a mile and a half down the trail with a 400-foot descent, most of that coming near the end where the canyon cuts beneath the Bandelier tuff into layers of much older basalt, tuff, and sandstone buried below. The falls itself drops 80 feet over what the trail guide says is hardened lava from the throat of an ancient volcano. The flow was slight but refreshing to see in the midst of such formidable rock exposures.



Upper Frijoles Falls


Another mile to Lower Falls, a more modest 45 foot drop resembling an outdoor shower. Then a second sign, a bit more dire. While I wasn’t exactly peeling my eyes it was hard to miss the gruesome remains of a half dozen dead and rotting cows in the brush. Sorry, no pictures. Here’s a flower.
 

Lower Frijoles Falls




 
In another mile the trail reached the banks of the Rio Grande, the river running high and muddy with spring snowmelt. Compared to the lovely creekside I’d just strolled through, this riparian landscape was a mess. I took it for the remnants of recent fires but eventually learned it was the doings of the Cochiti Dam a few miles downstream. Built in the 1970s ostensibly for flood control, it is by all apparent evidence being used to hold back as much meltwater as possible until downstream agriculture was ready for it.

Rio Grande

Rio Grande Riparian Flood Remnants

In 1985, wetter times almost a quarter of a century earlier, heavy runoff had backed up the reservoir enough to inundate 200-acres of Bandelier riparian area for a year and a half. This backwater killed the plants and trees and when the water finally receded the area was entirely reseeded by non-native plants brought downstream from agricultural lands. This spot had held a reputation as one of the most beautiful parts of the park and was the monument’s most popular backcountry destination. The Corps of Engineers reserved the right to flood the land again whenever necessary, making restoration efforts pointless. So the park service abandoned the trail, still passable twenty years later but no longer maintained.
 
This is nothing compared to what the dam did to the people of Cochiti Pueblo, descendants of some of the last people to leave Frijoles Canyon. The Pueblo had opposed construction of the dam until it was forced upon them by Corps of Engineers. Once built it flooded large percentages of their agricultural land; foisted a major regional recreational destination into the middle of their small community; forced them into an extensive soul and resource sucking legal and political battle for any kind of redress; and worst of all initiated a community divide between those people willing to wage this costly battle and those more ready to throw it in and pursue the economic benefits of commercial development.

In 2001 the Corps of Engineers apologized to the tribe and the two entities began working in a more consensual manner. In 2014 the Corps took an unusual step and returned to the tribe some of the land it had taken in construction of the dam. Whether these steps have resuscitated the agricultural land or provided the tribe with any other compensation are questions beyond my current research capacities.


III
In the summer of 2011, just two years after my visit to Bandelier, the monument was hit with a devastating one-two punch of fire and flood.The fire began on June 26 when an aspen tree fell on a power line eight miles outside the national monument. Conditions were awful. The temperature was 89 degrees, seven degrees higher than average and the first day in five not to have broken 90. Relative humidity was 5% compared to the June average of 12%; again the four days before had been even drier. Annual precipitation to date had been roughly 25% of annual average. 40 MPH winds fanned flames up the steep south facing slopes into a forest too thick and too littered with downed trees following a century of fire suppression.

Firefighters went after it almost immediately but the fire consumed 14,000 acres within 14 hours and ended up burning 154,349 acres, the largest to date in New Mexico’s history (a record it would hold for less than a year). Known as the Las Conchas Fire, it burned more than 60% of the park. The ruins and monument structures at the base of the canyon escaped damage but Frijoles Canyon burned “with high severity” for over 14 miles. Much of the ground was vitrified, a new term for me. (It means to convert something into glass or a glassy substance by heat and fusion.) This is a landscape sculpted by fire, but not by fire of this magnitude. 
 
The devastation so guaranteed flooding that even as the park service personnel were rescuing artifacts and protecting (fire-sliming) monument buildings, they were also laying out sand bags, removing bridges, and taking other preparatory steps against the inevitable. This came two months later, on August 21, when a major flash flood swept through, destroying among other things the entire Falls Trail below Upper Falls - not simply the trail, the entire cliff bench on which the trail was placed. The Lower Falls Falls Trail was closed indefinitely and likely for good. Too bad. I’d love to get back there and see what it looks like now that I’d know what I was looking at.

The 2011 flood was just the beginning. Flooding recurred each subsequent year and in September 2013 the largest flood in recorded park history came sweeping through. By the time I returned in March 2017 the trail system, reportedly the best in the Jemez Mountains, was largely speculative. Nearly all park trails were damaged and some were destroyed. Recurrent flooding outpaced ongoing repair efforts. The park continued to allow hiking but its website issued a packet of warnings. Remaining trails would be difficult to follow and familiar landmarks were likely gone. Shade would be harder to come by and the trees that remained were more likely to come crashing down. Trail junctions in canyon bottoms had been obliterated by floods making the location of trail routes exiting the canyons difficult to find. Excess growth of vegetation following summer rains would also obscure trail routes.

All of this was on the park website but of course I did not consult the park website. I did peruse the park’s hiking map, color-coded to signify the degree of disrepair for the respective trails. I hoped to hike the Frijoles Creek trail - a 13-mile loop going five miles up the canyon and returning atop the Canyon Rim. It was coded red, signifying “most damaged”. The ranger at the Visitor Center, however, told me that downed trees, not route finding, had earned the red designation. He didn’t mention that the park website described the trail into Frijoles Canyon as “passable but challenging in places due to erosion, rockfalls, fallen trees, log jams, flood debris, dense vegetation and numerous stream crossings.” I guess he figured I’d checked the website.

So I set off up the creek, figuring I would just go as far as I could manage and then turn back. In fact the downed trees weren't much of a problem. They were dry and sharp and unreliable for foot or hand-holds but not really very challenging, certainly not compared with Deception Creek in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, say, before that trail crew comes through.

The difficulty came with the creek crossings. Countless creek crossings! The water was never dangerous, just a soaking to the shins, and some better shod than I might have just plowed through. I opted for the dry approach, and for a while enjoyed solving the problem each crossing posed. I can always use the practice. But they just kept coming and eventually I lost my enthusiasm. Nearly every one required some kind of leap and this began to sap more spring from my legs than they could spare. I started tripping over things and I fell down twice, no harm incurred but convincing me to sit for a while to rest.



Frijoles Creek



The creek cut through some nice pink cliffs but with all the jumping I wasn't paying that much attention to the pink cliffs. At one point I turned a corner and walked into a wall of black flies and had to jump over the carcass they were feeding on. I didn't verify what it was – deer probably – as it had enough meat on it to maybe hold some proprietary interest for a cougar. I scurried along.

By this point I realized I had committed to completing the 13-mile loop trail, a longer hike preferable to jumping across the creek a million more times on the way back. The risk was in how bad the rest of the canyon might be. I felt I had already covered the five miles I needed to get to the high crossing that would bring me to the return leg of the loop. I scanned the high slope above but saw no trail. It dawned on me that five miles was the length of a trail that no longer existed. It did not account for the constant back and forth across the creek bottom.

Two guys had set out on the trail ahead of me – looked like father and teenage son – and they hadn't looked exceptionally hardy. I figured that if things had gotten too rough they'd have come back my way and given me the low-down. I realized they may have passed my by when I sat to rest, or possibly vice-versa. But finally back they came, reporting that the terrain up creek only got worse, and that according to their phone they had already traversed six-miles without coming to any high crossing. But the father also mentioned that he had spotted some flags somewhat upslope so maybe I could find a better way. And sure enough I soon found a trail of flags, different colors signifying who-knows-what, leading me up to a bench trail, level and easy, the world a far better place to be.

Still, the trail just kept going and I did fear I had missed the rim trail cutoff, or it had been destroyed, and that I was now going the wrong way, bringing to mind my favorite Yogi-ism – we may be lost but we're making great time. Quite abruptly a side trail cut back up the slope. No trail sign but no doubt either and up the steep burned out slope I went. God was nice enough to provide some big clouds for shade during my ascent and then withdrew them when I got to the top, allowing me to get some decent pictures of the fire-ravaged scene. A fine God-like performance.


Frijoles Canyon



Then it was just a long slog across a mildly windswept mesa of grass and a scattering of burnt trees, some still standing. I surmised that this mesa had been thoroughly burned by an earlier fire that left little for the 2011 fire to burn. It was pleasant if shadeless walking, too far from the rim for views. My legs were sore but my feet felt alright thanks to a trail surface of volcanic sand. I came upon two more people, the only ones I'd seen other than the father-son team, resting their bones as well. We compared notes on the downed trees and creek crossings and it took a bit of conversation and a couple of incongruities for us to realize we'd had the same experiences on two different trails. Finally the trail got close enough to the rim for some impressive views, and then a quick descent to the canyon floor where I had a lovely dinner in the shade of the ponderosa pine.

Alamo Mesa

Frijoles Canyon Wall



Some Less Obvious Sources

The Bandelier Archeological Survey, ed Robert P. Powers and Janet D. Orcutt (1999 Intermountain Cultural Resources Management/Professional Paper No. 57)

Biotic and Abiotic Factors Contributing to New Mexico’s Largest Wildfire: The Las Conchas Fire,  Laura L. Trader, Fire Ecology Program Manager, Bandelier National Monument, National Park Service( Spring 2012/RxEffects: National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior Fire Ecology Program)

Pinel Sandra Lee, Stopping the Flood of Damages from Cochiti Dam (Cultural Survival Quarterly Magazine June 1988)

Indian Country Today,  Cochiti dam changes pueblo way of life Aug 18, 2009

Regis Pecos, The History of Cochiti Lake from the Pueblo Perspective, (47Nat. Resources J.639 (2007))

Robert Julyan The Mountains of New Mexico P.83 (UNM Press 2006)

Patricia Barey,  Bandelier National Monument (Western National Parks Association
1990)

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