Hovenweep Adventure

I stopped frequently to look at the ruins that I found. Some, such as this one, are probably recent reconstructions, where folks piled stones from the ruins to form columns. Wish they wouldn’t do that.

A couple of weeks ago, I was out driving the back roads near Hovenweep. I was looking for old ruin sites, ones off of the beaten path.

There was a storm blowing in, but I wasn’t worried about it. I figured that I had probably a half hour before the storm reached me, and then another thirty or forty minutes before the road got wet enough that driving would be a problem. That would be plenty of time to get out.

In the meantime, the light was spectacular and I was having a really good time exploring and taking photographs.

Most of the sites that I found were just rubble piles. If I wasn’t explicitly looking for ruin sites, I probably wouldn’t have given the sites a second glance. Some of the sites had ‘shrines’ built on them, where previous visitors had piled stones from the original ruins into columns. I found potsherds and the occasional stone tool on the ground surface.

A (probably reconstructed) stone pile at one of the ruin sites, with the storm rolling in.

Potsherd from a corrugated pot. As I understand it, the potters would make the pot by laying down coils of clay, pinching the clay to create the corrugations. I’ve read that you can sometimes still see the fingerprints of the potter in the clay, though I’ve not noticed that myself.

Black and white potsherd.

The sky got darker, the light got prettier, and I just kept taking photos.

“Plenty of time,” I thought, “We’re only about five or ten miles from the main road,” and “Isn’t that pretty, though?”

Looking out across the desert, I could see the storm rolling in. I figured I’d have an hour or so to drive the next 5-10 miles to the main road.

Then it started to rain. Not heavily, just a moderate rain. I thought, Best quit messing around and drive out before the roads get muddy.

After driving through the rain for about five minutes, I was descending a grade into a broad valley. The Jeep’s steering seemed…sloppy somehow.

Odd.  The mud was not deep.

I slowed to a stop. Or…at least I tried to. The Jeep continued to move forward for four or five feet after the wheels had stopped.

Then, after it stopped its forward momentum, it began to move sideways on the trail.

Well now, I thought. This is sub-optimal.

The hard-packed dust and clay on the road turned into adobe. When stopped the jeep, it would slowly slide towards the downhill side of the trail, riding on a slick layer of packed adobe mud.

After a couple of feet, the Jeep stopped sliding sideways. I got out of the Jeep to see what was going on.

I found that the tires had been caking with mud as I drove. The tread was, at this point, nowhere near the surface of the trail. Rather, I was driving on thick balls of slick clay on a trail that was, itself, coated with a thick layer of slick clay.

Hence the Jeep’s quiet sideways motion. There was very little friction between the tires and the road.

The mud wasn’t deep, it it was very sticky and slippery. It formed an adobe coating around the tires.

I managed to drive the Jeep to a level spot in the trail where the Jeep wasn’t sliding, a spot that was high enough that I didn’t need to worry about flash floods.

I’m astonished that the Jeep was able to move forward on the slick trail, but it did. Oddly, I don’t think it even spun its wheels as we went forward, except for a couple of times when it nearly slid sideways off the trail and we had to do some “panic driving”.

I got out of the Jeep to assess the situation.  Was I going to need to walk out of here, then come back for the Jeep in a day or two? Sure looked that way.

It was still raining. It had been raining for about thirty minutes at this point. There was water running down parts of the trail.

I walked along the trail for a few yards. It was so slick that I had a hard time standing up on trail, and walking forward was quite difficult.

The road was slick to drive, and the Jeep was threatening to slide off. When I got out to walk, I found that the road was too slick to walk on.

I was having trouble walking on the trail. If I stood still and didn’t pay attention to my balance, I’d start to slide. I still don’t know how the Jeep had been able to go as far as it had and not get stuck or slide of the trail. The mud stuck to my boots and formed big, wet clay overshoes, just as it had on the Jeep’s tires.

I was able to get up to top of a nearby hill and, astonishingly, get cell reception (thank you, Verizon). I called to let folks know where I was, that I was okay, and that I was probably going to be spending the night in the Jeep. Then I walk-slid back down the trail with my big clompy mud-boots, back to the Jeep.

It wasn’t going to be so bad, I thought. I’ve got lots of water, warm clothes, and a sleeping bag. Might be nice if I had a little food…but hey!

After ten or fifteen more minutes, the sun came out. The air was crisp and  clear. It was just beautiful. I sat in the Jeep for an hour or so longer, then figured I might as well try to walk down to another ruin site that I thought I could see.

As I walked…I found the road was nowhere near as slippery as it was before. Hmm. Maybe that’s just my imagination.

I spent a little bit of time messing around in the desert, looking at the cactus and such. By the time I got back to the Jeep, the trail was definitely much less slick than it had been.

I thought there was a reasonable chance that the rain would return. If this is what the road was like when the top layers got wet, I did not want to see what the road would look like after a night of rain and it got really muddy. I decided to try the Jeep on the road.

The Jeep’s tires were still just balls of mud, and there was the occasional unwanted slide towards the steep road edge, but if I kept the speed down, I was able to drive without too much drama and unwanted lateral motion.

The Jeep’s tires were covered with a thick accumulation of the sticky mud. I was trying to drive on tires made of mud. I took this photo after the sun came out and the mud had started to dry - the mud layer was much thicker initially.

And then, in a surprisingly short time, I reached the paved road. I was giddy. No sleeping in the Jeep tonight!

So…lessons I learned on this trip:

Getting into a jackpot is easy.  Like falling off a log, or maybe sliding off a road. Not hard at all.

Be careful of back trails that are hard-packed mud and clay. Just a few minutes of rain will make them nearly impassable.

Don’t drive quickly on the trails. If I had been going quickly initially when the rain started, I’d certainly have slid off the trail.

Make sure there is overnight gear in the vehicle.

And, best part - if they are not soaked, those clay trails can dry out almost as quickly as they become impassable.

It was, overall, a really good trip. When I got home, I do not think that the food had ever tasted better, or that bed was ever more comfortable.