Tree House Ruin on Lion Canyon Trail

The Tree House Ruin is the first stop on the Lion Canyon Trail during an all day tour of Ute Mountain Tribal Park in southwest Colorado. Ute Mountain Tribal Park sits on the southern side of the more visited Mesa Verde National Park. It is a 40 minute ride on gravel roads to get to the trailhead.

The trail gets off to a fast start, requiring climbing down several ladders below the canyon rim. At the bottom of the ladders a bench allows you to rest a bit before continuing to the Douglas Fir shaded Tree House.
Soon the Tree House Ruin comes into view, arrayed along a corner of the canyon. The sites in Ute Mountain Park rely on the guide for interpretation. There are no signs or trail pamphlets available. This site has a setting similar to Spruce Tree House in Mesa Verde Park.

The views in the ruins here are very intimate, as the groups visiting are small and are escorted.
There is time to linger and look around at the details of the site. Some of these details, such as collections of pottery shards and stone tools are not things you see on the trails in Mesa Verde Park.

From the Tree House Ruin, we returned back to the base of the ladders and then continued along the trail to the next of the four cliff dweller sites, Lion House. The Lion Canyon Trail is a round trip of three miles to the four sites.