Far View Trail in Winter

Mesa Verde National Park in southwest Colorado stays open in winter despite an elevation of up to 8500 feet. The twisty main road is snow plowed but most of the side roads are closed for the winter. The Far View Trail is a short trail with six major Ancestral Pueblo sites to visit and is near enough to the main road to make it accessible for hiking. Park by the gate over to the side, there won't be much of a crowd. Far View House is visible at the end of the short road. This trail is under appreciated even in summer.

Far View House and Pipe Shrine House are two large mesa top pueblo sites facing each other across a plaza. The alcove cliff dweller sites draw the most attention at Mesa Verde but these two sites are very large and show the development of building skills and connections with the Chaco Canyon culture of northwest New Mexico.

I noticed that the clay soil here forms a sticky mud, common in the region but something not noticed in the dry summers. The rock alcove sites probably have less of a problem with mud. That would be a good reason for me to prefer to live there in winter but not one the archaeologists usually mention.

A little bit off the trail to the east there are far views across the canyon toward the LaPlata Mountains that are between Mesa Verde and the Durango area. The interpretive sign at nearby Mummy Lake shows that there is another constructed reservoir on the opposite mesa, and presumably more villages across the way.
The two keyhole shaped kivas and the Far View Tower. Present day Pueblo People still build kivas but don't build towers, so it's not known what the towers are for. Line of sight signaling doesn't seem to be a reason for this one as it doesn't have a good view, though others in the region have that.
Mummy Lake is one of four constructed reservoirs at Mesa Verde and the only one that is accessible. The alcove sites often have seep springs or the canyon bottom creeks for water supply but a mesa top site would have had to try to store the snow melt and summer storm water.

The clay rich soil here probably compacted well to seal the bottom, but the evaporation is high in the sunny southwest. Earth lagoons are common in this region. It seems like the rock walls surrounding the lake would have been more to prevent erosion around the edges than to hold water. The sandstone itself is porous and the mortar would have leaked if constantly exposed to water.