Inaccessible House Trail

Inaccessible House is located below the east rim of Navajo Canyon in Ute Mountain Tribal Park in southwest Colorado. It is rarely visited, but is included on a special tour along with the nearby Casa Colorado ruins site. The trail head is in the area south of the Mesa Top Tour at the south end of Mesa Verde National Park. This hike has been offered once per year since 2009.

The trail runs south along the Navajo Canyon east rim to an unnamed side canyon where the Casa Colorado ruins sits at the side canyon head. A rough trail descends into the side canyon and turns back toward the main canyon and runs under the rim. The Inaccessible House site is above the trail at a somewhat awkward viewing angle, and seems to be very well preserved.

At the canyon junction a short distance before the site there are some historic inscriptions from some of the early visitors to the area. The 2009 hike was guided by one of the experts in the history of Mesa Verde and there was a good discussion of who the inscribers were and what their roles were in the early history of the area. There are several inscriptions on the canyon walls here.

The trail continues past the Inaccessible House site to another alcove that has only rubble piles remaining but also has a small reddish pictograph panel.

The wrecked nature of this alcove site was attributed to rough use during the pot hunter era of the early 1900s. This second site has several grinding and sharpening sites also.

Beyond the second alcove there is a small granary site. The trail along here was reasonably good despite not much maintenance over the years. The Ute Mountain Tribal Park has mostly left these sites in the state that they were found. Pottery shards are visible and remain in place as all hikes here are guided. I noticed a second granary site on the return hike near the inscription rock, so there are three intact ruins in this area plus the pictograph alcove.

Inaccessible House doesn’t appear to be a place that anyone would have resided in, maybe it is a special use site. It is hard even to see it.

The quality of the stonework seems to be particularly fine here. The stones that are visible seem to be very well shaped.

There isn’t any room to step back and get a good view. Our tour group visited this site and those with enough energy left continued on to nearby but harder to get to Casa Colorado. On the 2011 hike the order of the visits was reversed. Casa Colorado was visited first. Casa Colorado is an easier site to view but the trail to Inaccessible House has more features.

On the 2011 return hike, there is a view point for Inaccessible House from the rim. The total tour in 2009 took about 6:30 hours with about half the time spent at each of the two sites. The 2011 tour took about 5:00 hours, with less time spent on Casa Colorado. The distance covered was about 3 miles but the route was somewhat difficult and required some scrambling up and dwn in the rocky environment.