Porcupine House Trail-Ute Mt. Tribal Park

The Porcupine House Trail is an infrequently offered guided tour to an Ancestral Pueblo cliff dweller site in Ute Mountain Tribal Park in southwest Colorado. This tour was offered as part of the annual open house that is usually at the end of May.

The site location is in Pitch Pine Canyon, a side canyon of Johnson Canyon on the south side of Mesa Verde. The access is from the main park entrance at the lower end of Mancos Canyon south of Cortez, CO. It is in the vicinity of the regular full day tour hike at Lion Canyon.

From the canyon rim only the upper level of the site is visible. From above, it looked like there were a few storage ruins here, but much is obscured by the thick vegetation. The canyon floor vegetation is dominated by Gambel Oaks and Ponderosa Pines, an unusual combination in the areas where the cliff dwellings are found. Usually the Pinon Pines and Utah Junipers are found in these canyons with occasional Douglas Firs in the deeper and moister locations.

There are two ladders installed to descend. This canyon is oriented north and south with the main structures facing east rather than toward the more typical south. There is a collapsed tower on the rim right next to the ladders. There is a drainage channel from the rim area that flows across the rough slickrock right into the ruins area, but I didn’t see a seep spring here. The bottom area is very thick with the Gambel Oaks.

This site has been worked on to some extent, but not as much as the large and famous Mesa Verde sites. There is a trail marked along the front of the site and there has been some excavation in places. Most of the Ute Mountain sites have been left as they were found, with little work done on them.

The Ute Mountain sites feature a lot of artifacts on display. There are pottery shards, corn cobs, grinding stones and other small tools. The small guided groups have kept these artifacts available for viewing. Most of the pottery shards are the corrugated types that were typically from cooking pots. There are also some black on white designed pieces.

A large kiva that looks like it has had excavation work is one of the highlights. The Porcupine House has about 50 total rooms and about 5 kivas. The kiva has the bench and pilaster features that are common to the Mesa Verde style kivas. There isn’t room here to step back and get a wide view of the many rooms. All the views are close ups.

One of the unusual artifacts visible at this site was an example of a small sandal made from Yucca fiber. The guide mentioned that it was thought that Yucca had been planted at this relatively cooler site. Yucca was the main fiber that was available to the people living here. It is surprising that an item like that, more than 700 years old stays so well preserved. This site also had more grinding stones visible than most sites that can be visited.

At the end of the trail the group has to turn around and retrace their steps back to the starting point. There is an option to try climbing out along the original route in and out rather than climb the ladders.

The total tour to Porcupine House took 7:00 hours with about 2:00 hours spent at the site. There were also two stops at Mancos Canyon pictograph and petroglyph sites that are part of the regular tours. There were also stops at the park campground and the trailhead area for the regular tour of Lion Canyon.