Spring House Trail

The Spring House Trail is one of three special backcountry hikes offered during the 2010 summer season at Mesa Verde National Park in southwest Colorado. It is also offered in the 2011 fall season. For many years, hiking at Mesa Verde has been limited to the specific trails visiting the major Ancestral Pueblo ruins sites for which the park is famous.

The Spring House Trail starts at the Chapin Mesa Museum and begins by following the paved trail that leads to Spruce Tree House Ruin. A short distance before the reaching the canyon bottom, the trail head for the popular 2.4 mile Petroglyph Trail and Spruce Canyon Trail branches off.

The route to Spring House follows the Spruce Canyon Trail to the point where it turns from south to north, then continues south to the junction with Navajo Canyon, one of the major canyons in the Mesa Verde area. The descending trail toward Navajo Canyon is cool and lush with vegetation and the relative dryness and change in vegetation of the Navajo Canyon floor is noticeable.

There are three ruins structures near the canyon rims to spot with binoculars near the junction of Navajo and Spruce Canyon. To the south is Echo House and just above to the north a wall fragment of Teakettle House can be spotted. The most interesting is the Navajo Watch Tower, one of the mysterious towers perched on a peak of sandstone with a commanding view of the area.

These three structures can be spotted from the Petroglyph Trail if you scan from the right spots, but the views are better from below. An igneous rock dike is visible in the canyon bottom area here. Where the dike passes through the resistant Cliff House sandstone, a notch has formed that may have been a place to travel through the cliffs.

From the junction the trail leads up Navajo Canyon to the junction with Wickiup Canyon and starts climbing the slope on the west side of Wickiup toward the top of Long Mesa. In early June there were many wildflowers in bloom, so many that the trek nearly became a botany hike instead of a ruins hike.

We spotted a large cluster of Claret Cup Cactus, Scarlet and Rocky Mountain Penstemons, Evening Primrose, Globe Mallow, Cliff Fendler Bush, Tetranevris, Forget-Me-Nots and several of the small Mesa Verde endemic plants that were marked with small warning flags for their protection..the Cliff Palace Milkvetch.

To add to the botanical excitement, this hike had a surprise guest speaker. A researcher from an Ohio University was searching the area for potato plants and he actually found some and showed them to us.

Before you comment that this study is just small potatoes, consider that potatoes are only native to Peru and finding them here would mean that the trading network of the Ancestral Puebloans extended as far as South America. The key research question is when did the potatoes arrive here. The usual plants mentioned as cultivated in the Four Corners region are corn, beans, and squash, and now maybe potatoes.

The highlight ruins site along the Wickiup Canyon segment is Buzzard House, across the canyon from the trail about halfway to the mesa top. There were at least four other small sites to spot in this area. These small sites were hard to spot even with binoculars and were in locations that make you wonder how anyone could get there.

The trail arrived at the top of Long Mesa at a narrow neck, practically a knife edge, with great views up and down Long Canyon. It seemed surprising that Wetherill Mesa is just across Long Canyon and the Step House Trail is visible at the canyon’s north end. Spruce Tree House to Wetherill Mesa seems like a long trip if you are traveling by car, but would just be a morning walk if you are hiking. You could leave after breakfast and arrive in time for lunch.

Hiking north along the mesa top for a few minutes, there is a precarious overlook view of 20 ½ House. The odd name comes from the site numbering system used by one of the early investigators, this site having been missed and found later. This is a two level site and is another one to wonder about the difficult location.

The highlight Spring House was also below the rim and was reached with the help of two ladders, a few ropes, and a rocky jumbled trail. The views are all from a platform on the right side and the tour didn’t enter the site. Spring House has evidence for 23 rooms on the upper level and 68 rooms total.

Looking up canyon, it can be thought of as a near neighbor of Step House. There is a good seep spring at the back left side of the site and the structure includes some rare Mesa Verde columns that were built around the spring and support room structures above the precious water.

The group spent about 0:40 minutes viewing and discussing Spring House. There is some minor rock art that can be spotted with binoculars. The return 4 mile leg of the hike took 2:15 hours and the total tour of 8 miles took 8:40 hours. On the outward leg we spent a lot of time pausing and discussing the fabulous Mesa Verde landscape and enjoying this rare opportunity, even for the rangers, to spend a day in this environment.

The $35 cost included a lunch of a turkey, ham, and cheese sandwich, small bag of chips, small bottle of juice, an apple, and several granola bar snacks. It was a warm 80 F degree blue sky early June day and 1 gallon of water should be carried by anyone making this moderately strenuous hike. This is a great hiking opportunity that may not be available every year.