CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
The stops in between: Pierre's site, Twin Angels, Aztec Ruins National Monument and back through Twin Angels. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,050 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
Getting to Chaco Canyon is part of the point. The last stretch of road into this remote corner of north-western New Mexico is unpaved, rutted and washboarded, and after rain it turns to slick mud that can make it impassable for any kind of vehicle. Take that seriously: on a road bike it is tough, and on a big touring machine it can be miserable. But the reward is extraordinary. Between roughly 850 and 1150, the Ancestral Puebloan people built monumental great houses here, multi-storey stone buildings with hundreds of rooms, aligned with the sun, moon and cardinal directions, linked by straight roads across the desert. Chaco Culture National Historical Park was listed by UNESCO in 1987.
Read the complete Chaco Culture write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Chaco Culture is where the day begins. Next is Pierre's site.
North of Chaco Canyon, the Ancestral Puebloans built something that still puzzles archaeologists: a road. Not a trail, but a wide, carefully engineered path, about nine metres wide in places, running almost dead straight north across the desert for some fifty kilometres. It is known as the Great North Road, and Pierre's site sits right on it. This is a cluster of small structures built on and around a prominent sandstone outcrop, including what may have been signalling stations or shrines on top of the hill, and from its height you can see far across the San Juan Basin. Like Kin Ya'a to the south, it is protected as one of the Chaco outliers on the World Heritage list.
Read the complete Pierre's site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Pierre's site comes up about 85 km into the recorded legs. Next is Twin Angels.
South of Bloomfield, on the edge of the badlands of Kutz Canyon, a small Chacoan great house sits on a ridge with views over the San Juan Basin. Twin Angels Pueblo is one of the outliers of Chaco Culture, a stone building with rooms and a kiva, built around a thousand years ago by people connected with the great centre at Chaco Canyon, about eighty kilometres to the south. It lies near the end of the Great North Road, the long, straight Chacoan road running north from the canyon, and it is part of the UNESCO-listed Chaco Culture. It is managed by the Bureau of Land Management, and reached by a rough dirt road and a short hike.
Read the complete Twin Angels write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 145 km into the recorded legs you reach Twin Angels. Next is Aztec Ruins National Monument.
The Aztecs never came anywhere near Aztec, New Mexico. The ruins here were named by nineteenth-century settlers who assumed, wrongly, that such impressive buildings must have been made by the famous people of central Mexico. In fact, they were built by Ancestral Puebloans between about 1100 and 1300, as part of the great Chacoan world centred on Chaco Canyon, sixty miles to the south, and they are included with Chaco in the UNESCO listing of the Chaco Culture.
Read the complete Aztec Ruins National Monument write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Aztec Ruins National Monument, about halfway. Next is back through Twin Angels.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Twin Angels write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Twin Angels sits at 155 km, about halfway. Next is back through Pierre's site.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Pierre's site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Pierre's site comes up about 293 km into the recorded legs. Next is Chaco Culture.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Chaco Culture write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Chaco Culture closes the day.
Chaco Culture → Pierre's site is 85 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Pierre's site → Twin Angels is 60 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Twin Angels → Aztec Ruins National Monument is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Aztec Ruins National Monument → back through Twin Angels is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Twin Angels → back through Pierre's site is 65 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Pierre's site → Chaco Culture is 86 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.