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.
A 488 km round trip from Cortez - roughly 9 h 12 in the saddle. The stops in between: Aztec Ruins National Monument, Twin Angels, Pierre's site and back through Twin Angels. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,450 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
On a high sandstone plateau in the south-west corner of Colorado, the Ancestral Puebloan people lived for about seven hundred years, from roughly the sixth century to the end of the thirteenth, and in the last century or so of that time they built their homes in the shelter of the cliffs. Mesa Verde, the Green Table, takes its Spanish name from the pinon and juniper that cover the mesa top. The cliff dwellings, tucked beneath overhanging rock, are among the best preserved in North America, and Cliff Palace, the biggest of them, has around a hundred and fifty rooms and many circular ceremonial chambers called kivas.
Read the complete Mesa Verde National Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mesa Verde National Park is where the day begins. 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 comes up about 140 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 178 km into the recorded legs you reach Twin Angels. 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, 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 234 km, about halfway. Next is back through Aztec Ruins National Monument.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Aztec Ruins National Monument write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Aztec Ruins National Monument comes up about 348 km into the recorded legs. Next is Mesa Verde National Park.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Mesa Verde National Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mesa Verde National Park closes the day.
Mesa Verde National Park → Aztec Ruins National Monument is 140 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Aztec Ruins National Monument → Twin Angels is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Twin Angels → Pierre's site is 65 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Pierre's site → back through Twin Angels is 60 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Twin Angels → back through Aztec Ruins National Monument is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Aztec Ruins National Monument → Mesa Verde National Park is 140 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.