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: Chaco Culture, Pierre's site, Twin Angels and back through Pierre's site. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,100 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Pueblo Pintado stands in the high desert of northwestern New Mexico, on Navajo land, and it is the easternmost of the great houses connected to Chaco Canyon. Around a thousand years ago the people we call Ancestral Puebloans raised masonry walls here, several storeys tall, laying thin sandstone into patterns that still look careful today. The ruin has been roughened by weather, but the arrangement of rooms, the circular kivas and the long arc of the building are clear, and you can walk around it on a short trail.
Read the complete Pueblo Pintado write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Pueblo Pintado is where the day begins. Next is Chaco Culture.
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 comes up about 63 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 148 km into the recorded legs you reach Pierre's site. 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.
Twin Angels, 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 sits at 155 km, about halfway. Next is back through 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.
back through Chaco Culture comes up about 359 km into the recorded legs. Next is Pueblo Pintado.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Pueblo Pintado write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Pueblo Pintado closes the day.
Pueblo Pintado → Chaco Culture is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
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 → 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 → back through Chaco Culture is 86 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Chaco Culture → Pueblo Pintado is 64 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.