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.
From Bloomfield it runs 345 km to Bloomfield; allow about 8 h 09 of riding. The stops in between: Chaco Culture, Kin Ya'a and back through Chaco Culture. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,250 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
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 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 103 km into the recorded legs. Next is Kin Ya'a.
A broken stone tower rising out of the sagebrush is what you see first at Kin Ya'a, and it is one of the strangest sights in the Southwest. This was a Chacoan great house, built in the eleventh and twelfth centuries by the same Ancestral Puebloan culture that raised the monumental buildings of Chaco Canyon, some forty kilometres to the north. What makes Kin Ya'a special is its tower kiva, a round ceremonial room built up four storeys high, much of which still stands. Its name is Navajo and is usually translated as tall house. It is one of the outlying sites included in the World Heritage listing of Chaco Culture, linked to the canyon by what archaeologists believe was a formal road.
Read the complete Kin Ya'a write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 171 km into the recorded legs you reach Kin Ya'a. 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, late in the day. Next is 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 at Twin Angels. That is the ride.
Twin Angels → Chaco Culture is 103 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Chaco Culture → Kin Ya'a is 68 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Kin Ya'a → back through Chaco Culture is 71 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Chaco Culture → Twin Angels is 103 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.