Not every place has its time. But on this placid Sunday morning, Alcove House had its time.
We ventured into Bandelier National Monument early. A summer shuttle system locked out individual cars from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. We beat 7:30. Bandelier has one of the best approaches of any national monument. You enter atop a mesa, then descend into Frijoles Canyon. From the curve before dropping into the canyon, one can see Sandia Peak and Albuquerque some 60 miles away.
A handful of cars sat around the Civilian Conversation Corps-constructed Bandelier Village, with the visitor center, restaurant and gift shop. That translated to no one on the trails. From the visitor center to the Alcove House trail, we passed one person, a 20-something from Asheville moving faster than us.
Bandelier has more than dozens of miles of trails that go up and down the canyon and over closer to Valles Caldera (the two park units abut each other). It has been nominated for national park status, The more time I spend there, the harder it is to argue that proposal.
They waited until we embarked on the Long House Trail before they grazed along the path, eventually moving into the pueblo ruins and off to the safety of the cottonwoods along Frijoles Creek.
We moved through the Long House structures. The residents carved these structures from the porous tuff of the canyon walls, with wooden structures constructed in front of the stone rooms. The trail discreetly rises above the canyon floor. I spotted a few people far below. The deer had absconded to the woods. We decided to do the Alcove House Trail, adding an extra mile roundtrip (so we covered 2. Even if we didn’t climb, we were assured a longer hike. Of course “long” is relative – we covered 2-plus miles of 80 trail miles in the park.
Just a dry bed closer to the visitor center, Frijoles Creek turned back into a bubbling riparian lifeline the futher we went up the trail into the canyon. From Alcove House, the stream flow was the loudest noise below.
The canyon felt wilder the further we went. At the base of the Alcove House climb, my friend planned to do it whether or not I did. I could see the young hiker and saw the trail was split well between ladders and stairs. Last time I was here, I never considered climbing to Alcove House. Days after I visited, a woman died on the hike when part of the cliff face broke away as she climbed a ladder and knocked her to her death.
This time, the lack of people and my friend’s desire to climb changed my mind. Not wanting to sit at the base, I decided to go first and moved up the cliff face.
Stairs and ladders took me 140 feet above the canyon floor. The stairs are slippery due to silt and sand on the steps. The wooden ladders offer less trouble but required both hands. Combined, the four ladders represented more ladders than I have climbed consecutively in my entire life. The middle two were quite long, with only birdsong and the talking creek in my ears. In retrospect, it took a few minutes. But processing every rung on the ladder took an eternity. I blotted out fears of slipping.
Atop the last and shortest ladder, I arrived at a peaceful place and shed my fear for a while. A reconstructed kiva and a rock shelter above the lush forest of Frijoles Canyon. I suspect more places exist in the canyon heights that ancestral Puebloans made their own, but Alcove House is hard to top.
I had my moment with the ancient denizens of this place, and I descended even more cautiously than I arrived. My natural clumsiness fortunately chose not to show up. At the bottom, I could observe the alcove above the creek and know I had stood there.
We were back on the trail just as volumes of people began to pick up. In that way, the quiet walk along the creek’s floodplain back down the canyon is the perfect way to preserve the majesty of Alcove House. The ladder climb is exhilarating, the chamber a glimpse into the past, and creek path provides room to contemplate the experience.
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