Mesa men

We had explored the largest of the Chacoan Great Houses, Pueblo Bonito and Chetro Ketl, and we wanted to do something different on our second day in the canyon. Our campground neighbors, Tom and Kathleen from Santa Fe, had recommended a moderate hike on top of the mesa to the Pueblo Alto and New Alto sites.

I wondered if the boys would be able to withstand a desert trek, even for only a few miles. I shouldn't have worried: They held up marvelously.

The trail started at Kin Kletso, a late house, after a walk down a gravel road from Pueblo Del Arroyo. It zig-zagged up the cliff, a rough path at best. We made it rougher by taking a wrong turn halfway up, going left instead of right, and gingerly picking our way along the face. Our camp neighbors, coincidentally coming back from a long hike on the canyon floor, noticed us and shouted. It seems we have a talent for wrong turns.

Back on track, we came to perhaps the coolest part of the hike: a narrow crevice that climbed up to the mesa top. We squeezed through, Michele and I as excited as the boys by the Indiana Jones-like passage.

On top, we walked along the edge of sandstone rippled and carved by wind and water, admiring the view. Hot breezes blew on us as we followed cairns marking the way. At one point, after curving around two small canyons, we came across two smooth basins -- called peck holes -- scooped out of the mesa by the Chacoans for, probably, ceremonial use.

Eventually, we arrived just above Pueblo Bonito for a fascinating birds-eye view of the complex. Then the trail turned for the stretch up to Pueblo Alto, the terminus for the Chacoans' north road. The sun bore down on us, and we walked more slowly past yellow-blossomed prickly pear and the occasional lizard. Water breaks grew more frequent. The wet towel draped on my neck had long dried, but Michele periodically moistened the boys' ones. Close to the pueblo, we crossed a stretch of excavated Chacoan road, a patch just floating in a sea of sage and cacti.

When we topped a last ridge and beheld the windswept remains of Pueblo Alto and New Alto, alone on the mesa top, we felt like real explorers discovering a hidden ruined city. That's not to say there wasn't some grumbling, but the expedition's morale picked up when the leaders decided to head back and not brave the loop around the crumbling walls of the unexcavated pueblo.

New Alto, a better-preserved, smaller neighboring complex, stood like a lonely sentinel in the heat. Before leaving. we checked it out, surprising a solitary hiker who sat in the late afternoon sun contemplating the northern vista of distant mesas, buttes and mountains. There she was, enjoying the silence until a noisy family barged in. After a few pleasantries, we left her to her view.

Heading back, spirits improved with every step drawing us closer to air conditioning. Flagging before, we perked up. We got to the Pueblo Bonito turn. Then came the peck holes.

And then, disaster almost struck.

John Michael screamed in horror. A gust had whipped off his beloved range hat, sending it skittering toward the mesa's edge. Worse, he started chasing it.

Things got a little crazy. Without thinking, I yelled for John Michael to stop, and bounded after the tumbling hat, my lens cap popping off. I'm not sure I was exhibiting any better sense chasing a $50 hat toward a precipice. But I was in dad overdrive. Fortunately, the hat stopped in a little ledge, a few yards from sending us both in a freefall.

To his credit, John Michael had not only stopped, but he had retrieved my camera lens cap after it popped off in all the excitement. He got his hat -- and a breathless reminder to hold on to it tightly in the wind.

In comparison, the rest of the hike was uneventful, though the mesa crevice was just as fun going down, and we managed to follow the trail for the rest of the descent. Rosenblum family 1, desert hike and malicious, hat-stealing wind 0. We drove back to camp, in air-conditioning bliss, with proud, sweaty smiles.