Two weeks ago Walt & I went a total of 39 miles round trip down Virgin Mesa and, among many other sights and sites, visited the Amoxiumqua ruins down there.  (  http://gogittum.com/blog/?cat=100  )   Toward the end of that run we went off to the east on a side trail to try to find a little known ruin on the edge of the canyon, but ran out of trail and time, ending at waypoint 820.  (the “820″ flag is hidden under the “Trl E” flag)  GPS map is at the end of this story.

Today, Sept. 27, 2009 we took off again on a dedicated trip to find our missing ruins, called “Quaia-tso-qua.”  We went in to the last waypoint from the previous trip and parked the quads at the “quads” flag on the GPS.  Remember me saying several times previously - “Always mark where you leave the vehicle ??”  It saved us a lot of thrashing around this time, believe me.  We left the quads in heavy brush after running completely out of trail.  The quads are real work-horses, but can take you only so far……………

So, OK, we got onto our hind legs and started cross country.  No trails.  Right away it got very rough and we quickly warmed up.  Very quickly.  In this picture, the line of mountain in top left is the far side of Jemez Canyon, with Jemez Springs below.  The closer ridge, barely showing at upper right is the near side of the canyon - our destination……..part of it.  We had an old GPS waypoint that we “thought” was close to Quaia-tso-qua, so we headed for it.  Straight to the edge of the canyon, then a mile south on the rim……………

Some areas opened up and were fairly easy going and in one of those stretches we found another of the many ancient single family dwellings.  Archaeologists have marked many of them with white tape for further study.  (we found several of these today)……………

As I mentioned in the Amoxiumqua page, when one of the women died, her neighbors broke all her bowls, so her spirit wouldn’t be trapped in them.  True to form, there were 1,000’s of potsherds here, and some were from very large pots.  Look at the radius of these pieces and the thickness of the handle piece on the left…………..

We left them where they lay.  Much farther on we came to the edge of the canyon.  I approached eagerly but carefully and it was starting to look great……………

Then, I carefully stepped out onto a promontory with camera ready……………

………..and the view looking north to Jemez Springs nearly took my breath away.  Magnificent.  It’s 1,400 feet down to the canyon floor.  This area is all volcanic and there are many hot springs down in the canyon.  Massive Valles Caldera shows to the north in upper center and right of this pic.  It’s the 9,000 ft high, 14 mile wide crater left from the tremendous explosions (2 of them) of a 25,000 ft mountain 1.6 and 1.2 million years ago……………

Then a look downstream, to the south…………..

But……..we had ruins to find.  Not as easy as you might think in country like this.  We hiked about a mile south along the edge of the canyon, with no joy…………..

Then retraced our steps along a little different route and continued an additional mile north, then split up and zig-zagged over a large distance.  No ruins.  Walt later found an old GPS program that showed a different location.  Looks like we walked right past it.  The flag marked “Quad” is where we parked the quads, “Walt’s Ruin” is where we originally thought the ruins were at and Walt’s Ruin 2 is the new location, so we’ll try there next time……………….

We came back out considerably north of the quads and while bushwhacking south ran across an old “road” that’s pretty badly grown over.  It’s at “Trl E” and may give us a way to get farther in on the quads next time.  We’d have found the quads OK, but the GPS fix made it much faster and easier.  I figure we hiked around 5 miles today and ran 25 miles on the quads, some of them very tough miles………..and ol’ Lar was beat, whupped, thrashed, worn out……..and was very glad to get back to the truck.  I’m pretty well acclimated to the altitude now, but not in shape yet for heavy hiking.  We both have plans for next weekend, so will try for the Missing Ruins again in 2 weeks.  Wish us luck.                        Lar.

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Larry Bourne
Santa Fe, NM
www.gogittum.com
www.gogittum.com/blog

Posted: September 29th, 2009 under 09 Santa Fe, 09-9-27 Missing Ruins.
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