I found this high on a ledge

There is a landscape in the southwest where people lived for centuries. They built homes beneath these cliffs, raised families, and made a life here. And then at some point they left. Where did they go? Why did they leave? Hidden high in the canyon walls is a place that may hold part of that story. I want to see if I could get to it. So I'm about to drop into a canyon system in the American southwest that's rich in archaeological sites, some of them dating back at least a thousand years. There's also other things in here, one in particular, that I want to see that's supposed to be thousands of years old. So I'm hoping to spend two nights, that's three days, out here exploring this canyon system. And the reason I say hoping is because there's something that might stop me from staying out here that long. So to give you an idea of why, I think there's a good chance I might have to turn around. This is the off-season. It's really hot. There's often not water down in the canyon floor, so there's a good chance the only water that exists is what I'm carrying. In order to backpack in here you have to be issued a permit. So I logged on to buy my permit and there's over a hundred permits that could be issued and there wasn't a single one issued. So that means I'm the only one backpacking in here. Is that a metaphor? Foreshadowing what's to come. About 75 feet. So I think I could get down from over here. Now the site I'm trying to get to, it's not a structure, it's actually a pictograph panel. And it's a pretty iconic panel in the southwest. I've never been to it and I wonder if you've seen it before. So hopefully tomorrow, with a little luck, we'll make it to it. Two miles that way is where we started. So I'm following a branch of a canyon that connects to a larger canyon. It's about three to four miles long and there's supposed to be ancient sites in here. So the human record in this place goes back all the way to the archaic four, six, even eight thousand years here. So the people that likely built this structure were the ancestral Puebloan people who lived 750 to a thousand years ago out here. Let's continue on down that canyon. There's a spring several miles from here. That's what I'm counting on to have water. So if it doesn't have water, we're gonna have some decisions to make. Oh, well, you could kind of see. Let me get out my other camera. Oh, that's way up there. I can't see it. And it's starting to run out of light, so I think what I'm going to do is set up camp and then tomorrow morning we'll see if we can find a way to access it. There's barely a flat place like right here and I think I'm just going to sleep out tonight, not set up my tent. Oh, it's just so hot. I don't want to be in that thing. Pretty good spot, actually. Great view. So right over here, that's where the site is, right around that corner. You can barely see it over there. We'll have to say goodnight to it. Go check it out tomorrow. What I try to do when I camp is, of course, get out of the canyon bottom, even though tonight it would be nice to stay there because the coldest air sinks to the bottom. But it's also an animal corridor, so I think getting up top here is a little bit safer. If you watch my videos, you might know that I'm afraid of mountain lions a little bit. I had one stalk me when I was 17, 18, so it's always been in the back of my head. I try to avoid it and no, I don't carry a gun. It's a whole other conversation, but we're going to put those thoughts out of our head and I'm going to eat and then I'm going to tuck in, get some sleep, and I'll see you tomorrow. Good morning. Slept decently last night. Cooled off finally enough to fall asleep, so I'm gonna get some food, get some coffee, and then we'll get after it. I came up this ledge over here. I got to get back down. I got to go with this here. Wow. I've never seen this site before. Have you ever seen this site before? Oh, whoa. Looks like there's the ventilator shaft. You can kind of see the deflector stone in there. Yeah, there it is right in the center. So that deflector stone would block the wind to a fire that would be on the other side. That's really cool. I've never looked through a ventilator shaft and seen the deflector stone intact, so that's a first. So I'm tempted, of course, to walk up here and look in, but I don't want to touch any of these rocks here even though it looks like someone has. Someone's likely dug through here, unfortunately. So if this is a kiva, you would enter from a ladder from the top. So even though this looks like a doorway in, it's actually damaged. So likely looters have dug in here, whether they did it 100 years ago when they were first in this canyon or whether it's recent. I don't know. To give you a broad description of this place, the people who lived in here, they're referred to as the ancestral Puebloan people. We don't know what they called themselves. We'll probably never know, but they lived here between 750 and a thousand years ago. So the oldest tree ring cutting date in this canyon is from roughly 1265 to 70. So they thought that there was just a small holdout population here when everyone else moved on. But there's been a recent survey where they've tested a lot more sites out here and they found a number of structures with the late 1260 date. So it's thought now that instead of there being just 50 to 100 people left out here, there was likely a larger population who lived here into the late 1270s and possibly 1280s. But at some point this place went dormant and we're in the four corners and they likely went south into Arizona. They went east into Mesa Verde and they went southeast into the Rio Grande area. The living descendants of the people who lived out here have oral stories that speak of that. So I know that looks very narrow and it is, but it looks pretty passable to me. That however, it's a little too sketchy for me, especially being out here alone. So clearly this was made to keep people out. I wonder if you could get in right here. See if I could reach up there. All right, so I'm going to get out my 360 camera with a pole see if we could see anything through it. So I'm going to head down below these structures to see if by chance there's any way to access them. I'm guessing this is the only way, but let's find out. It's unfortunate we can't get up there with how limited access is. I bet it's in really good condition up there. Oh that's the structure we saw coming in. That thing's massive. What is that? Like a pole? A log? So it's probably a wall made of daub and wattle, just like that mud and wood plaster on the other structures. And it's hard to tell, but it looks like it's maybe 20 to 25 feet tall right there. Whoa. I wonder if there's any way to get up on this side. I know it kind of looks like you could get up from over here, but it's deceiving through the camera. That's way too exposed. It's such limited access up there, it makes me wonder what's hiding up there. All right, as much as I want to stay here, I'm going to get moving down canyon, see if we can find some water today. This canyon doesn't flow all year round. There's some springs that last throughout the year, but we're in a multi-decade drought coming off one of the driest winters in recent history, and that doesn't give me too much hope that there's going to be water in the spring. You know no one's been in here for a while when there's not a single footprint in the canyon, but that means I get this place to myself, which is very rare. All right, I'm getting somewhat close to where the spring is supposed to be here in about five minutes. We'll find out what our fate is. So the spring is supposed to be up here. Let's go check it out. You can see this moss or lichen that's growing here, probably grows around water, but there's no water here. Now this is the side canyon, and the confluence is up here in a half mile. There's a chance the main canyon will have water, but based on the reports I don't think so. All right, I'm almost to the main confluence, and it's not looking good. No, no water. I'm going to sit in the shade and formulate a game plan. My hope was to come down here, find water, and then spend three nights exploring this whole canyon, because I know there's a lot of sites in here. But since there's no water down here, what I'm going to have to do is drop my pack and hike up with a daypack to that panel. I have enough water to do that, then that leaves me three liters to hike out. I don't know if I need to hike out tonight, or if I could sleep down here and hike out tomorrow. But let's go see that panel and worry about all that later. So the people that came before the Ancestral Puebloan people were the basket makers, and their structures, they were more temporary. But even though their structures were more rudimentary, they hadn't invented ceramics yet, their pictographs and their petroglyphs are considered some of the finest rock imagery. And the site that I'm trying to get to was created by those people well over a thousand years ago, as far back as 2,500 years ago. Somewhere up on this cliff face should be the panel, so let's go find it. Whoa, wow. So you have this white figure inside this other figure, possibly could represent pregnancy. And then over here, there's another white figure. Then over here, it's hard to tell what that is, but these odd objects, these shapes. Another smaller person up here. So you could see the faint outline of two others here. So were those laid down at the same time? Are they older? Those ones are more brown, so maybe there's no hematite in there, maybe it's just blood. Animal blood tends to go brown when it dries. Makes me wonder if this object here, this rectangular object with the frills on the end, makes you wonder if there was a person there in red or something that faded over time. That looks like a bear paw. Next to a little person, this one almost looks like it has a bird head. So the right is clearly a man, and the left almost certainly is a woman with her skirt here. And it's interesting that this is a mixture of pictographs and petroglyphs. The red, obviously a pictograph painted on, and the white appears to be a petroglyph they're scraped in. You can see handprints on her shoulders, and it looks like they go down her torso. But it also looks like these handprints that are on her body lead back to that figure that we saw earlier that has since faded. Makes you wonder if there was a person there in red or something that faded over time. Who were these people? Was this a couple? Were they part of a ruling class out here? Were they leaders? Were they elders? Are they buried out here? Now not too far from here, there's also a pair of pictographs in a similar style, different color, but of a man and a woman. And in the late 1800s, they excavated beneath them and they found their bodies. I wonder, are they buried somewhere out here? I don't know. It's hard to say. So these figures standing tall here have a commanding view of the canyon. Can you imagine if you come walking up this way and look up back when these were freshly painted, how bright they were looking down on you? This place feels pretty special. I know that the descendants of the people who lived out here, their ancestors, still come out and visit these sacred places. I was sitting here thinking about how I'm slowly running out of water and how it parallels with the ancestral Puebloan people who lived in here. Something caused them to leave. No one knows exactly why. I bet you the descendants have oral stories that explain why. The archaeological record, those tree ring dates, tell of a drought that set in. So we know that resources probably started to dwindle at that point. If there's no water, you could imagine there's no food. There's a theory that warfare started, that they began to raid and attack each other. The architecture speaks to that, that site that we saw earlier high up in the canyon. It seems like a very well-protected spot. It's got the high ground, it's got defensive walls. So it's likely that they did start raiding each other, whether it was their direct neighbors or distant neighbors, don't really know. While I've been hiking down here worried about water, I was thinking a lot about the drought. And we're in a multi-decade drought. And the irony is I couldn't find any water down here. I have enough water to get out of here, but I don't think I have enough water to spend the night here. So I think it's time to leave. With that said, thank you for joining me on this one. I'll see you on the next one.