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NAXJA Member #135
- Location
- Albuquerque, NM
The name is spoken "Canyon d‘SHAY". It is the white man's spelling of the Navajo word Tsegi, a physical or spiritual home. This National Monument is unique in that it is home and refuge to many Navajo families in addition to being a showcase of the Anasazi who are completely unrelated to the Navajo but who lived here before their arrival.
Our trip on Labor Day weekend, 2007, began at the Cottonwood Campground. It has shady sites with flush toilets just inside the monument and within walking distance of the visitor center. No fee is charged to enter the monument or camp at this campground. Only 25% of the sites were occupied during our visit on the holiday weekend. You can drive the paved north and south rim roads to several overlooks of major ruins, as well as hike down to the White House Ruin for free. You need a Navajo guide that is registered with the NPS in order to visit the canyon bottom. They cost $15/hour for the first vehicle in a group, $5/hour for each additional one, up to 5 vehicles per guide. Somebody in your group will need to supply an empty seat for the guide. Overnight stays can also be arranged.
Go the ranger's desk at the Canyon de Chelly visitor center and tell them you need a guide. You will fill out a free permit with the license plate #s of all vehicles in your group, along with the group leader's name and address. I showed up at 4pm, there were no guides on the premises but the ranger called one and she showed up within 10 minutes. I did this because I wanted to leave at 7am the next morning and the visitor center is open from 8am to 5pm. If you get there anytime in the morning there should be a guide or 3 milling about, waiting for business.
Very important: The Navajo Nation observes daylight savings time, while the rest of Arizona does not. Set your watch to Mountain Daylight Savings Time when visiting the Reservation from March through November.
Scott and I left at 7am with Kathy Yazzie, the guide we had arranged for the day before. Kathy rode with Scott the entire time as he was the only one with an empty seat. She had grown up in the canyon and had lots of interesting stories about the place, along with some dubious driving tips for Scott, usually involving the need to drive faster.
All driving trips into the canyon start here, in the wide, sandy, dry Chinle Wash.
The sheer canyon walls soon soar above us.
Kathy points out barely visible petroglyphs to Scott at the first major ruin in the canyon, aptly called First Ruin. Bring binoculars as you are not allowed into any of the ruins here!
You can hike to White House Ruin for free. There are Navajo vendors selling jewelry there as well as outhouses. No drinking water though! This is as close as you can get to any of the ruins.
We continued up the south canyon, enjoying scenery that was quite similar to Moab.
The upper part of the canyon had flooded out 4 days ago, Kathy said that none of the Navajos had been back up there yet. She guided us as far as Spiderwoman Rock, through puddles...
...stream crossings...
...and washouts.
We returned Kathy to her cabin at Chinle Wash for lunch and met up with Chuck, who had spent the morning doing the north rim drive while waiting for us to get out of the canyon. He is from Arizona and did not realize that the clocks on the Reservation were set an hour ahead of his. After taking an hour's break back at our shady campsite and eating some lunch, we headed back out with Kathy again, now with Chuck and his hemi powered Dodge truck.
This time we headed up the north canyon, Canyon del Muerto. Along the way we saw more ruins, as well as many wildflowers.
Those 3 renegade horses provided a comic counterpoint to the beauty and mystery of the canyon. We would be driving along and the trio would come galloping out of the underbrush past us, sometimes pursued by a pair of lasso-toting Navajos riding bareback. That happened several times, the entire length of the canyon. We even saw them one last time just before exiting Chinle Wash. I’ll bet they are still running free!
We turned around at the majestic Mummy Cave Ruins. The road gets pretty faint past there anyways.
Kathy had mentioned something about a Pine Tree trail at the end of del Muerto that she thought the Jeep Jamboree uses to drive up to the mesa top... this might be an interesting way to end the next trip.
Early afternoon brought the sound of thunder echoing off the canyon walls. Kathy said that if the canyon flooded it could fill the entire floor, but only a couple of inches deep and we would be ok, so we continued our tour deeper into del Muerto. We never did get rained on, but there were signs of storms nearby:
The road and creek bed had been dry on the drive up, on the return trip it was flowing swiftly with a flood that emerged from the junction of Black Rock Canyon. Bear in mind that we didn't see a drop of rain the entire day!
The strange thing is that we went from a dry road and creek, to a flood that steadily increased as we traveled down canyon into the peak of the flow, and then back to a dry wash as we outran the water and it sank into the sand of the lower canyon.
We spent a total of 10 hours on the clock with our guide and got to see about 1/2 of each of the 2 major canyons, we also learned a lot about the Navajo culture and history of the area.
The included .gpx file has tracks for the north and south canyons, as well as for the trip from the south rim drive over the Defiance Plateau to AZ Highway 264. There are also waypoints for the visitor center and Cottonwood Campground. More information is available at the monument website.
Our trip on Labor Day weekend, 2007, began at the Cottonwood Campground. It has shady sites with flush toilets just inside the monument and within walking distance of the visitor center. No fee is charged to enter the monument or camp at this campground. Only 25% of the sites were occupied during our visit on the holiday weekend. You can drive the paved north and south rim roads to several overlooks of major ruins, as well as hike down to the White House Ruin for free. You need a Navajo guide that is registered with the NPS in order to visit the canyon bottom. They cost $15/hour for the first vehicle in a group, $5/hour for each additional one, up to 5 vehicles per guide. Somebody in your group will need to supply an empty seat for the guide. Overnight stays can also be arranged.
Go the ranger's desk at the Canyon de Chelly visitor center and tell them you need a guide. You will fill out a free permit with the license plate #s of all vehicles in your group, along with the group leader's name and address. I showed up at 4pm, there were no guides on the premises but the ranger called one and she showed up within 10 minutes. I did this because I wanted to leave at 7am the next morning and the visitor center is open from 8am to 5pm. If you get there anytime in the morning there should be a guide or 3 milling about, waiting for business.
Very important: The Navajo Nation observes daylight savings time, while the rest of Arizona does not. Set your watch to Mountain Daylight Savings Time when visiting the Reservation from March through November.
Scott and I left at 7am with Kathy Yazzie, the guide we had arranged for the day before. Kathy rode with Scott the entire time as he was the only one with an empty seat. She had grown up in the canyon and had lots of interesting stories about the place, along with some dubious driving tips for Scott, usually involving the need to drive faster.
All driving trips into the canyon start here, in the wide, sandy, dry Chinle Wash.
The sheer canyon walls soon soar above us.
Kathy points out barely visible petroglyphs to Scott at the first major ruin in the canyon, aptly called First Ruin. Bring binoculars as you are not allowed into any of the ruins here!
You can hike to White House Ruin for free. There are Navajo vendors selling jewelry there as well as outhouses. No drinking water though! This is as close as you can get to any of the ruins.
We continued up the south canyon, enjoying scenery that was quite similar to Moab.
The upper part of the canyon had flooded out 4 days ago, Kathy said that none of the Navajos had been back up there yet. She guided us as far as Spiderwoman Rock, through puddles...
...stream crossings...
...and washouts.
We returned Kathy to her cabin at Chinle Wash for lunch and met up with Chuck, who had spent the morning doing the north rim drive while waiting for us to get out of the canyon. He is from Arizona and did not realize that the clocks on the Reservation were set an hour ahead of his. After taking an hour's break back at our shady campsite and eating some lunch, we headed back out with Kathy again, now with Chuck and his hemi powered Dodge truck.
This time we headed up the north canyon, Canyon del Muerto. Along the way we saw more ruins, as well as many wildflowers.
Those 3 renegade horses provided a comic counterpoint to the beauty and mystery of the canyon. We would be driving along and the trio would come galloping out of the underbrush past us, sometimes pursued by a pair of lasso-toting Navajos riding bareback. That happened several times, the entire length of the canyon. We even saw them one last time just before exiting Chinle Wash. I’ll bet they are still running free!
We turned around at the majestic Mummy Cave Ruins. The road gets pretty faint past there anyways.
Kathy had mentioned something about a Pine Tree trail at the end of del Muerto that she thought the Jeep Jamboree uses to drive up to the mesa top... this might be an interesting way to end the next trip.
Early afternoon brought the sound of thunder echoing off the canyon walls. Kathy said that if the canyon flooded it could fill the entire floor, but only a couple of inches deep and we would be ok, so we continued our tour deeper into del Muerto. We never did get rained on, but there were signs of storms nearby:
The road and creek bed had been dry on the drive up, on the return trip it was flowing swiftly with a flood that emerged from the junction of Black Rock Canyon. Bear in mind that we didn't see a drop of rain the entire day!
The strange thing is that we went from a dry road and creek, to a flood that steadily increased as we traveled down canyon into the peak of the flow, and then back to a dry wash as we outran the water and it sank into the sand of the lower canyon.
We spent a total of 10 hours on the clock with our guide and got to see about 1/2 of each of the 2 major canyons, we also learned a lot about the Navajo culture and history of the area.
The included .gpx file has tracks for the north and south canyons, as well as for the trip from the south rim drive over the Defiance Plateau to AZ Highway 264. There are also waypoints for the visitor center and Cottonwood Campground. More information is available at the monument website.
