Exploring ancient cliff dwellings in Mule Canyon, Utah

Today we're in Bears Ears in Mule Canyon checking out a very well-known set of ruins called House on Fire. If all goes well we're going to continue heading on after we check that place out and there's more ruins in here. The trail is supposed to be pretty overgrown. Most people stop at the first set of ruins so we'll see how it goes. That was a lot better preserved set of ruins than I was expecting. Obviously pretty popular. You want to get there when the lighting is right which was, what was the time on the lighting? 10 30, 10 45. 10 45 was when it was prime for us. I don't know if that changes throughout the year and you probably saw people get down low and shooting up a little bit. The less sky you have the photo, the more the colors come out in the rocks. If you visit these places, practice leave no trace. Don't touch anything. Leave everything how you found it so future generations can enjoy it. And now we're lost. It's maybe a mile or so to get to House on Fire. The trail keeps going up and there's three or four other ruin sites up here. Most people stop at House on Fire and turn around though so trail gets a lot less easy to follow but it's not been too bad so far. Yep there's there's ruins right up there. Those look really intact too. We're gonna have to check in a minute. Keep your eyes peeled on the side of the canyon and you'll get used to seeing the alcoves that they put them in. It's got an overhang. It looks relatively deep. Might be something worth Tina found a much more sane route so I'm gonna grab our gear and bring it over to her. I don't know maybe don't take the direct route every time. Sometimes look for less sketchy ways to get up to places. It's another set of ruins. Look really small up in that alcove. I don't think I'm going up there We'll see how that goes. I'm not looking forward to getting down that. Anyway there's those matates or whatever they're called. Matati. Where they grind corn. It's like some pottery shards collection pile here. This used to be a room and then over to these. I love the work with these sticks. I don't know what they were for. So the trail gets really hard to follow. It goes into the wash out of the wash back and forth. So sometimes you end up not really knowing exactly where you're supposed to go. So if you're out here doing that make sure that you practice leave no trace. Which means walk on durable surfaces. So you want to walk in a wash. You want to walk on rocks. You want to steer clear of cryptobiotic soil that looks like this. That helps prevent erosion. You don't want to step on plants and don't even want to walk on sand dunes a lot of the time. So anyway if you find out that you're not on trail you should probably backtrack and look around. You probably missed where it went into or came out of the wash. Get back on the trail and you I don't know if you can see this but ruins ruins. There's some up there a little bit and then there's some up top. I don't know how they got up to that. It looks a little sketchier than I thought to get up there. There's that key doorway and then back in here. Wow they've still got the doors for those storage things. This looks like another door. I don't know what these designs are. It's wild. Looks like finger marks. Oh I wish you could get up here. This is one of the best ones I've ever seen. Gotten all that and there's even more up there. I don't know how they got up there. Ladders I guess. This is one of the most impressive sites I've seen. It's amazing. All right now I got to get down from here. Another set of ruins way up there. I do not feel like climbing up to that one. It's fine. There's our last set of ruins. Looks way up there. I think I could get up this but I would not want to come down it so I'm not going to do that. All right so we went up canyon a little bit further and found two more sets of ruins but they were both really high up and difficult to reach so just going to end the video with that one. We've got about five miles to hike back to the car and then we got to drive back to Phoenix so I'm going to put the camera away and we're going to book it. We're done here.