Oak Tree House
Mesa Verde National Park
The ruins blend so well into the cliffs that it's easy to miss the upper tier of ruins. Several of the sites at Mesa Verde have an upper tier such as can be seen here at Oak Tree House. I can't help but wonder how the inhabitants gained access. Probably it was by the use of ladders but I have been up 40 ft ladders and they sway so much in every direction that it's not something you'd never want to do daily or multiple times a day. The ledge also gets pretty narrow, in fact just down right sketchy, at that crack in the middle of the upper tier. I can't even imagine making that crawl. Probably these are just granaries and nobody actually stayed up there. Still, somebody had to go up there regularly to put food there after harvest and get it through the rest of the year.
One other thing I noticed about these ruins are all of the smoke stains on the rocks above the lower tier of ruins
Oak Tree House
Mesa Verde National Park
The ruins blend so well into the cliffs that it's easy to miss the upper tier of ruins. Several of the sites at Mesa Verde have an upper tier such as can be seen here at Oak Tree House. I can't help but wonder how the inhabitants gained access. Probably it was by the use of ladders but I have been up 40 ft ladders and they sway so much in every direction that it's not something you'd never want to do daily or multiple times a day. The ledge also gets pretty narrow, in fact just down right sketchy, at that crack in the middle of the upper tier. I can't even imagine making that crawl. Probably these are just granaries and nobody actually stayed up there. Still, somebody had to go up there regularly to put food there after harvest and get it through the rest of the year.
One other thing I noticed about these ruins are all of the smoke stains on the rocks above the lower tier of ruins