THE CITADEL

After breakfast Mike and Nancy headed home while Cathie and I headed out for some more exploring.  We didn't get far as the weather started changing.  It wasn't long before we started getting snow flurries, so we spent the day mostly in the car.

The next day, the sky was clear and the air crisp so we decided to look for "The Citadel", a ruin on Cedar Mesa.  After getting hiking directions from a BLM ranger, we drove to the trail head.  After an easy 1 hour hike along a canyon rim, we arrived at the Citadel.

ALONG THE RIM

THE CITADEL

Looks pretty scary, doesn't it?  Well, what you see in the photo is not the worst of it.  Where the photo was taken is about 300 feet above the narrow peninsula.  You must down climb a veeeeery steep rock face just to reach the peninsula, but in order to down climb, you had to go around this obstacle.

THE OBSTACLE

This is the point were we chickened out.  To get around this pointed rock you had to walk, or crawl along the cliff on this 18 inch wide ledge with an exposure to a fall to the canyon bottom.  We opted to live a little longer.

So the day wouldn't be a total failure, we headed to another area and hiked to a series of ruins.  This one a portion of the roof system was well preserved.

On the way back to Bluff, we decided to take a short cut along the west side of Comb Ridge.  Not too many people have been using this road lately as it was blocked by large piles to tumbleweeds, sometimes piled higher than the car.  Not wanting to go back, we just plowed through.



TUMBLEWEEDS

IS THIS GOOD FOR THE PAINT JOB?

COMB RIDGE