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canyonwalkerSedona Travelog #10
Sedona, AZ - Sun, 29 May 2022, 1pm
I've kind of been sneering at Subway Cave for being Instagram famous. Often such places are oversold; they're not as amazing in person as in carefully posed shots. And almost always they're over-touristed. Subway Cave is definitely over-touristed but I'm not sure it's oversold. In addition to the caves being fun to explore there are also ancient native cliff dwellings here.
In the photo above you can see remnants of two cliff dwelling rooms built into caves in the same stratum of rock. A caution about jumping to conclusions, though.... The walls you see may not be authentic. They may have instead been reconstructed by well-meaning scientists decades ago based on what they think the ancient Puebloan people would've done 800 years ago. That said, there is ample evidence elsewhere in this region that the ancients constructed such buildings. Some were built with many rooms and used as dwellings. Those with few rooms were often storage areas, possibly for when hunters or nomads moved around.
The two small caves with walls build in front of them are not the only caves here. RIght next to them are at least two larger caves, including the one in the photo above. Were these used as rooms, but the rock walls all fallen/removed in the intervening centuries? It's hard to say. When there's not physical evidence— and sadly, physical evidence has often been removed over the span of hundreds of years— we can only guess.
BTW, what did it entail crossing from the picturesque Subway Cave over to here? I had to "go around the horn":
In the photo above you can see 3 people going around the horn. Two of them are clinging to the wall because, yeah, it's a little scary there. The rock floor tilts away to a sheer fall of 50'.
Here's what this area looks like with a bit more context around it:
At the bottoms of the photo above you can see a pair of hikers deciding whether to ascend through the chute I climbed. If they make it up, they'll be at the rock stratum those other three hikers are clinging to.
How about the view to the side?
This is the view out the side canyon the Subway Caves are nestled in. I don't know if the ancient Puebloans lived here, but if they did this sure seems like a penthouse suite.
Sedona, AZ - Sun, 29 May 2022, 1pm
I've kind of been sneering at Subway Cave for being Instagram famous. Often such places are oversold; they're not as amazing in person as in carefully posed shots. And almost always they're over-touristed. Subway Cave is definitely over-touristed but I'm not sure it's oversold. In addition to the caves being fun to explore there are also ancient native cliff dwellings here.
In the photo above you can see remnants of two cliff dwelling rooms built into caves in the same stratum of rock. A caution about jumping to conclusions, though.... The walls you see may not be authentic. They may have instead been reconstructed by well-meaning scientists decades ago based on what they think the ancient Puebloan people would've done 800 years ago. That said, there is ample evidence elsewhere in this region that the ancients constructed such buildings. Some were built with many rooms and used as dwellings. Those with few rooms were often storage areas, possibly for when hunters or nomads moved around.
The two small caves with walls build in front of them are not the only caves here. RIght next to them are at least two larger caves, including the one in the photo above. Were these used as rooms, but the rock walls all fallen/removed in the intervening centuries? It's hard to say. When there's not physical evidence— and sadly, physical evidence has often been removed over the span of hundreds of years— we can only guess.
BTW, what did it entail crossing from the picturesque Subway Cave over to here? I had to "go around the horn":
In the photo above you can see 3 people going around the horn. Two of them are clinging to the wall because, yeah, it's a little scary there. The rock floor tilts away to a sheer fall of 50'.
Here's what this area looks like with a bit more context around it:
At the bottoms of the photo above you can see a pair of hikers deciding whether to ascend through the chute I climbed. If they make it up, they'll be at the rock stratum those other three hikers are clinging to.
How about the view to the side?
This is the view out the side canyon the Subway Caves are nestled in. I don't know if the ancient Puebloans lived here, but if they did this sure seems like a penthouse suite.
