Life on the Edge -- the Moon House Ruin

December 08, 2020

 by Steve

Alternative title: 
The Day We Tried to Kill Larry

October 2020: the Coronavirus pandemic was raging in the US, although the spread wasn't as bad as it would get later in the fall. We had just spent the summer in the Tucson area, where they recorded the hottest summer on record in more than 100 years of record keeping. We needed to get out of the desert for a while. So we headed to southeastern Utah, where it's easy to isolate and there are interesting things like pueblo ruins and cliff dwellings to discover.

We invited our friend Larry to come along. Larry lives in Prescott, AZ, and like us had spent the summer doing a whole lot of nothing, wanting to avoid exposure to Covid-19. Larry is a fun guy, pretty adventurous, and (we thought) probably a good hiker. But most important was that Larry's truck has 4-wheel drive. So Larry came up to Blanding, UT, for 5 days or so, and we planned out some places to see.

The area around Blanding is riddled with ancient ruins. The areas of Bears Ears National Monument, Cedar Mesa, and Grand Gulch contain hundreds of these sites. Some are fairly accessible, but many of the sites require multi-day backpacking trips or longs treks down roads requiring vehicles with high clearance. Our Honda HRV couldn't get us to one of the more impressive cliff dwellings, Moon House, because the access road is 8 miles of high-clearance-vehicle road followed by 1.2 miles of 4-wheel-drive road. But since Larry has 4WD, this one was on the table.


Here's our first view of the Moon House, as seen from across the canyon. To get there, however, requires hiking down about 300 feet to the canyon floor and then climbing up the other side to the ruin, with both sides being rather steep. The hike to the ruins starts out easy enough: a nice walk over slickrock to the canyon rim. Once you head down into the canyon, things get a bit more interesting. It's not so much a trail as it is a "route." There's a bit of exposure, but if you did slip and fall, it would take a couple good bounces before you went over the edge and plummeted to the canyon floor below.


These canyons have been sculpted by water erosion of millions of years, and they tend to have harder layers of rock that create rims along the canyon wall. These can be a bit challenging to descend, and harder to ascend. Below is a picture of the canyon where the Moon House is located.


We had to descend one side of this canyon, including going over one of these rims, and then scramble up the other side. This is where things got interesting for Larry. We made it over the rim all right, as earlier hikers had built up a pile of rocks on the ledge below. Without that it would have been a 6 foot drop to the ledge. The trail then continues along the ledge, which gets narrower and narrower (which means that the sheer drop to the canyon floor below gets closer and closer); then the trail eventually plummets down the side of the canyon. That's where Larry decided he had seen enough.


Larry decided that continuing on would be taking on more risk than he was willing to do, and so he said "You go on and see the ruin. I'll wait here for you." That's Larry (above) sitting just off the trail. It's good to know your limits and not go beyond them. Continuing on when that little voice in your head tells you to stop is what gets people in trouble. So, as much as we know that he would have enjoyed seeing the ruin, we didn't push him to continue.

The cool thing about this ruin is that there is a courtyard. Under the deep overhang of rock, an outer wall that encloses a courtyard area. An inner wall creates room tucked into the back of the recess. With this double layer of protection, the inner rooms still show their wall paintings, unaffected by time.


Here's Jane (above), about to scramble through the door in the outer wall.  You have to be careful not to touch the wall at all, lest you damage it. Note the openings at the top of the wall for light and air.


Here's Jane in the courtyard, looking into one of the inner rooms. The doorway she came through is that area of sunlight just behind her. Note the white painting on the wall on the left side.


The walls of one of the inner rooms are painted to show the different phases of the moon--hence the name "Moon House." Not much light gets into the room through the single door/window, but fortunately we had been forewarned and hadbrought along headlamps and flashlights.


One of the cool things about this site is that some of the walls are made of mud packed over a thatch work of sticks--kind of a primitive plaster. You can see the hand-prints of the people that made this over a thousand years ago. (And no, Jane is not touching it; her hand is a couple of inches in front of the wall).

The tricky bit about this hike is getting out when you are done. Here you can see us descending back down the canyon side, which is fairly smooth slickrock. Yes, this picture is looking pretty much straight up, and you can see there's nothing to hold onto, so it's best to have really grippy boots.


The trickiest bit is yet to come, which is where you climb and pull yourself up an overhang onto the rim that runs along the canyon wall. This required climbing up a pile of rocks, then scrambling up the rim with pretty much nothing to hold onto. We made it up, with Steve going first and then pulling both Jane and Larry up after. They probably wouldn't have made it out without assistance. Unfortunately, we didn't get a photo, because Steve was too busy hauling Jane and Larry, and Jane and Larry were too traumatized to think of taking pictures. Larry likes to say that we tried to kill him on this hike, but the truth is if we hadn't pulled him out of that canyon, he'd still be there today. So, in a way, we saved his life!

Despite the challenges, this was totally worth doing and we'd do it again in a heartbeat. If at some point you decide to do this one, do some research ahead of time so you're prepared.  Here's a good site to check out: https://www.hikingproject.com/trail/7021911/moon-house-ruins. And another one here: http://www.gjhikes.com/2016/10/moon-house.html

You will need a permit, as the Bureau of Land Management allows only 20 people a day to visit the site. You can purchase your permit at https://www.recreation.gov/permits/273374

Happy hiking!


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1 comments

  1. NestonwheelsDecember 16, 2020 at 9:02 PM

    From Larry: As The Story Goes, the retelling of it is pretty accurate. I, the Larry of the story, feel the Peril was somewhat whitewashed. But I no longer feel my"friends" we're trying to kill me. What they really wanted was my four-wheel drive. Steven Jane were just being polite when they asked me to risk my life. And, no! I I have no desire to do it again. They can borrow my truck. The best thing that came out of the experience was an appreciation for life, a lot of laughs, and an even greater appreciation for life. Burma shave

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