We Found a Jungle Full of Massive Megalithic Structures

I'm with two friends and we're scaling a treacherous Canyon in the American southwest in search of a massive complex of prehistoric ruins we're going to be descending a narrow and Jagged Canyon via rope navigating numerous hazards along the way this was one of my hardest days in recent memory but what we found at the end made it worth [Music] it we started in the morning with about 3,000 ft to climb our goal was to get to the top of the plateau where we would drop into the canyon via rope there was no trail to the top only a steep loose vegetation choked Ravine oh man sometimes you do wonder why you do this stuff and call it fun at one point a 30ft cliff blocked our way it looked climbable so I went ahead to scout lots of good jugs hey guys let me make sure we're not about to get cliffed out um I think it goes but I I don't actually know I don't want all of us to have to down climb this go see what we got up here yeah we're good thanks for joining guys yeah so we are mid way up the approach currently we just came up a kind of a steep section waiting for the other guys to get up here taking advantage of a little shade while we got it getting closer like most of the Southwest it's rugged but beautiful wow look at that there's definitely times you wonder why do I do this and you look at Landscapes views like this and you remember all right guys we are up top finally taking a little break up here let me show you guys something cool so beautiful view up here but the object of all this right there three different big sets of ruins and the last one right there tucked up under the cliff pretty wild stuff just to give you an idea of what it looks like from the top you know they're in that kind of black Cliff band there that's where all three of the overhangs are pretty cool stuff seeing them from up top right so we're going to take a quick lunch break and then we're going to Contour around this Rim get up to uh where the canyon begins set up the first repel I haven't officially introduced Josh or Nate yet but there they are faithful friends on many a Longs suffer Fest yeah what is is it a raven or a hawk I can't tell is that the hwk that's screaming it's beautiful up here here for sure we've got uh still a little bit of snow hanging in the north facing aspects okay guys we're going to Contour around right to I think somewhere up in there that's where the canyon kind of see how it slots up there and we'll drop in there Josh nater it's always funny when it's not you and then when you're the one bushwhacking and getting poked by Thorns uh it's not so funny I wouldn't be laughing in another few minutes maybe it was because we were already tired from The Climb but this next section felt like an eternity sadly I was very mistaken about my earlier prediction of where the canyon dropped in we still had a few miles to go we slowly moved across the top getting poked prodded and Tangled Up in every plant this region had to offer holy cow it's a massive Ponderosa ponderosa pine that's falling down here and the tree roots up there probably 12 ft tall finally reaching the top we geared up [Music] [Music] okay so what we're doing up here today is consider Canyon earing uh some people call it canyoning but I think Canyon earing sounds cooler so yeah basically it's the technical Descent of a canyon I bag on okay there's Nate heading down first down into the deep dark Canyon not speaking of which Little Rock [Music] fall maybe not the most uh graceful dismount there she is my friends back light's kind of harsh right now what we're using in this Canyon are known as natural anchors meaning there's no bolts you're just using natural features in here like um this is what's known as a rock pinch basically got this big Granite wall and another Big B fer here and so you're just using this constriction here to basically anchor yourself as you repel down each drop follows a similar pattern you set up your rope on a natural anchor with some climbing webbing everybody repels you pull your rope down at the end and repeat process okay woo little different kind of Canyon huh rockfall was a constant concern for us there were a ton of loose chunks all over the place thankfully we avoided the catastrophic pieces okay we got our first little uh trickle waterfall Rael there's Nate down there maybe 50 feet it won't be funny when I'm in it Nate's trying to avoid that that water pool down there oh wow you see that I got it on video lucky real Adventure here my friends all right so we're about halfway down the canyon we've got I'd say our first kind of you know a little bit iffy makes you think uh repel here so the main thing I'm concerned about is being able to get a clean rope pull and get our rope back so when you try to pull a rope little cracks like this can totally um pinch it and you won't be able to pull your rope back so when I go down last I'm going to try and follow this course down eventually hopefully stay dry down there bottom we're going to get a better angle we pull it from back there let me get oh no oh dude you told me that was good no I said I can throw a rock there for you all right hold on let me keep pulling [Music] thiso got it I had a wet foot but we got our rope so all was good the deeper we descended the more it felt like we were entering some primeval jungle the water increased the vegetation thickened birds were everywhere and the canyon widened little taste of the just absolute Log Jam this Canyon is everywhere these logs just getting washed down from Clash floods higher Upstream bend it the scenery was Grand but the reality that the afternoon was slipping away from us with each twist and turn of the canyon became more apparent how much more but about equal don't get anything caught on this repel because we don't have enough to do a contingency all right guys stay might watch your hand right here that was the final repel holy moly we knew there might be water I don't think I bargained for that much oh my gosh yeah we we bit off a little more than we could chew not in terms of skill but in terms of time um it was so much slower moving through uh that Canyon than we expected cold we all brought a little bit of uh dry clothes in case you know you never know if you get stranded or something night sets in hypothermia so this is my uh one dry thing everything else soaked to the bone there's the guys up there there good friends man you need people like that who will come out and do stupid things like this with you so I'm going to leave them to come down on their own and we're going to go check out some ruins there's a little bit of like an eerie vibe to it here in part because even though there's a couple hours of daylight left it's just there's a lot of lot of shade back in here which I'm kind of surprised about so I'm following that black Cliff Bank that we saw we ate lunch I don't think we can actually see it but it was somewhere way up there finally coming down there's Josh he hasn't gotten uh completely soaked yet let's wait for it that water was cold it's about to happen just the accept the inevitable I don't know if you guys could hear I don't know if the mic picked it up but he definitely uh gave a holler when that water that cold water hit him okay there we go my friends it's the first set of ruins wow look at that this is a big complex I mean first things that stand out to me or one you know these huge holes where I'm certain Timbers you know big Timbers would have come and I guess supported speaking of Timbers here's still a little bit of the original wood up there wow also know there's a lot of blackening up here on the ceiling so certainly fires in this place okay so yeah here's a Big Timber still in place huh wow this is really cool so you can tell this definitely was like a multi-story structure at one point in time and just to give you guys a little perspective because I know uh you know scale is really difficult to tell on a camera but these walls up here probably about 15 ft off the ground and so you had plenty of room you know for two two twostory structure looks like another room was probably back in there some of the rock they used in this is really pretty got nice coloration these runs have been credited to the salato people the date of construction is believed to be sometime in the late 1200s which puts these in the 700 year old range wow huh lot of black up on the roofs in here got some wild flowers blooming this time of year I mean just a put some of this place in perspective I mean look at the edge of the chasm these things sit at like you see in a lot of the ruins and the mortar you can really make out like fingerprints up in there just really imagine the human hands at work up here I mean it's it's just wild to think about the effort that it took to I mean bring these huge Timbers up here all this rock I mean this is not this is not easily accessible huh I don't know that there's going to be time to go all the way over there today but there's some I don't know if that's a mine what over there oh no I think I see looks like some more structures right so I just noticed there's some pictographs up here looks like maybe some geometric designs up top there's definitely a handprint right there couple things in red but you can't really make them out anymore there's a bunch of water dripping up under this overhang coming out of these ferns I don't know if it would drip year round um but they certainly had water you know decent amount of the year so these structures kind of sit a ways away and in front of this other big complex over here so I just noticed that this was evidently a door at some point in time that the occupants sealed up here's the back side of it you know whenever I see things like that I I always wonder you know like what caused them to seal up a door oh wow look at that guys I mean again just to put in perspective where these things sit it is insane imagining living up here huh this set seems a little worse for wear given its position it might be exposed to more sunlight did think this was pretty cool you've got this shelf built in here look how they just built right around that Boulder that was already laying back there so this wall right here is by far the highest I've seen yet here it's it's probably a good 20 ft up there looking from down here you know I notice these two rocks that are clearly sticking out of the wall and it makes me wonder what were they for can you imagine hauling these huge beams from who knows where I mean it's definitely possible that some of them they were able to cut down you know along the The Cliff face but there's no way that they got all of them there so they were hauling them it's just it's crazy this is actually probably the most impressive section yet I mean one so here I was standing just so I was standing you know right down here when I was looking up and showing you guys there kind of two rocks that are sticking out so that's probably the 20ft wall there this is a side view again it was very clearly a two-story structure there's some more pictographs up under here you guys hear all those birds I mean it is it is very jungle likee here I love how that thing is still in that sort of te configuration I'm not going to go in this Inner Room but I do want to poke the camera in this is the inside of that very tall wall see where all those beams would have sat and this was a major complex it just goes on and on here's another large obviously twostory wall here got the [Music] beams and then it connects over there with the other one and then just down from all these large rooms we got another seep coming out of the rock there I'd imagine those are some original Stone axe Cuts so take a look in this little crevice here there is under dedly a corn cob a little piece of maze I don't see any way you were growing corn upon this Cliff I mean so that must have come from down at the bottom there you like way down at the bottom of the valley I mean it continues to go on these have definitely fallen down and it doesn't seem like they were quite the same size as the others but but again they aren't in as good of condition so it's hard to say for sure probably a th000 ft down there okay I pushed on a little bit further and this was that final set that we saw way up top and actually speaking of which I believe that Ridge line right there is where we ate lunch a lot of energy and a long time ago it's pretty similar to what we've seen at the other two sites I mean they're pretty pry close only a couple hundred yards separating them here's another one of those te beams another twostory oh wow look at that that is I mean it's falling down but it's basically the intact roof still wow final structure here you know we were all standing up here chatting a little bit and and really just remarking you know how Blown Away We Are by this I mean the size of it the scale of it um the location of it I mean it really is mindboggling to imagine the work that uh went into constructing these and just living up here on a daily basis this was a day for sure this is one all of us will remember it's been a long day it's been a good day we've still got some uh miles to cover thanks for watching guys I hope you enjoyed this uh hit subscribe if you want to keep exploring the Southwest with me I'll see you next time

Channel: Desert Drifter

Views: 446,354

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Id: xjp_nc9HZrA

Length: 29min 20sec (1760 seconds)

Published: Fri May 03 2024