Well to make this short and sweet – – the weather Wednesday morning was beautiful AND it turns out that each and every "hiker" we saw that morning at the visitor center was heading out on the guided Betatakin ruins hike. The route is on Navajo land so you aren’t allowed to stray from the main route. It requires quite a bit of soft sand hiking and many crossing of a shallow stream, which flows down Keet Seel Canyon. The route, 1,000 feet down into Tsegi Canyon then up Keet Seel Canyon to the Keet Seel camping area and Keet Seel cliff dwellings is 8.5 miles. Note: Only 20 people a day are allowed to hike to Keet Seel and then only five at a time can tour the Keet Seel ruins in the company of an on-site National Park ranger.
We tried to discern the "day hikers" from the "backpackers", who might be going to Keet Seel. There were lots of campers at Sunrise View campgrounds near Betatakin, and lots of folks showed up at the visitor center when it opened at 8 am. Up at 4 am on the road by 4:45 am breakfast at McDonald’s in Kayenta then on to the visitor center at Betatakin. You can often see tire marks where the National Park Service drive their four wheel drive pickup truck up to all but the last few miles to Keet Seel (supplies and exchange rangers "on duty"). This isn’t wilderness you are hiking but the scenery is great and we need to thank the Dine’ people (Navajo) for permitting us to hike their land where they live, to enjoy Keet Seel. We ran into one small group of Navajo horses then one horse by himself then one more small group.Īll of the horses we encountered showed an intense interest in our presence but also a desire to keep a comfortable space.
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