The Simon Ruin Trail offers a short but beautiful hike in Simon Canyon Recreation Area, near Navajo Lake State Park in Northern New Mexico.
This area is BLM land and, according to one of the rangers, dogs are allowed to be off-leash along the river and the hiking trail. However, in the picnic and camping area near the parking lot, dogs must be leashed.
You can access the trailhead from the north corner of the parking lot. This area is primarily used by people fishing the nearby San Juan River. Whenever we’ve hiked the Simon Ruin Trail, which leads away from the river, we’ve had it completely to ourselves.
The official trail to the Simon Ruins is only .8 miles long but you can stretch it to 1 mile each direction with a little extra exploring. According to my AllTrails data, the 2 mile hike took us about an hour with 200 feet elevation gain.
The first part of the hike leads up a maintenance road. It’s a consistent uphill climb but not extremely steep.
The hike feels relatively remote. So, when I heard engine noise near the top of the dirt road, the first time I hiked it, I was a little confused. I quickly discovered one of the many active wells that are spread across Northern New Mexico. The road ends there and the trail continues to the left of the well site.
Soon after passing the well, you can sign the list trail visitor list.
The trail leads through beautiful landscape of boulders and trees. Sometimes the trail disappears or forks around trees and boulders. Fortunately, you can’t really get lost because one side of the trail drops down the steep canyon to the river bed below and the other side rises up the steep canyon wall to the ridge above.
As you approach the .8 mile distance from the trailhead, look ahead for the first glimpse of the Simon Ruins on top of a large boulder.
A plaque next the boulder describes the following history of the ruins:
“The Simon Canyon site is the most northwester of the structures attributed to the Gobernador phase of Navajo history (1700-1775). The site consists of a single room on a large boulder. the room is rather well preserved with the greater part of the roof intact. Of all the remaining structures of this period in Navajo history, it appears to have been the most vulnerable to Ute raiding which has frequently been named as one of the causes for the Navajo abandonment of this area. There are no other sites in its vicinity which have been attributed to the Navajo. the site position north of the San Juan River separates it from the major contemporary Navajo populations in Gobernador and Largo canyons. Simon Canyon Ruin was nominated to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. The site was stabilized by the BLM Stabilization Team in 1975.”
Walking around the ruins, to the side opposite from the plaque, enables you to see the doorway.
You can continue walking past the ruin site to the edge of the canyon wall for views of the river/riverbed below.
The footpath comes to an end where the trees and boulders become to dense and steep to walk through.
Hiking back down the Simon Ruin Trail offers more beautiful views from a different direction.
Because the trail disappears or splits off in different areas, our return path was slightly different than our original path. One sandy area had footprints leading to the right of the boulders. I remembered, from a previous hike, that it lead to the edge of the cliff, downhill from where we needed to go. So, we turned left, uphill a few steps and climbed up the boulders.
That led us to the high, rocky path along the main trail instead of the low sandy path to a dead end.
As we followed the trail past the noisy well and down the dirt road, we could see our camper in the parking lot below.
Comentários