Welcome to Chinle - Yá'át'ééh!

** Updated with photos an links**

Today we awoke in Albuquerque to a beautiful fall day. We checked out a local coffee roastery, Villa Miriam Roasting, for fresh pastries and a beautiful Ethi pour over before hitting the road for Chinle, Arizona.

We drove 3.5 hours east of Albuquerque and I got to watch the landscape shift before me, from red rocks and platues, to jagged black rock volcanic fields, and even through the tall red cedars of the Cibola National Forest. As we got closer to our destination, the red rocks returned and the evaluation began to shift, revealing the first glimpse of canyon landscape we had come to explore.

Canyon de Chelly is a National Park on Navajo land. Protected for its archeological and spiritual significance, the canyon is home of the famous White House cliff dwellings which were inhabitited by the ancient Dine until the 1600’s. The fabulous rock formations in the canyon include Spider Woman rock, a thousand foot spire standing alone in the center of the canyon and believed to be the home of Spider Women, the Navajo teller of tales.

White house cliff ruins (I did not take this picture)

In order to enter this special place, one must always be accompanied by a Navajo guide. This can be done on a horseback riding tour, Jeep tours, or even walking tours. If you want to enter the canyon, you must do so under supervision in order to protect this invaluable asset. There is only 1 exception to this rule: The Canyon de Chelly Ultra Marathon

Once a year, 150 bibs are issued to allow a 34 mile race through the canyon. Those bibs are your ticket to a (relatively) unsupervised canyon adventure along a well marked and approved trail. The race has only been around for 6 years, but over the past 3 it has gained in such popularity, appearing in New York Times, and Outside Magazine, that the race now sells out in minutes. Because they kept crashing the website on signup day, they decided to run a lottery this year.

So here’s where we get to the point in the story where you might begin to see how this crazy trip all came together. I didn’t really plan for us to run around the southwest before traveling to the Far East.  I entered Marchelo and myself into the Canyon de Chelly lottery in early February, not really hopeful that we would get in. Out of 500 entries, they pulled 150 names. Shaun Martin, the race’s amazing director, cut out all the names and placed them in a hat the old fashion way, drawing the names one by one. My name was drawn, Marchelo was #180 on the waitlist.

For a long time I wasn’t sure what we were going to do; if I would do this race as a solo adventure or if Marchelo would be able to run or come to be my crew. Eventually we decided to fold in the Canyon adventure into one long trip and Marchelo figured he would make the best out of the day, even if he coun’t run the race.

Which is why today I was reminded of my college band director who would often tell us that there are 2 types of people in this world: people who show up, and people who don’t. Today, Marchelo showed up. He came with me to packet pickup with a slim hope that there was an open bib. Lo and behold, 5 spaces had opened up in the last 2 days and Shaun was happy to welcome Marchelo to the race. I got bib #62, Marchelo is lucky #147.

I have so much to share with you about our amazing welcome to Navajo land by Shaun and his family, but for now dear reader it’s getting late. Tomorrow we run in beauty.