The gravity-defying undulating rock spiers are one of the most magical parts of the landscape of the Southwestern United States.
But after torrential rains linked to the super El Niño season, at least one famous rock formation in northwest New Mexico was found in pieces.
And as local communities in the Four Corners region struggle with the aftermath of flooding, washed out roads and damaged homes, more damage to the area’s natural wonders may yet be uncovered.
Kialo Winters was on a tour of New Mexico’s Valley of Dreams Trail near the Ah-Shi-Sle-Pah Wilderness on Oct. 30 when he discovered that one of the area’s most famous spiers, or “hoodoos,” had been destroyed.
“We turned the corner and my heart dropped,” he said. “The highlight that everyone wants to see is the Alien Throne.”
The majestic formation, which is featured prominently on a local tourism website, had broken into pieces. Winters said he immediately assumed heavy rains and super El Niño season were to blame.
A week earlier, torrential rains and flooding hit northwest New Mexico hard, forcing evacuations and hundreds of water rescues of stranded residents. In Farmington, the closest town to the Valley of Dreams region, some families spent the night on rooftops watching the river flood their homes before being rescued, authorities said.
Winters has been guiding visitors to the area for 13 years with Navajo Tours USA, a company he founded. The rock spiers, which are on Navajo Nation land, are popular with visitors and photographers, but they also have deeper meaning for the area’s Native residents, he said.
“These are traditional crossing points in our Indigenous history that have guided our people across the land for many generations,” Winters said.
And it’s not just the alien throne that collapsed, Winters said. Another nearby formation, the King of Wings, which Winters called “the unicorn of hoodoos,” has also been damaged in recent weeks. Several user posts on AllTrails, a hiking website, suggest the formation broke up sometime before October 9, before intense rain hit the area.
“These are heavy losses for us,” Winters said. But, he added: “The lands are alive, and we understand that they change. The same erosion that made them also makes them fall, that’s what our elders tell us.”
Winters called on visitors to the damaged spiers to “let this site rest” and not climb what remains of the formations or take stones home to make relics. “It’s illegal to do this,” he said, adding, “It’s disrespectful to the community as a whole.”
Although his hypothesis is that the alien throne broke due to “natural causes,” Winters said, the Navajo Nation and Bureau of Land Management should examine the site and confirm the cause.
It is not yet clear how much damage may have been caused to other rock spires in the Four Corners region of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico during recent weeks of heavy rains and flooding. Park rangers at Chiricahua, Goblin Valley, Gold Butte and Cathedral Gorge state and national parks, which have extensive “hoodoo” formations, told SFGate they have yet to document any damage.
In a year when El Niño is marked by intense storms in the Pacific, famous rock formations across time zones are showing damage. Earlier in October, the centuries-old Hōlei sea ark collapsed into the Pacific.
“We will continue to honor these sentinels and crossing points through stories, photographs and art installations,” Winters said of the lost formations on Navajo Nation lands. “Their legacy lives on. »
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