Page 8 - Volume 15 Number 8

An excavated pit house near Navajo Canyon View in Mesa Verde National Park. Pit houses were the chosen dwellings of the Archaic Mesa Verdeans and date to approximately 1,000 BCE.
Cliff Palace can be viewed along the Cliff Palace Loop Drive at the southern end of Mesa Verde National Park. It is the larg-
est cliff dwelling in North America and sits at an elevation of approximately 7,000 feet. It contained over 150 rooms and likely housed over 100 people at any given time.
Mesa Verde National Park (MVNP)
We ended Part I at Montrose Regional Airport (MTJ) in west-central Colorado. From there, the under 100-nautical-mile flight to the southwest corner of the state will keep you west of the highest terrain within the Colorado Rockies. Of course that only means you’ll avoid peaks in the 13,000- to 14,000-foot range. You will still have to overfly the Uncompahgre National Forest, which includes several peaks near or above 10,000 feet. Further southwest, the Little Cone and Lone Cone peaks rise to 11,981 and 12,613 feet, respectively. Lone Cone, the highest point along the route, is almost directly underneath a direct course between MTJ and Cortez Municipal Airport (CEZ). Cortez is the gateway airport into one of the most fascinating archaeological treasures within the United States — Mesa Verde National Park.
Like the park itself, CEZ is a throwback to a bygone era. It’s a quiet, non-towered airport with an old-school FBO that prioritizes service over grandiose facilities. Cortez Flying Services offers all the amenities pilots and their aircraft typically need. Plus, it does so in a friendly and reasonably priced fashion. For overnight stays or even day trips into the park, rental cars can be reserved and waiting at CEZ and tie-downs are available to secure your aircraft while you are away. The airport is a single runway (03/21) with four instrument approaches to choose from – GPS LNAV approaches to both runway
6 • KING AIR MAGAZINE
AUGUST 2021