Balcony House, Mesa Verde National Park.

©Checubus/Shutterstock

Balcony House

Southwest Colorado


Tickets are required for the one-hour guided tours of Balcony House, on the east side of the Cliff Palace Loop. A visit is an adventure that will challenge anyone’s fear of heights or small places. You’ll be rewarded with outstanding views of Soda Canyon, 600ft below the sandstone overhang that once served as the ceiling for 35 to 40 rooms.

The Balcony House tour requires you to descend a 100ft staircase into the canyon, then climb a 32ft ladder, crawl through a 12ft tunnel and climb an additional 60ft of ladders and stone steps to get out. It’s the most challenging tour in the park but might just be the most rewarding, not to mention fun!


Lonely Planet's must-see attractions

Nearby Southwest Colorado attractions

1. Cliff Palace

0.76 MILES

The only way to see the superb Cliff Palace is to take the hour-long ranger-led tour. The tour retraces the steps taken by the Ancestral Puebloans –…

2. Spruce Tree House

2.07 MILES

This Ancestral Puebloan ruin is the most accessible of the archaeological sites, although the half-mile round-trip access track is still a moderately…

3. Chapin Mesa

2.17 MILES

The largest concentration of Ancestral Puebloan sites is at Chapin Mesa, where you'll see the densely clustered Far View Site and the large Spruce Tree…

4. Chapin Mesa Museum

2.96 MILES

The Chapin Mesa Museum has exhibits pertaining to the park and is a good first stop. Staff at the museum provide information on weekends when the park…

5. Long House

4.64 MILES

On Wetherill Mesa, the magnificent Long House is the second-largest cliff dwelling in the park. A strenuous place to visit, it is only reached as part of…

6. Wetherill Mesa

4.68 MILES

Wetherill Mesa is the second-largest concentration of sites. Visitors may enter stabilized surface sites and two cliff dwellings, including the Long House…

7. Step House

4.68 MILES

Step House was initially occupied by Modified Basketmaker peoples residing in pithouses, and later became the site of a Classic Pueblo–period masonry…

8. Mesa Verde National Park

6.9 MILES

A fascinating, if slightly eerie, national park. Anthropologists will love it here; Mesa Verde is unique among American national parks in its focus on…