Most of the ruins at Chaco are in the canyon. If you can scramble up an easy chimney, you can take the Pueblo Alto trail to get to two ruins on the upper plateau. Below is the newer Alto ruin.
It's not built with the quality of the better ruins down in the canyon, but it's a really cool hike. The walls are multi-layer like the canyon ruins, but the vaneer layer up at Alto is coarser and less aesthetic. Still better than I could do...
Looking at Neuvo Alto from the east, it stands out that there's no windows. I'm guessing the outer wall had at least some spotter ports.
When you look at the big picture view, you can see part of the canyon wall to the right of the ruin, but mostly you see plateau level. We were wondering if Alto was a hunting camp or possibly a scout camp to watch for intruders.
The older Alto ruin is a couple hundred yards to the east and it's got funkier rock work and pretty clean lines.
Here's another of the things I call "WTF, Gringo?". They call this the Jackson Staircase because William Henry Jackson was the first white man to have seen the staircase. They could have named it after the side canyon it's in or whatever. Regardless, I bet it was a treat to be chipping these steps in with the tools on hand a thousand years ago.
Looking down on the Chetro Ketl ruin from the Alto trail:
And finally, looking down on Pueblo Bonito from the Alto trail: