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Little Yampa Canyon: South Beach to Duffy Mountain

Floating the Yampa River Through Duffy Mountain | Average CFS: 14,140
Saturday & Sunday, May 20-21, 2023

With the big snowpack in the mountains of Colorado this year I decided to take a little break from hiking and backpacking during the months of May and June so that I could try to get out onto the rivers as much as possible this season. This weekend Jackson and I were looking to get out on an overnight trip and were initially thinking about trying to catch some of the ephemeral desert rivers in Utah, but that wouldn’t logistically work out for us this weekend and we turned our attention back to the Yampa River in Colorado’s Great Northwest. After looking over maps of the area we settled on trying out a section of the Yampa that is just west of Craig and known as Little Yampa Canyon or Duffy Canyon. This 33 mile stretch of the Yampa River carves it’s way through Duffy Mountain and is all flat water. Since we were unfamiliar with this section of the river we were a little concerned that it’s easy nature might change at the high water levels it was currently seeing, but we decided to check it out anyway.

The White Rim: Airport Tower to Monument Basin

Friday – Sunday, February 5-7, 2021

While I had an amazing time supporting Diane and Jared as they biked the White Rim Trail in Canyonlands National Park last October, I didn’t quite have enough time on that trip to get in all the hiking that I had wanted to do because they were riding faster than I had anticipated! Since I had a backpacking trip to The Needles last spring that was cancelled because of COVID and I needed to reschedule that permit or lose in the next few months, I thought it would be nice to head back on my own to the east side of the White Rim so I could make up the hikes I had skipped out on. Last year the weather for our hike from the White Crack to The Confluence in early February was very nice, so I thought I would head back the same weekend this year, too.

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Meander Canyon: The Colorado River in Canyonlands

Floating from the Potash Boat Ramp to The Loop | Average CFS: 2,660
Thursday – Sunday, September 17-20, 2020

On Thursday morning Diane and I woke up extra early at 3:30am and headed down to Moab where we drove through The Portal on our way to the Potash Boat Ramp and met up with our friends Jackson, Amy and Chris just after sunrise. We were going to be spending the next couple of days on a relaxing float through Meander Canyon on the calm waters of the Colorado River into the heart of Canyonlands National Park. I had such a great time in Labyrinth Canyon two years ago at this same time of the year, so I was really looking forward to another trip similar to that. Although Diane swore that she would never go on another river trip with me after our swift float through Slick Rock Canyon, I managed to talk her into giving it one more try after promising her that this would be all flat water with no rapids! Thankfully, she really enjoyed this trip and I think she will definitely be coming with me on future flat water adventures!

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The Bears Ears

Southern Utah Wanderings | Northern Bears Ears
Friday – Sunday, September 29 – October 1, 2017

This year for my annual weeklong trip into southern Utah during the first week of October I met up with Jared and we spent most of the week exploring, hiking, four-wheeling, camping, backpacking, peak-bagging and photographing within Bears Ears National Monument. The first few days of our trip were spent in the northern part of the Bears Ears between Canyonlands National Park and Lockhart Basin. (We did a little hiking into Canyonlands, too.) We were hoping to visit a few new pictograph panels and maybe find some ruins, but we ran into some issue that prevented us from reaching the rock art sites we were looking for this time, so we will definitely have to come back and try again another time. Here are some photos from the first three days of the trip.

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Little Yampa Canyon: South Beach to Duffy Mountain

The White Rim: Airport Tower to Monument Basin

Meander Canyon: The Colorado River in Canyonlands

The Bears Ears