I was up in Northern WY this weekend and did a little canyon exploring, with mixed results. One of the best canyons we looked at is Deer Creek, outside Cody WY (not far from Yellowstone). It’s one I’ve been been meaning to check out for some time. It’s a 500 foot deep canyon, in a mountain setting with swift running water. The timing wasn’t really good. A big storm had just rolled through, so the water was running too high to go up or down the canyon. So we hiked along the rim to reconnoiter. The rim trail starts with a 900 vertical foot hike up switchbacks, to get you high enough where you can parallel the canyon. The hike offers some dramatic views of the canyon far below. After about 2 miles, we came to a side drainage, with a beautiful waterfall cascading into Deer Creek. This seems to drop you into the start of the best section of the canyon. Hopefully I can head back up there before long and try the canyon again, with lower water. I have very little experience in class C canyons, so I’m being overly cautious. Especially since we’re beta-less. If anyone is planning on being in the area, and wants to try it, drop me an email and I’ll give you what beta I have. I’ll upload some pictures of the area as well, once I have them all gathered up.
After that, we headed over to Bighorn National Recreational area, that straddles the WY/MT border ( http://geocities.com/canyoneeringnorthwest/bigHorn.html). We’ve found a few canyons there in the past, and were hoping to find some more. There were several slot canyons that we looked at, but most aren’t interesting enough to repeat. They aren’t very narrow, and don’t have many drops. However, Layout Creek is one that I’ll probably try. It doesn’t look difficult at all, but is very scenic, as it follows a stream deeper and deeper into a canyon, until it finally drops into Bighorn canyon.
Lastly we wanted to do one of the repeat canyons we did last year, so we decided to do John Blue canyon. Usually it’s a very short, easy canyon. It has a lot of drops, all less than 20 feet. It turned out to be more difficult than usual because the rock was wet and VERY slippery. The rock is limestone, instead of sandstone, so it gets very slick, making the multiple downclimbs difficult. We were going to repeat Spur canyon as well, but ran out of time.
Even though we spent most of our time reconnoitering, it was a fun little trip. I hope I can get back up there and complete some of the best canyons. I’m working on gathering pics from the trip. Once I have them all, I’ll post a link to them, for those interested.
Jeff
Jeff Baird
I’m a bit late gathering all the pictures from this trip, but here they are, for anyone interested. http://community.webshots.com/album/152643962ovVOWY The 2nd and 3rd page are of Deer Creek, the best new prospect we looked at up there.
—–Original Message—– From: Jeff Baird Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2004 9:35 AM To: Yahoo Canyons Group Subject: [from Canyons Group] TR~Wyoming Recon
I was up in Northern WY this weekend and did a little canyon exploring, with mixed results. One of the best canyons we looked at is Deer Creek, outside Cody WY (not far from Yellowstone). It’s one I’ve been been meaning to check out for some time. It’s a 500 foot deep canyon, in a mountain setting with swift running water. The timing wasn’t really good. A big storm had just rolled through, so the water was running too high to go up or down the canyon. So we hiked along the rim to reconnoiter. The rim trail starts with a 900 vertical foot hike up switchbacks, to get you high enough where you can parallel the canyon. The hike offers some dramatic views of the canyon far below. After about 2 miles, we came to a side drainage, with a beautiful waterfall cascading into Deer Creek. This seems to drop you into the start of the best section of the canyon. Hopefully I can head back up there before long and try the canyon again, with lower water. I have very little experience in class C canyons, so I’m being overly cautious. Especially since we’re beta-less. If anyone is planning on being in the area, and wants to try it, drop me an email and I’ll give you what beta I have. I’ll upload some pictures of the area as well, once I have them all gathered up.
After that, we headed over to Bighorn National Recreational area, that straddles the WY/MT border ( http://geocities.com/canyoneeringnorthwest/bigHorn.html). We’ve found a few canyons there in the past, and were hoping to find some more. There were several slot canyons that we looked at, but most aren’t interesting enough to repeat. They aren’t very narrow, and don’t have many drops. However, Layout Creek is one that I’ll probably try. It doesn’t look difficult at all, but is very scenic, as it follows a stream deeper and deeper into a canyon, until it finally drops into Bighorn canyon.
Lastly we wanted to do one of the repeat canyons we did last year, so we decided to do John Blue canyon. Usually it’s a very short, easy canyon. It has a lot of drops, all less than 20 feet. It turned out to be more difficult than usual because the rock was wet and VERY slippery. The rock is limestone, instead of sandstone, so it gets very slick, making the multiple downclimbs difficult. We were going to repeat Spur canyon as well, but ran out of time.
Even though we spent most of our time reconnoitering, it was a fun little trip. I hope I can get back up there and complete some of the best canyons. I’m working on gathering pics from the trip. Once I have them all, I’ll post a link to them, for those interested.
Jeff
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