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Category Archives: Paddling
Featured Photo Gallery: Kayaking the Upper Owyhee River
The Owyhee River carves narrow canyons of sheer rhyolite and basalt walls hundreds of feet deep into the sagebrush and grassland high desert sprawling over southwestern Idaho and eastern Oregon. An area four times the size of Yellowstone, it’s the loneliest corner of the Lower 48. It’s hard just to get there because of the few, bad roads. Check out the canyons of the Owyhee in this slideshow. Then read my story about our eight-day, 82-mile kayaking descent of the upper Owyhee River, where we saw just one other kayaker, on our last night, a couple miles before the takeout.
May 1, 2013
Featured Photo Gallery: Wildflowers Gone Wild
Seeing wildflowers blooming in the backcountry always brings a smile. They enliven a landscape. Blooming only briefly, they signal our serendipitous timing. And beautiful wildflowers sure can make a photograph pop.
I’ve assembled this slideshow of my favorite wildflower photos, from places like Mt. Rainier, the Tetons, Glacier, Zion, the North Cascades, Joshua Tree, Alaska’s Glacier Bay, the Olympic Mountains, Oregon’s Eagle Cap Wilderness, New Hampshire’s Presidential Range and Carter Range, and Idaho’s Sawtooths, Smoky Mountains, City of Rocks National Reserve and Castle Rocks State Park. I’ve included photos from as far off as Norway’s Jotunheimen National Park and as close to my home as the Boise Foothills. The lead photo above shows Herb Robert on the Oregon side of the Columbia Gorge; other photos in this gallery are from Dog Mountain on the Washington side of the gorge, which puts on one of the best wildflower displays you’ll see anywhere every May and June. Continue reading →
April 22, 2013
Five Great National Park Adventures
Hearing the thunderous roar and walking through the rain of mist coming from some of North America’s biggest and most iconic waterfalls in Yosemite Valley. Seeing mountain goats, bighorn sheep, and one (fortunately unaggressive) sow grizzly bear with cubs in Glacier National Park—as well as incredible mountain scenery almost every step of the way. Backpacking through a landscape of multi-colored canyon walls and wildly sculpted sandstone monoliths in Zion National Park. Paddling a sea kayak past seals in Alaska’s Glacier Bay, while watching a mile-wide glacier with a snout 200 feet tall explosively calve bus-size chunks of itself into the sea. And backpacking through vast fields of wildflowers below jagged peaks on one of the country’s premier multi-day hikes, the Teton Crest Trail. Continue reading →
Featured Photo Gallery: Floating the Green River
From Mineral Bottom to its confluence with the Colorado River in Canyonlands National Park, the Green River meanders through 52 miles of Stillwater Canyon, slowly unfurling beneath a constant backdrop of giant redrock cliffs and spires. Off the water, you can take side hikes to centuries-old Puebloan rock art and cliff dwellings, camp on sandy beaches and slickrock benches, and maybe even spot bighorn sheep scrambling around on precipitous rock faces. View this gallery of photos from that trip for inspiration, and then read my story (with a video) to learn more about pulling it off.
The Green River in Stillwater Canyon, Canyonlands National Park, Utah.
Featured Photo Gallery: Paddling the Everglades
Mid-winter is the prime time of year for canoeing or kayaking in Everglades National Park: few mosquitoes, mild temperatures, lots of exotic birds–and the gators are relatively inactive because, for them, it’s cold. Check out this inspirational gallery of photos, and view a video and read my story about kayaking the East River and canoeing and camping in the Ten Thousand Islands of Everglades National Park.
Ten Thousand Islands, Everglades National Park.