Colorado Hiking: Southwest Safari Camps - The Other Canyonlands - 7 Days
Colorado Hiking: The Other Canyonlands - Overview
Enjoy scenic Colorado hiking in "the other Canyonlands", Cedar Mesa. Tucked away between the Blue Mountains and San Juan River, Cedar Mesa encompasses Grand Gulch, Natural Bridges Monument, and a multitude of other canyons steeped in ancient ruins and rock art. The Dark Canyon Wilderness is on the northern edge of this uplift. Learn how ancient people lived their lives as you explore ruins and hike to ancestral Pueblo archeologic sites. This Colorado hiking adventure with O.A.R.S. takes you through remote canyons to awe-inspiring views of Monument Valley, Raplee Anticline, Navajo Mountain, and Comb Ridge. Take a day to float by raft through a section of the San Juan River for the ultimate Colorado adventure vacation filled with geology, natural history, and ancient culture. Your homebase for your southwest adventure in Colorado is our comfortable, fully equipped safari style camp. An ideal family adventure, O.A.R.S. Youth Guides will teach your children how to make a friction fire, throw an atlatl, and create split-willow figures and they'll wow their friends with stories from your time together.
Colorado Hiking & Southwest Safari Camp - Itinerary at a Glance
- Meet in Durango, CO and transfer to our private campsite at Nizhoni for welcome dinner and orientation
- Hike to Butler Wash or to Horse Pasture Canyon in Dark Canyon depending on the weather
- In Butler Wash we visit a spectacular rock art panel perhaps depicting an exit from the Sipapu and 2,000 year-old Basketmaker petroglyphs
- The very scenic hike in Dark Canyon Wilderness Area traces the canyon from its Elk Ridge headwaters to the historic Scorup Cabin, a well-preserved summer cowboy camp dating back to 1930
- Visit Natural Bridges National Monument or Moon House ruins
- Float the San Juan River from Bluff, UT to Mexican Hat - a classic and inspirational Southwestern journey offering fun, adventure and a unique perspective of the area’s archaeology and geology
- Hike through walls of red sandstone and shale, past intriguing rock art panels, past an extinct volcano, and into a deep limestone canyon, once an ancient inland sea and now complete with fossils and magnificent cliffs rising on both sides of the river
- Choose to return to Natural Bridges or Moon House in McCloyds Canyon for further exploration
- Depart for Cortez via McElmo Canyon. Stop at Hovenweep National Monument to visit some unique tower ruins
- End in Durango to spend the night in the Starter Hotel with a final celebratory dinner at a Durango restaurant
- Following breakfast, depart for airport for return flights home
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