Ep. 36: Down the West’s Grandest Canyon | The American West
episodePreviously titled “Ep. 36: Down the West’s Grandest Canyon” — renamed by the publisher on Sep 15, 2026
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at phelpsgamecalls.com what john wesley powell accomplished first in the 1870s float the length of the grand canyon you can do today and it's still the western wildlands experience of a lifetime i'm dan flores and this is the american west
Down the West's Grandest Canyon. Our personal motives for experiences in the American West have always been many. Some of us move west or relocate within the West for a new start in life. Some come to seek wealth and become rich. Some of us are lured westward because everything from scenery to wild animals is new and exciting. But in a region of America where the landscapes are supersized and grand eloquent, the rivers mysterious and even furious, the animals often large and occasionally dangerous, the human search for adventure has forever been a part of the West's mystique. From hunting buffalo on yellow grasslands under a dome of blue to making an ascent of every one of Colorado's 53 official 14,000-foot mountain peaks,
the possible interactions with the Western world are colored by the excitement of living large. It's entirely possible to reside in the West or come to the West and spend your days checking account balances, watching sports, sitting in front of a computer screen, or endlessly scrolling on your phone, but you can still be your own personal version of Amelia Earhart or Bob Marshall here. The West's wildlands and rivers are offer adventures enough for several lifetimes. I've lived in the West and in different parts of it almost all my adult life. Luckily, with good health, a strong constitution, and since I'm a biped, a propensity for seeing the world around me from on foot. So like a lot of us, I've hauled a pack into many of the remote corners of the West to be able to breathe the champagne air of the heights of ranges like the winds,
the Tetons, and the Sierra Nevadas, or pass into sleep as a juniper fire pops and hisses while the Escalante River waxes lyrical feet away. I'm not quite as addicted to seeing the West by river as many Western adventurers I've known, but I have canoed the white cliffs of the upper Missouri, shot through the rapids of Cataract Canyon and Canyonlands National Park, descended the canyons of the Rio Grande and Big Bend, soloed in inflatable kayaks through Idaho's giant wildernesses on the snake and the salmon, and paddled a raft for 12 days down the Hula Hula River through the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge at the top of Alaska. But with strong competition from the Hula Hula and ANWR, no wildlands trip I've done so far has been quite the equal of that top tier of all Western adventure's
a two-and-a-half-week descent by rubber raft of the Colorado River through America's grandest canyon. I've hiked the Grand Canyon on foot, and while nothing remotely like walking the park rider Kevin Fedarko's year-long trek down the length of the canyon with a buddy, that rim-to-rim passage from south rim to north rim over the course of a day isn't a bad taste. you get some 24 miles of trail through spectacular canyon scenery and an ever-changing ecology, plus a combined 10,000-plus feet of elevation change for your trouble.
How does the author introduce the Grand Canyon rafting trip and its appeal?
Even that, however, pales against the wild land's rhythms that come with descending the river through this magnificent canyon day after day after day. Knowing what's looming ahead but not knowing, because of course, every descent through a canyon like this is new and fresh.
I've long been in the habit of taking a little notebook and a couple of pens with me to record immediate firsthand accounts of wild lands trips. Here then is what one Grand Canyon descent was like. September the 26th.
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3 chaptersSpeakers
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