COURTESY OF KENT VERTREES
Travel
Do the Duffy
| BY EUGENE BUCHANAN
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Duffy Canyon offers a Class I-II float through a sagebrush-covered desert canyon.
et off your duffs and head to Duffy Canyon. Yep, everyone’s heard of world-class Yampa Canyon through Dinosaur National Monument. But with only a 5 percent chance of landing a private permit, the opportunities to run it are slim, or expensive if you go with a commercial outfitter. So, head somewhere closer and free that doesn’t require a permit: the Yampa’s unsung and unheralded Duffy, or Little Yampa, Canyon. Little Yampa/Duffy Canyon is located just downstream of Craig and is home to one of the most family-friendly and wilderness flatwater stretches of the Yampa – a section that has been deemed suitable, even, for Wild & Scenic designation. Unlike Yampa Canyon, which requires a permit from Dinosaur National Monument, Duffy is managed by the Bureau of Land Management as a Special Recreation Management Area and doesn’t require one. Just show up and go. “It’s a hidden gem offering solitude and scenery, and it gives floaters a perspective of working agriculture alongside the nature that relies on the Yampa,” says Jackie Brown, who chairs the 40 | ONLINE AT WWW.STEAMBOATMAGAZINE.COM
Yampa-White-Green Basin Roundtable. “It is a testament that the Yampa Valley Curse is running strong up and down valley.” While its 32-mile length discourages day trippers (that’s a bit long, unless you’re up for an all-day paddle in a sea kayak or canoe), the section is gaining popularity, thanks to Friends of the Yampa — in partnership with the BLM’s Little Snake Field Office, the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Yampa River State Park, Mission Continues and Craig’s Parrotheads — building five riverside campsites on the stretch in 2018, complete with signs, fire rings, grilling grates, picnic tables and tent sites. The five campsites include Antlers (Mile 7.6), Friends (Mile 14.5), Railroad (Mile 14.8), Bubba’s Beach (Mile 25.5), and Charlie Mike (Mile 30.4). If those are full, look for other areas on the stretch’s cobblestone bars and banks. Run it at the right time and you’re in for a wilderness treat, floating Class I-II flatwater past large stands of old growth cottonwoods, sage-brush-covered hills and a sweeping desert canyon you never even knew was there.
