Such sexy rock
Navajo, that is.
Wild canyons are of course awesome but sometimes what’s between them is even wilder. Route planning is in one sense easier because there’s more flexibility than being restricted to a canyon but figuring out what not to miss makes it trickier and being willing to just wing it is key, even after all those hours looking at topos and sat images.
I’d spent quite a bit of recent time in the area so to avoid spending time covering some of the same ground again a little cheating was in order to start
After a couple hours of mesmerizing blackbrush walking, a little evening exploring. Water situation looking quite nice (always a worry when you’re about to spend a week out of canyon bottoms in the desert).
Just about every day was worthy of setting up a basecamp and spending 3 or 4 days in the area exploring.
Adding to the coolest-places-I’ve-ever-been list…
Get on up…
Of course you can’t stay out of all the canyons…
Lucky…
Never had to carry more than a liter…
If you’re staying in the bottom, you’re missing out…
I’ve ascended and descended the Waterpocket Fold maybe a dozen times in the past months and it’s always madness. Map in your hand, thinking you picked a sweet route and then everything just falls away. I love it.
A successful trip when you return with weeks worth of future trips to do.
out. living. 
!!!
This is great, thanks for sharing – any regrets with the DP1m?
Thanks Matt. Loving the Dp1m. Doesn’t quite have the magic of the 2 or especially the 3 but it’s still fantastic. Just picked up a used Ricoh GW-3 21mm adapter to experiment with as well.
Oh wow – does the Ricoh fit onto the 2 and 3? that is slick if so! What’s your trick for keeping your cameras in one piece on these trips? My GR is about toast after 1.5 years of hard use
From what I’ve read it isn’t very good on the 2 or 3. It’s pretty good on the 1 if you stay at best aperture (around f4) but the corners still smear some. Not really a problem if you aren’t leaving it at 3:2. My biggest complaint is the giant front element. It’s a bit heavy, I suspect flares easily, and it’s just a lot of exposed glass for backpacking.
I hear ya on difficulties of not destroying cameras. With the merrills, the biggest problem I’ve had is sand getting in the buttons and them getting stuck. On my 2 the power button is currently not functional; I have to hold the play/review button to turn it on. They seem pretty bombproof though; I stupidly sat down in a deep section of water with the cam around my neck, fully submerged it to the point water was pouring out of it afterwards and it was no worse for the wear once it dried out.