Brett and Diana Davis are no strangers to getting deep in the backcountry for weeks at a time, just to see what is there.
Most of their adventures revolve around pedaling through a remote wilderness on two wheels, though he usually pairs biking with another activity to experience all a landscape has to offer.
There was the time Brett Davis biked to and skied 18 peaks in the San Juan and La Plata mountains. Once, he pedaled and paddled inflatable kayaks called packrafts through Alaska’s Brooks Range. The Davises, along with a group of friends, retraced famous outlaw Butch Cassidy’s network of escape routes through Southwest Colorado and southeastern Utah.
Most recently, the couple paddled packrafts across 150 miles of Lake Powell for four weeks in September and October. The goal, Davis said, was to explore slot canyons that were submerged when the Glen Canyon Dam was completed in 1966 but have reemerged as climate change and years of drought have lowered water levels in the reservoir.
“The impetus for it all started in 2020, when I said I want to spend a significant amount of time out here,” he said. “I wanted to go there with an exploration mindset of ‘we’re going to paddle the whole thing, but we’re going to take our time and stop and explore canyons along the way too and really give it justice.’”
In 2024, Davis retired from his position as director of Fort Lewis College’s Outdoor Pursuits, where he facilitated outdoor expeditions and educational trips with students. Though Davis loved his job at FLC, a role he was in for 15 years and in which he mentored hundreds of students on how to safely explore the backcountry, retirement has given him time to do trips he always dreamed of.
The Lake Powell trip, for instance, was to document what was happening in Glen Canyon as the waters of the reservoir recede.
Davis and his wife packed enough food to last four weeks into their kayaks, as well as cameras, ropes, camping gear and climbing equipment so they could stay in Lake Powell for as long as possible. What they found was a world returning to nature, despite the drought and a relatively short couple of years away from his last visit.
“In 2020, we had gone into a canyon called Smith Fork, and I wanted to go visit that canyon again and see what changes have been made in the last five years,” he said. “We got to it, and I couldn’t get into the narrows. It was so overgrown with so much life there. The beavers had moved in there, and I couldn’t get in there.”
As the pair traveled across the lake, they found many of the canyons on the north side of the lake had undergone similar metamorphoses. Beavers and native plants had reclaimed the canyons they once called home. The receding waters revealed sites of the area’s past Indigenous inhabitants, Davis said.
But, he said, these canyons have already started to see the impacts of humans. They found tons of evidence of people who would drive in on house boats or jet skis to scrawl graffiti on the newly revealed sandstone, as well as leave trash, fire rings and deadman anchors on the beaches.
“Toward the bottom of Lake Powell, there are places where the boater can get to where the lake’s receded and hasn’t grown up with vegetation,” he said. “There’s beautiful slots you can walk through, but the amount of human impact in there, it’s crazy. You’re already seeing it.”
Davis said he wants more people to explore these natural places – the fact that there is so much open space in the West and the freedom that comes with that is something that is a quintessential part of being an American. But, he said, he thinks it is important to spread awareness and a sense of responsibility to protect these places and keep them beautiful.
“You can recreate however you want, because it’s fun to ride a speedboat and a Ski-Doo and all that,” he said. “But just respect the land.”
That leave-no-trace ethos – wherein someone who travels through a wild place leaves it as they found it for the preservation of the land and the enjoyment of its users – was a huge part of Davis’ work at Outdoor Pursuits, he said.
“I miss working every day with students,” he said. “It was modeling good, healthy behavior and living a good, healthy life. Sharing and giving skills for people to pursue it on whatever level they want. We can make an impact in the world by being an educator by doing that.”
Davis said he is still figuring out what that impact looks like after his 26-year career as an educator and 15 years at Outdoor Pursuits. Filming and writing is a way he can continue modeling responsible outdoor recreation.
“I got to have a bigger purpose than me going just to play,” he said. “I’m good at playing, but there has to be a bigger purpose. I think that’s why I’ve been trying to share some of these adventures in a media way.”
His trip following Butch Cassidy’s footsteps was a way to add to the story about America’s endangered public lands.
“With the Wild Bunch and Butch Cassidy trip, the whole impetus was to follow the warnings of Butch Cassidy,” Davis said. “Given this current state of the world and attacks on public lands, how much have the lands that Butch Cassidy moved through freely, which allowed him to do what he did – rob banks or hide here and there – can you still move through like he did?”
Davis made it through most of his planned route, which was painstakingly pieced together through historical analysis of Cassidy’s movement. And for most of the way, he was able to follow it. But, he said, right at the end, he ran into a barbed wire fence marking a private ranch – a bittersweet reminder that the West has changed since Cassidy’s time.
For Davis, though, the fact that he made it so far, and that he can go to Lake Powell or the Brooks Range and just disappear into nature for weeks at a time, is something to celebrate.
“That’s the beauty of our public lands, especially here in the West,” he said. “We shouldn’t take that for granted, and we should be doing what we can to protect that. The more we continue to try to sell it off and privatize it, we’re losing what, I think, uniquely makes us American.”
Sedmondson@durangoherald.com
