How to Visit with Care
It’s our responsibility as visitors, boaters, and recreationists to minimize our impact on the landscape and promote an enjoyable experience for everyone. Here are some tips on how to visit with care:
- If you happen upon a cultural site, please enjoy it from afar and look but don’t touch. Leave all cultural and historical artifacts—like pottery pieces—as you found them.
- While exploring a cultural site, please leash your pets and keep them away from the area. If you have children, please guide them on how to experience the site respectfully.
- Please do not reveal a cultural site’s location on social media. Doing so could draw large foot traffic to an unprotected space.
- Stay on the path and avoid stepping on the desert's fragile biocrust. This living soil surface—made up of slow-growing cyanobacteria, algae, fungi and lichens—is vital to our canyon country ecosystems.
- Please avoid building cairns and leave trail directional signs to land managers. Cairns can inadvertently increase impacts to sensitive areas.
- Leave no trace: be prepared to pack out everything you bring into the landscape. Carry out all human (and dog) waste using an appropriate toilet system. Carry out all charcoal, fire ash, and garbage. Keep side canyon streams, springs, and pools clean and free of soap and other contaminants.
- Drive on designated roads only to avoid unintended impacts to cultural sites and fragile ecosystems.
- The economics of recreation can have a huge impact on the local and rural economies. Please be courteous and spend your money in the communities along Dolores River Canyon Country.
For more information on local boating etiquette, please see this guide from the Dolores River Boating Advocates. For guidance on how to visit cultural landscapes respectfully, please see these tips or this guide from Tribal leaders and elders.
The photo below is courtesy of the Colorado Wildlands Project.
