AMERICA'S FINEST WILDERNESS VACATIONS Guides need at least three river trips just to gain an apprenticeship and then must pass a state-licensing test. On top of those requirements, Dee has adopted his own stringent training program that stresses wilderness first aid, river safety and rescue, food handling and interpretation skills.
TAKING CARE OF THE ENVIRONMENT
Once on the river or trail, guides go out of their way to protect the environment in manners pioneered or perfected by the Holladays. Engines that could foul the water with gasoline or oil, and which reverberate noisily through the river canyons, aren't allowed. Campfires are built on metal fire pans elevated over ceramic fire blankets that keep the sand and vegetation from being scorched or baked. All garbage and human waste is packed off the river or trail. On some trips, Holiday even packs firewood down the river for campfires.
"If we haul it away," Dee says of driftwood that many other boaters feed their fires with, "it takes the home of some lizard or frog or other critter."
Such practices have long been the standard for Holiday Expeditions. And the company's guides are just as environmentally sensitive away from the river. They know you have to tread carefully on hikes as many of the soils along the Southwest's rivers have cryptobiotic crusts - nitrogen-rich soils that are home to bacteria and lichen, and take 50 years to establish, yet can be destroyed by one footstep.
"It's literally the glue that holds all the sand in place and provides nitrogen for the vegetation in the desert to grow," says Dee. "With more and more people out there, it's more and more critical that they become aware of the damage they create. Once we destroy this stuff, we'll be left with nothing but a mound of sand. It will be like the Sahara Desert."
Thank you for stopping by Holiday Expeditions.
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