Happy Canyon

by: Steph Davis

By KAVU

June 4^th, 2019

Happy Canyon is a super remote part of the desert with a small shack and air strip left over from the uranium days.

Miners were flown out to this isolated canyon with supplies, and spent their days drilling for ore samples and building roads, living in the wooden shack through heat, wind and rain.

They called it Happy Canyon because they were so happy when they left….

It must have been incredibly hardcore living there in every extreme the desert has to offer, with almost no contact to the outside world.

A little less hardcore, and possibly a lot more fun?!, is flying over this beautiful landscape in a helicopter and doing a wingsuit jump down to see the abandoned shack :)

I’m still scratching my head about why there’s a vintage iron on one of the falling down shelves inside….

My good friend Ben Black of Pinnacle Helicopters has hiked through large portions of this remote landscape, after previewing it from above on his helicopter tours, and knows this place better than most anyone from land and air.

He knows where the desert donkeys live, and can usually find them from above, and getting to see them was definitely one of the best parts of the outing!

These hardy little creatures can, and do, survive on literally nothing through cold, heat and drought, and are perfectly at home in a place that most other living beings would never make it.

It’s incredibly beautiful to see the contours of the cliffs, canyons and the river from above, as well as the colors of light and shadow against the rocks and plateaus, flying over the most fantastical landscape you can imagine.