Deer Creek, Wyoming

Deer Creek is a canyon in a mountain setting, with swift moving water. It's about an hour outside of Cody, just East of Yellowstone. We haven't descended the entire canyon, but I’ve spent some limited time poking around the area, reconnoitering. We've probably explored about 1/3 of the canyon. My beta is far from complete, but if you want to know what I have so far, drop me an email. So far we haven't found any mandatory rappels. Just some tricky sections working around the swift water. I've just included some of the pics here, but if you're bored and want to see them all, visit my webshots page for Deer Creek. Also coldfear.com has a video of Aaron kayaking down Deer Creek. I'm anxious to get up there again and explore the rest of the canyon. We're thinking of doing a little exploring in the winter, once the ice freezes up. We've ice climbed in this canyon, and the river often is frozen over enough to support the weight.

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On our first outing to explore the canyon, the water was too high to attempt hiking up the bottom of the canyon. So we hiked up along the rim, to get a view from above. Clayne and I after a 900 vertical foot hike to the rim.


A view from above of Deer Creek


After about 2 miles of hiking, we came to this side drainage that cascades down into Deer Creek. It looks like this would drop you into the start of the best section of the canyon. But we couldn't tell how many rappels it would take to enter the canyon from this drainage.



Clayne looking down the drainage.


In July we visited Deer Creek again, with much lower water to hike from the bottom. The canyon starts out pretty wide, but after a little ways the canyon starts to get more interesting. At this point, the water ends up flowing under this interesting arch.


Neil and Dave in Deer Creek


We continued our hike up river until we came to this waterfall. It doesn't look too hard to bypass.

View of Neil from above the falls.

































Michele and Dave above the waterfall.



Heading back down the canyon, after turning back from the waterfall.


Another shot descending the canyon.

Group shot.

































One of the most scenic area was where the river flows around a large oxbow. Didn't get any real good pictures of the oxbow itself, but the contours at this part of the canyon are beautiful.


Another shot of the Deer Creek Arch, on the way down the canyon.



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