When I wrote Canyoneering Arizona 27 years ago, the essence of the sport escaped me. It was all about exploring river basins then; mainly just hiking down creekbeds that I might later descend by kayak, when high water arrived.

As the sport developed, so too did my understanding of it. Principally, I realized that it doesn’t take a big drainage to produce a good canyon. Narrows, rappels, pools; these are the stuff of appealing canyons, and they’re found mostly in small drainages, not big ones.

My map scouting became smaller in scale, and canyoneering possibilities exploded. I’ll never forget looking at a map of the Santa Catalina Mountains, just after a descent of Lemmon Canyon there. Drainages similar to Lemmon littered the map! My work was cut out for me. But I was already late to the game in the world of canyon seeking.

Within a couple short years of my epiphany, Todd Martin came out with Arizona: Technical Canyoneering, a clear advancement from my earlier work. All the Catalina clefts were in there, plus a whole lot more. When John Govi and I probed “explorations” into unlisted canyons that year (2007), we found canyon registers. Ours was likely a 2nd? or 3rd? or 4th? descent. The pioneers had been here.

A few years later, Martin and Rich Rudow presented Grand Canyoneering—an exploration of canyons within the grandest canyon of them all—Grand Canyon. I’d once considered such a project myself, and quickly discarded it as too time consuming, too effortful, a true labor of love. Hats off to Todd and Rich, they brought their labors to life with that guidebook, a true tome that has been used widely. Canyoneering has come of age.

As Govi and I rappelled down Babes Hole Spring Canyon this spring, I reflected on how canyoneering has changed in the nearly three decades since I published Canyoneering Arizona. A minor draw like Babes Hole would’ve never caught my eye back then. But like every outdoor pursuit, explorers have covered new ground, probed deeper, and refined the essence of the endeavor. An interesting rappel down a craggy draw can unveil an unknown piece of planet. And for me, that’s what it’s always been about.