The Roan only looks flat. It is actually cut with long canyons, and the one you can see here in this photo contains the main stem of Trapper Creek. If you set out cross country here, you’d find that the land between the main canyons is corrugated and crinkled like a piece of paper balled up in the hand and then straightened. Each fold of the land is dramatically different- the wet and shadowy north facing slopes where the snow lingers long into spring are heavily timbered, jackstrawed with downed fir and pine, the perfect security cover for elk and other wary beasts. The lower elevation slopes and coulee bottoms are tangles of service berry, aspen, rich grasses. The southern aspects of each coulee are dry and hot, sage brush, rabbit brush, rock, where horned toads scatter beneath the hooves of big mule deer, whose sidehill trails show everywhere like veins incised into the steep ground.

It is this complexity that makes the Roan such fine game country, and also why the water holds on here deep into the summers, some of it soaking down  to emerge as springs on the far flanks of the plateau. The rest of it feeds the main creeks- Trapper, Northwater, JQS Creek, and others. These creeks flow down and tumble straight off the rim of the plateau, creating the tributaries of Parachute Creek, which brings life to the ranches and farms of the flatlands, then flows to the Colorado River.