Camel Back Wilderness Study Area

The striking lower desert canyon, with its brilliant red bands of Entrada Sandstone, is BLM's Camel Back WSA, so named for a large, isolated mesa between Roubideau Creek and Criswell Creek.  Roubideau Creek has carved one of Colorado's unique canyons. Named for French fur trapper Antoine Robidoux, the canyon originates in subalpine spruce and aspen forests high on the Uncompahgre Plateau before it flows 20 miles north to the Gunnison River. BLM's WSA encompasses the lower eight miles of this canyon as it descends into the arid desert reaches. Recognizing the outstanding wild values of Roubideau Canyon, Congress in 1993 designated 19,650 acres in the adjacent Uncompahgre National Forest as the Roubideau Area and placed it off limits to development and motorized vehicles.  As it flows down out of the spruce and aspen forests onto BLM lands, the canyon becomes more arid, with rock buttresses, freestanding pinnacles, pinyon-juniper forest, and a meandering stream lined with cottonwoods.