June 7, 2026
After hiking closer to camp near Swen’s Canyon the previous day, Mark and I drove down Miller Flat Road and parked at Rolfson Reservoir for a hike up Staker Canyon. We’d hiked Rolfson Canyon a year earlier and saw a bear cub, and we were hoping not to experience that this time. I wanted to make it all the way to Skyline Drive but I wasn’t sure whether Mark would be up for that long and steep of a climb, or whether snow drifts would prevent us from getting all the way to the top. There were some ups and downs as we followed an old road south from Rolfson, crossing over a hilly area at the base of the ridge separating Rolfson and Staker. Then, once we reached Staker Canyon, it was a steady ascent as we mostly followed the old road into the upper basin.
The canyon widened in its upper end and the road was more visible where it had been cut into steeper terrain near Skyline Drive. The road got us to the top of the ridge between the two canyons.
The last stretch of the climb to Skyline is where I was expecting a snow drift, and there was one but it was easy to hike over. We reached the road and took in the views and took advantage of a few moments of cell service. There’s a benchmark shown on the USGS topo map right where we topped out, but we couldn’t locate it after about 10 minutes of searching.
Next we headed back down the trail and across the snow drift, but stayed on top of the ridge above the canyons and followed it for most of the rest of the way back. At first there was a maintained trail through the trees but beyond that we were on game trails, or no trail at all. We descended a short distance down off the south side of the ridge to sit on some boulders and eat lunch. While resting there, we watched deer and elk wandering in the bottom of Staker Canyon, and I spotted some sort of wooden pole fence in the distance that we decided to check out after we finished eating. It was a little bit out of the way, and in a seemingly strange place on the side of the hill. There was no opening to get livestock inside so I assume it’s a grazing exclosure rather than a corral.
Near the end of the ridge where it drops off steeply, we followed a trail off the south side and saw more aspen carvings, some quite old and some made recently by sheepherders. The terrain leveled out and we hiked along another old road–a different one than we’d ascended in the morning–back to the trailhead. Our total distance came in at under seven miles, with 1,700′ elevation gain.
Photo Gallery: Staker Canyon to Skyline Drive