We launched our packrafts onto the Escalante River with a simple goal: to experience and film 65 miles of Utah’s most untouched and magnificent backcountry. For five days, we drifted through towering red rock labyrinths, severed from the outside world. But what we brought back was a time capsule of a landscape on the brink of erasure.

Following President Trump’s July 2026 executive order that slashed Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears to less than 10% of their original size, the canyons we paddled have become the epicenter of a bitter legal battle between conservation and industrial extraction. Led by a coalition of Native American tribes and environmental groups, the fight will ultimately decide the survival of the Antiquities Act and the future of America’s public lands.

Upcoming Festival Screenings

Chagrin Documentary Film Festival: Friday, October 9, 2026 at 11:00am at Methodist Church, 20 S. Franklin St., Chagrin Falls, Ohio

Chagrin Documentary Film Festival: Saturday, October 10, 2026 at 2:00pm in Triangle Park, Chagrin Falls, Ohio

Every year, brothers Brian and Hank Leukart meet somewhere in the world to take on an epic adventure. When they set out — well past the end of the summer hiking season — to hike the 211-mile John Muir Trail (a.k.a. Nüümü Poyo), they find themselves up against a slew of unexpected physical and psychological challenges. As they make their way across the Sierra, they discover that conservationist John Muir’s legacy isn’t as straightforward as they once thought, prompting them to reevaluate their fundamental assumptions about environmentalism and mankind’s relationship to the natural world.

After I directed the film Bears Ears — which tells the story of Native Americans in Utah fighting for federal protection of their ancestral lands — I was inspired to continue telling stories of indigenous people native to the land that I hike through regularly. The fascinating, undertold story of California’s Native People in the Sierra inspired me and my brother to make this new film about our thoughtful trip on the John Muir Trail.