Part of our commitment to the environment and our guests is how we approach going down the river; it’s not so much getting from point A to point B that matters, but rather the way you get there.  The way we run our trips is tailored both for our guests enjoyment and for the preservation of wild places.  There is a mindfulness to the ‘why’ and ‘how’ everything gets done around camp and on river; there is a praxis behind never using a gasoline motor to access these delicate ecosystems, picking up every last bit of trash, or creating elegant designs to reduce wasted time energy or resources… We believe our efforts and attention to detail will create an unforgettably intimate experience for your friends and family in the natural world.

Respect for the wilderness and its interconnection.  That’s what makes your trip with Holiday special.   This isn’t an afterthought for our company, but rather the foundation of it.  These rivers have given us everything: from enjoyment and adventure, to a deep sense of peace and belonging, to the very sustenance of life both in ecosystems and our bodies. Water is life. Say-it-again! Water IS life.

That’s why we use oars on our rafts, never motors. It seems to us that rushing to get there is exactly what you took a vacation to get away from. Respect. For the Land. For the River. For our Guests. Our guides are selected for their respect and contributions to preserving the rivers and trails we love.

Holiday River Expeditions’ goal is to preserve our nation’s wild lands. By providing our guests an enjoyable wilderness experience with an opportunity to learn about the natural world; Holiday trips develop their awareness and encourage the preservation of wild places. Holiday will accomplish this through: Diligent Training; Meaningful Interpretation; Innovative Equipment & Facilities; Responsible Stewardship of the Land; and Environmentally Sound Business Practice.

Whether by being leading visionaries of these organizations, or simply helping them raise much needed cash by stewarding their supporters down the river, Holiday has embedded in our foundation a moral commitment to protecting the planet we all live on and the rivers we love to run. From the large national organizations to the unpaid grassroots networks, here is a list of some of the organizations we believe in:

• Living Rivers
• Green River Action Network
• Utah Rivers Council
• Sierra Club
• HEAL Utah
• Waterkeeper Alliance
• Peaceful Uprising
• Wasatch/ Canyon Country Rising Tide
• Great Old Broads for Wilderness
• Glen Canyon Institute
• Grand Canyon Trust
• Wildlands Network
• Cloud Ridge Naturalists
• Audubon Society
• Nature Conservancy

We understand that real change happens systemically, (we are after-all like a river, very-much interconnected). While Holiday’s staff spends a fair amount of time working towards structural change and root-causes of issues that impact our natural world and our global climate, we cannot ‘talk the talk’ in our advocacy without ‘walking the walk’.  As famous river-runner Buzz Holmstrom once said, it is in the “Doing of the thing”. Our day-to-day practices and behaviors strive in as many ways as we can, to model an ethical lifestyle; one at peace with the natural world we enjoy so much. Here are some of the things we do on the daily!:

• Recycling on all our trips & at our office, even though our Headquarters are in towns without facilities.
• Conserving water at our headquarters including using gray-water tanks.
• Conserve electricity at our operational headquarters.
• Self installed and designed solar arrays on our Green River Headquarters
• No-idling practices with our vans.
• Efforts to source food from ethical/ sustainable distributors.

We are visitors to pristine wilderness with unimaginable beauty so we go above and beyond to make sure we leave little impact. Our founder Dee Holladay is responsible for developing many of the “Leave No Trace” practices required by land management agencies in modern river and land use permits.   We consequently take our adherence to these principles very seriously.  From innovating fire-blankets and portable fire-pits, to picking up every last bit of ‘micro-trash’ our guides will make sure that the beaches we visit look as un-touched as they were before we arrived; sometimes even better.  We even helped innovate packing out solid waste!

“Leave only footprints, take only pictures”