The most extraordinary of all the sites we explored—nicknamed Waldo's Catwalk by Renee—was 60 feet up an overhanging 150-foot cliff. When we arrived at the base of the cliff, Greg said softly, "My mind is blown." We could see the route some Fremont daredevil had used to reach a ledge with two granaries. The Fremont climber had leaned a 25-foot-tall Douglas fir trunk against the cliff to shinny up. From the tip of this makeshift ladder, he had "gone for it" (in climbing parlance), using hand- and footholds to launch his body over two outjuts of rock that blocked his way like roof cornices on a building. Midway through that desperate passage, he had hung on with one hand while with the other he had slammed a hefty stick into a crack, then trusted it with all his weight as he pulled himself up on it before continuing his climb.

Greg estimated the route would rate 5.11 for modern climbers, on soft, crumbly sandstone—near the limit even for today's best rock jocks using nylon ropes, sticky-soled shoes, and cams and nuts for protection. We were not about to tackle it. Instead, Greg got us into the site from the rim above by slotting spring-loaded cams into a crack, stitching a rappel tight to the overhang, then swinging sideways till he reached the ledge.

Some 50 years ago, Waldo had climbed to the base of this cliff, then stared up in wonder. But when I expressed astonishment at the Fremont acrobat, Waldo was less impressed. "Look at it this way," he said. "Them Indians did nothin' but climb every day. Maybe some of 'em fell off and died, but the ones that didn't got pretty darn good at it."

In the summer of 2005, the tension between Waldo and the scientists who had taken over his erstwhile paradise began to mount. During their four seasons in Range Creek, the teams had plotted the GPS coordinates of every site they'd found and recorded the location of every potsherd, arrowhead, and metate. But they were also gathering up artifacts to take to the Utah Museum of Natural History. Waldo was dismayed. "I think they should leave the stuff where it is," he said. "The canyon's the biggest and best museum the Indian stuff could ever be in."

Waldo has nursed a sense of doom about the canyon he loved. The cattle he ran kept the valley grazed, but today the grass stands thigh-high, creating a tinderbox. It infuriates Waldo that the archaeology team—more than half of whom smoke—won't institute a site-wide smoking ban.