Colorado: The Land of the Directional Impaired

As I get my bearings in the area, I have become aware that the locals around here do not know or use cardinal directions correctly, or at least how I was educated with them.

Let me demonstrate some examples:

• If you go "up valley" you actually have to travel south...now most maps are laid out with north being the top of the chart. The rest of society will tell you that you go up to go north (As in, "I went up north this weekend."), not up traveling south to your destination. Everyone here will quickly remind you it is an "elevation thing." But if you are south of Aspen and have to go down in elevation are you going up or down?
• The "South Canyon" is located to the northwest of West Glenwood Springs. Everything north of the canyon is desolate and very steep, so not that approachable from that direction, so not sure why they call this the "South Canyon"? The other canyon into Glenwood Springs is to the east of South Canyon and is called Glenwood Canyon not "North Canyon."
• In defense of the locals, I will confirm that the Roaring Forks River flows north until the confluence with the Colorado River (which then flows northwest through the South Canyon), while most of the rivers in the northern hemisphere flow south.
• Secondly, I refer to being from "back east," but to get back east I have to travel to the front. You see they call the eastern slope of the Rockies here the "Front Range." I assume the name is from the time of the expansion west. But the majority of the weather here travels west to east, so can we call it a storm "front" if it is coming from the back of the front range? Just asking...

No one gets lost here with their localized aboriginal system of directions, I guess they are preserving an earlier civilizational way of thinking.