Ever come across an incredible hotel that stops you mid-scroll and makes you think, Wow, wouldn’t it be something to stay there? We do, too—all the time. Welcome to Friday Fantasy, where we highlight amazing hotels, lodges, cabins, tents, campsites, and other places perched in perfect outdoor settings. Read on for the intel you need to book an upcoming adventure here. Or at least dream about it.

Ten feet overhead in a desert canyon in Utah, a jammed log spanned the gully, left by a recent flash flood. In the next passage in Harris Wash in��Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, southern Utah, our group gazed up at a tangled brown stripe of debris from the same flood, adorning a green cottonwood tree like Spanish moss.

All our lives we marvel at nature’s power. Here we also appreciated the immovability of geology—rock walls—as our group of nine, all staying in the region at��the complex, at first walked and then arduously wormed through a narrowing slot canyon. When the sides pinched down to only a foot wide, my friend DeMarco Williams, athletic and deep-chested, said from two feet ahead, “I don’t know if I can do this.” He was pinned.

Ofland Escalante, two miles from the town of Escalante, is situated amid the landscape of the national monument and between two national parks. (Video: Eric Vega)

I had it easier, being smaller. As a climber, I’ve been in squeeze chimneys before; they can be awful and claustrophobic, and you just want out, but have to make it happen.

DeMarco pressed on, and something gave, and he scraped through the constriction. I followed, ducking, and emerged into the light, where he waited smiling. At each obstacle, following canyoneering practices shown us by Rick Green, owner of the guiding outfit , one of us waited to help the next person.

This trip last August was to the treasure that is Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, where friends and I all stayed two nights at Ofland Escalante, an ideal, central base located within the national monument and two miles west of the pioneer town of the same name. (Harris Wash was some 25 miles from town, with much of the drive on a washboard road.)

Not everyone in our group loved our several-hour canyoneering experience. Some cried, and some half-laughed, half-cried. But no one will forget it.

Toward the end, having split into two groups (one with Amie Fortin of the same outfit), we all convened for lunch in a bowl among blunt buttresses that were once ancient sand dunes, the slickrock around us inscribed with fine criss-cross lines. Sage and grasses waved in the wind, with hardy piñon-juniper trees in clumps nearby. Paiute, Ute, and Navajo tribes once dwelled in this region. So did dinosaurs. We saw no one else all day.

As we all looped back out of the canyon, we scrambled a little, but much of the return was just a quiet, reverent walk through washes and passages. Tracing the undulating wind- and water-sculpted walls, I peered into natural niches like little altars, holding swirls of sediment.

The Lodge

Closed each winter but slated to reopen March 12, Ofland Escalante is located just off Highway 12. Opened in 2021 on the site of an old RV park and drive-in movie theater, the place was in recent years, per the website, a “luxury RV park” known as Yonder Escalante. In May 2023 the new owners added “deluxe” cabins, and last year renamed the place (“Ofland” is for “of the land”). Ofland has varying services and prices, and brings people together in communal spaces.��

The place offers four types of accommodations. I bunked in a Deluxe Cabin, simple and boxy with floor-to-ceiling windows, able to sleep up to four people. Also available are vintage Airstreams, tiny cabins, and campsites.

The central common area draws visitors with a fire pit, picnic tables, complimentary hot drinks, and shelves of books, board games, and cards. Our crew brought over s’mores supplies from our rooms and gathered at the tables for spirited rounds of Uno.

On Ofland Escalante’s 22-acre grounds, you can still enjoy the vintage outdoor “drive-in” theater, where you watch from inside one of nine in-situ classic cars. Other property diversions include a hot tub and swimming pool.

But the big deal is the place’s location amid the wonders of the Utah desert. The nearby town of Escalante is on the northern border of the 1.87-million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and just off the 123-mile-long U of scenic highway 12, which runs between Panguich, 67 miles west of the town, and Torrey, 65 miles north of it. Escalante sits between two national parks, about 50 miles east of Bryce Canyon and 67 southwest of Capitol Reef. Highway 12 links them all.

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Escalante (and Ofland Escalante) are in road-trip reach of five national parks, four state parks, another national monument, and the vast Dixie National Forest, all boasting a myriad of .

You’re also in the high-elevation desert here. The town of Escalante is set at 5,800 feet, and the surrounding area rises to about 8,600 feet, while reaches 9,000 feet. So ascend gradually and, while you are outside and exerting, pay attention to your water intake.

Escalante is famous for its slot canyons, and Excursions of Escalante can take you out, set up rappels, and use their guides’ situational experience to avoid dangerous floods. The outfitters gave us packs, helmets, and water bottles, but you should arrive wearing good trail shoes and clothes that take being abraded.

A little on-site commentary from a canyon in Harris Wash, the Utah desert (Video: Neil Tandy)

A Utah friend tells me that , a 6.7-mile out-and-back starting 19 miles northeast of Escalante, is her favorite hike ever. It has birdwatching—for hawks and ravens, and she once saw a condor—and “a little of everything” else, from steep sections to sandy patches and a 125-foot waterfall.

For me, a dark-horse favorite was also . We hiked the Rainbow section (and added a few other loops), where we saw petrified wood in scattered chunks, from wastebasket- to coffee-table size, with hues of sulphur yellow and iron red but also deep blues and violet. The starts on an uphill past a tram-size balanced rock overlooking Wide Hollow Reservoir, where you can camp, swim, or .

Please do not pocket any pieces of petrified wood. Things in the desert are supposed to stay there. Besides, I’ve , and taking one only brings you ill luck.

Choice Rooms

My Deluxe Cabin’s outside shower was heaven. The water was plenty hot, and I could gaze out at the sky and the surrounding scrub-covered dun bluffs.

The Deluxe Cabins (from $259 per night) are the most cushy places, the only ones with private bathrooms and their own driveways. Each has a kitchenette and Wi-Fi, a deck with picnic table, and a queen bed and pull-out sofa such that it can sleep up to four. From the cabins it’s a five-minute walk to the main lodge. ADA cabins are available as well, and the lodge has golf carts for transport around the property.

Other options include vintage Airstreams ($175 per night), which sleep up to three people, and tiny cabins ($169), located just paces from the common area. The cabins have front decks and the Airstreams step out to picnic tables and fire pits. Both use shared bathrooms with amenities and open-air showers.

Ofland also has five campsites (from $99, per night). Each comes with a picnic table, grill, fire pit, filtered-water hookup, power, and bathroom access.

Eat and Drink

Pop over to the on-site food truck, prepare your own meals in your kitchenette, or go out for dinner at in the delightfully small and funky town of Escalante. 4th West offers 30 types of beers; burgers, paninis, and nice spicy tacos; a pool table, where my friends played half the night; and a nice local vibe. The evening was cool, so we skipped the outdoor seating, but in warm temps it would be wonderful to enjoy the view from there over dinner.

, 14 miles east of town and located within the national monument, is a magical-looking complex overlooking the startlingly green forest lining the Escalante River. It offers vegetarian-friendly Southwest fare, indoor and outdoor seating, and lodging.

Thirteen miles farther north is in the town of Boulder. The place, which has a devoted following, features ethically sourced ingredients and its own organic garden. The owners practice Buddhist principles and are committed to social responsibility.

At the end of Highway 12, in the town of Torrey, is the family-owned Wild Rabbit Cafe, with an on-site coffee roaster, and vegan and vegetarian options.

When to Go

Ofland Escalante is open mid-March through October. Spring and fall will have you cozying up around the fire pits, and maybe hitting the hot tub. Summer is bound to put you in the swimming pool. All indoor accommodations have heat and A/C.

How to Get There

The small Bryce Canyon Airport is just four miles north of Bryce Canyon National Park, 48 miles from Escalante. Most visitors and rent a car for the amazing 294-mile drive south and back with its section on Highway 12.

Don’t Miss

Hike to the 100 Hands Pictograph Panel, actually site of three major rock-art panels, via a family-friendly 1.2-mile round-trip off Highway 12, starting from the Escalante River Trailhead 14 miles east of Escalante. Ancient petroglyphs—sheep, deer, a snake—are visible just five minutes along the trail. The trail contours up to an alcove where you see the 100 Hands (more like 160 Hands) panel, and beyond that is the Shaman and Hunter panel, with a bowhunting scene and collection of shaman figures wearing headpieces.

Forty miles beyond Escalante, stop and get out at the Homestead Overlook, at 9,600 feet elevation, to see the tableau of the Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument, the Kaiparowits Plateau, and the Waterpocket Fold of Capitol Reef National Park, with their oceanic deposits and sedimentary layers, red and gold desert against the bumpy skyline of the Henry Mountains. Descending, you pass the Fishaven Reservoir and may see some sandhill cranes, before winding through the treed hamlet of Boulder, volcanic rocks and basalt scattered along the roadway.

Details

Price: From $99

Address: 2020 UT-12
Escalante, UT 84726

Alison Osius is a senior editor in travel at ���ϳԹ��� magazine and ���ϳԹ��� Online. She is a longtime climber and a former editor at Climbing and Rock and Ice magazines. She’s recently written about seeing the Utah desert from a lodge made of glass sky domes; hiking the memorial Storm King Trail, scene of one of our country’s greatest firefighting tragedies; and how to approach traveling to altitude (which starts with: paying attention). Oh, and if you were wondering, here are 8 simple rules for visiting your friends in mountain and waterfront towns.

The post Want to Wake Up in Utah Canyon Country? We Do, Too. appeared first on ���ϳԹ��� Online.

There’s a solid chance you’ve never heard of Capitol Reef National Park. Or maybe you’ve heard of the park, but as a destination it hasn’t cracked your top-ten bucket list, so you’ve never made the long trek to Southern Utah to experience its goods. I was in that same boat myself until last month.

I’ve criss-crossed Utah countless times in the last 30 years, hitting every other national park in the state, but I only recently had the joy of gazing out at my surroundings in Capitol Reef. Two days knocking out short day hikes throughout the park left me craving more.

The problem, which is also a blessing, is location. Surrounded by more famous destinations, Capitol Reef is often overlooked. Sure, people trek from all over the world to Utah on national-park road trips, but the vast majority are visiting Arches and Zion. Maybe Canyonlands or Bryce if they can squeeze in an extra day. Yet Capitol Reef is beautiful, and it might be the most adventurous unit in the entire national-park system.

If you’ve heard of Capitol Reef at all, it’s probably because of its orchards, which are pretty damn cool. Starting in the late 1800s, settlers from the Church of Latter-Day Saints planted thousands of apple, cherry, peach, and pear trees in the Fremont River Valley, which is now within the boundaries of the national park. Many of those historic orchards are still thriving within the park’s boundaries, and the National Park Service is working on an to keep the fruit blooming for years to come. You can even pick fruit from orchards with U-Pick signs and self-pay stations.

But listen, there’s a lot more to Capitol Reef.

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The park covers 241,904 acres of prime slickrock desert, encompassing the Waterpocket Fold, a nearly 100-mile-long uplift that has eroded into a cornucopia of cliffs, arches, natural bridges, and monoliths. The landscape is so remote and so rugged that the Waterpocket Fold area was the in the continental U.S. Today that landscape still feels remote and adventurous.

“This was the spot that made me fall in love with Utah,” says Mike Hinkle, owner of Capitol Reef ���ϳԹ��� Company, who moved to the area to work as a guide more than two decades ago. “People say it’s in the middle of nowhere, but the landscape is unique, and it doesn’t feel like Disneyland. You’re not waiting in line to get on the shuttle. You’re not sharing a trail with 1,000 other people. You’re out there.”

Capitol Reef is 60 miles long and six miles wide, bigger than Zion and Arches combined but with a fraction of the visitors. The park is divided into three distinct sections.

• Most visitors stick to the central portion of the park, the Fruita Historic District, where Highway 24 offers easy access to the Visitor Center, day hikes, and a front-country campground.
• Cathedral Valley occupies the northern section of the park, where mostly unmaintained dirt roads lead to domes and backcountry campsites.
• The southern part of the park, the Waterpocket District, is just as remote, full of dirt roads and narrow canyons and long hikes where you have to huff across miles of desert for grand views.

It is a park that delivers both for those who want a scenic drive/short hikes and backcountry-seekers, with a diversity of adventure that ranges from backcountry bike rides to roadside trad climbs.

“It’s a mix of the same rock you see in Zion and Arches,” Hinkle says. “Capitol Reef has its arches and cliffs and waterways that make it the same kind of rock features, but because it sees less people, we can actually guide technical adventures here.”

Here are the best ways to explore Capitol Reef National Park.

Day Hikes in Capitol Reef National Park

You can access the majority of front-country day hikes along Highway 24, which runs through the middle of the park and the Fruita Historic District. Here are three gems you can hit without driving on dirt to reach the trailheads.

Cassidy Arch Trail

If the park has a signature trail, it’s , a 3.4-mile out-and-back to the celebrated stone arch, which forms a 125-foot-long bridge on the edge of a cliff high at the top of the Grand Wash Canyon. It’s classic desert scenery, skirting the edge of red sandstone cliffs and crossing acres of slickrock.

Grand Wash Trail

Starting from the same trailhead as Cassidy Arch, the gives day hikers a taste of the slot-canyon landscape without the common inherent dangers of mandatory rappels and flash-flood potential. The three-mile out-and-back meanders through a canyon with 200-foot walls that gradually narrow as you hike towards the center of the gorge. The hiking is flat and sandy, and after a mile, you’ll reach the skinniest point of the canyon, roughly 20 feet wide, a slot canyon but not constricted. This trail is an easy yo-yo hike that’s great for families with small children.

Hickman Natural Bridge

This 2.1-mile passes through stands of junipers and cottonwoods as well as clusters of sand dunes, and lets you see the remnants of a granary built by the Fremont people, an indigenous culture that predates the Navajo and Ute. The crescendo is the sandstone Hickman Bridge, 125 feet tall and 133 feet across.

This is a moderate hike, gaining just under 500 feet in elevation, but if you want more, add on the , which branches off from Hickman Natural Bridge Trail near the trailhead on Highway 24. It’s a 1,100-foot climb over 1.3 miles to the Rim Overlook, where you can stand on the edge of a cliff and peer 1,000 feet into the valley below.

Bike Rides in Capitol Reef National Park

Capitol Reef is a biker’s dream. Highway 24 and the eight-mile Scenic Drive passing through dramatic rock formations offer mellow options for road cyclists and e-bikers, but if you really want to see the park on two wheels, hit the system of unpaved roads that traverse the backcountry, offering stellar views and solitude.

For truly hardy bikepackers, the burly 70-mile loop through the delivers you into some of the most remote corners of the park. It’s full of steep climbs and sandy or muddy wash crossings that can be tough to navigate with skinny tires, so I’d opt for a fat-tire mountain bike for this one. Also, there’s no water along the route, so you’ll need to carry enough for two to three days. But if you’re prepared, you’ll have this broad valley, which is loaded with towering sandstone outcroppings that reminded the original explorers of massive churches, to yourself. There are also six primitive campsites at the Cathedral Valley Campground (first come/first serve, free) roughly halfway through the loop, letting you break up the 70 miles into two days.

Canyoneering in Capitol Reef National Park

Guided canyoneering trips are prohibited inside Arches and Zion National Parks, but not here. Professional outfitters with commercial permits are allowed to guide rock climbing and canyoneering trips within Capitol Reef National Park. Unless you have the proper equipment and experience (flash floods are a concern in tight canyons that can drain water from even small storms), go with a guide.

Cassidy Arch Canyon ��

This is the most dramatic canyon within the park. It’s also one of the more technical, with eight rappels (more rappelling than hiking) on the journey through the sandstone subway. The adventure starts with a 150-foot drop through Cassidy Arch itself. It’s an airy descent as you lower from the sunny edge of the arch into the shadows of the canyon below. The rappels get shorter as you descend through the canyon, but you’ll drop through the center of two other natural bridges along the way. offers full-day trips through Cassidy ($300 for the first person, $125 per additional person).

For those looking for a self-guided canyoneering adventure with easy access, venture into , a 9.5-mile point-to-point starting at the Chimney Rock Trailhead on Highway 24 and running to where Highway 24 crosses the Fremont River. It’s not an official trail and the route is unmarked, but you’ll find cairns along the way. Nor is it a technical descent, as the dry falls that need to be negotiated have bypass trails, removing the need for ropes. It is an adventurous hike, though, with scrambling, some narrow slot sections, and a mandatory crossing of the Fremont River towards the end of the journey. Carry plenty of water and only attempt this trek if that description sounds like something you can handle.

Sheets Gulch

offers a more remote nine-mile trek through narrow, textured Navajo sandstone walls before opening up to banks of Douglas firs. It’s an out-and-back, so make sure you turn around with plenty of daylight left.

In case you want to spend a couple of days exploring Capitol Reef’s signature narrow passages, two other popular slot canyons, Burro Wash and Cottonwood Wash, are located in the same area.

Rock Climbs in Capitol Reef National Park

For decades, climbers mostly neglected Capitol Reef, but in the last few years the sandstone cliffs and boulders have received more attention, though they are still not as busy as Southern Utah hotspots like Bears Ears National Monument. You’ll find crack climbs on steep Wingate sandstone cliffs and collections of sandstone boulders both inside and outside of the park’s boundaries.

You need a day-use permit (free), which you can get at a self-serve kiosk at the Visitor Center, to climb or boulder within the park. Also, using white chalk is prohibited (use tan chalk instead), and first ascentionists can only use traditional removable protection in the rock rather than placing bolts for sport climbs. No climbing within 100 feet of rock art or prehistoric structures, nor on any arches or natural bridges.

Summers are hot, so consider Capitol Reef a fall-through-spring climbing destination. The approaches can be long, too, so bring water regardless of the season.

The Fruita Area, which is accessed by Highway 24 shortly after entering the park from the west, has the largest concentration of established climbs and boulders. Most of the established climbs are tough (5.10 or harder) but the unfortunately-named is a moderate trad 5.8 up a 50-foot wall via a wide crack that’s close to the road (bring hand-sized cams). Hundreds of established and potential boulder problems exist in the Grand Wash area of Fruita. (V2) is the classic, up a 15-foot sandstone rock via a sit start to pockets and jugs, with a walk-off topout.

Grab a copy of if you’re looking for other options.

Where to Stay in Capitol Reef National Park

Capitol Reef has one of the coolest campgrounds in the park system: the 71-site Fruita Campground near the Fremont River Valley sits in an actual desert oasis surrounded by fruit trees planted by the Mormon pioneers of the 1880s. The facility can handle everything from tents to RVs, though there are no sewage, water, or electrical hookups (from at $25 a night, and make your up to six months in advance).

I found dispersed camping outside the western border of the park on Fishlake National Forest just off Highway 24 near the town of Torrey. The camping is free, but there are no facilities.

Head down Highway 12 towards Boulder, Utah, and you’ll find developed campgrounds in Dixie National Forest at Singletree Campground and Pleasant Creek Campground. Capitol Reef has an ��with locations of alternative camping options surrounding the park.

The gateway town of Torrey has plenty of hotel solutions as well. is the closest to the park’s western entrance, with accommodations that range from Conestoga wagons to hotel suites (from $119).

Where to Eat in Capitol Reef National Park

Torrey (pop. 257), which sits just outside the park’s western border, may be small, but it has plenty of restaurants to keep you satisfied. The Wild Rabbit Cafe has great coffee and breakfast (I like the burrito) that uses local eggs. Hunt and Gather is more of a fine dining option, using as many local ingredients as possible. Head to the next town over (Bicknell) for Curry Pizza, which melds Indian cuisine with pizza.

I left the area marveling at its wonders, while I wondered why the hell it took me so long to come here.

Graham Averill is ���ϳԹ��� magazine’s national-parks columnist. Visiting Capitol Reef for the first time, and falling in love with it, makes him wonder what other hidden gems he’s been missing within the park system.

Want more of ���ϳԹ���’s travel stories? .

For more by this author, see:

The 10 Best Bike Towns in America, Ranked

The post Why Did It Take Me Forever to Get to Capitol Reef? And What Other National-Park Gems Have I Been Missing? appeared first on ���ϳԹ��� Online.

A few years after quitting his job to pursue a longtime dream of becoming a whitewater guide on the Colorado River, former ���ϳԹ��� senior editor Kevin Fedarko was approached by his best friend, the adventure photographer Pete McBride, with a bold and unlikely vision. Together they would embark on a 750-mile expedition, by foot, through the Grand Canyon, moving from east to west—a journey McBride promised would be “a walk in the park.” Fedarko agreed, unaware that the tiny cluster of experts who were familiar with this particular trek billed it as “the toughest hike in the world.”

In keeping with the two men’s time-tested habit of cutting corners and flying by the seats of their pants, Fedarko and McBride proceeded to fast-talk a group of long-distance desert hikers into permitting them to tag along for the first part of their own through-hike, which began on September 25, 2016. In an excerpt from Fedarko’s forthcoming book, , he shares the grisly details of what happened on the eve of their departure.

“There’s a lot more coming,” Pete warned when he called me that night to explain that my house would serve as the staging area for all of the equipment, clothing, and food that he was ordering. “Your job is to wrangle everything together and get it squared away. Can you handle that?”

“Absolutely. Consider it done.”

Given how many packages were still on the way, I decided it was best to wait a bit before getting to work. When most of the boxes had been delivered, I’d unpack them and start testing important items such as the camp stove, the tent, and the DeLorme InReach, a handheld communicator that enabled two-way text messaging via satellite, but could also be paired with topographic maps on a cell phone—and would, if necessary, transmit an emergency SOS. But for the moment, I simply plucked each new package off the porch, carried it down the driveway, and tossed it into the garage.

I knew that the organizing and testing business was important, and I had every aim of flinging myself into the mission when the moment was right. But, alas, a hundred other urgent and pressing tasks intervened—laundry, napping, mowing the lawn—and despite my best intentions, the pile in the garage continued to grow. Then, almost without warning it seemed, September 24 arrived, and it was time to leave for the canyon.

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As if vomiting blood wasn’t bad enough, imagine doing it while stuck in a 3,000-foot deep cave on the other side of the world.

That’s what happened to American researcher Mark Dickey during an expedition to explore the Morca cave in Turkey. After spending nearly two weeks underground with severe stomach problems, the 40-year-old was pulled to safety on a stretcher shortly after midnight on Tuesday, September 12, .

“It is amazing to be above ground again,” Dickey told reporters on Tuesday. “I was underground for far longer than ever expected…It’s been one hell of a crazy, crazy adventure, but I’m on the surface safely. I’m still alive.”

The complicated rescue mission involved around 190 experts from across Europe, including doctors, paramedics, and cavers, . Many of the rescuers camped near the cave’s opening in southern Turkey’s Taurus mountains.

The race to save Dickey also generated headlines across the globe. TV crews caught images of him emerging from the cave.

An experienced caver himself, Dickey was on an expedition mapping the 4,186-foot deep Morca cave system for the Anatolian Speleology Group Association when he became ill on August 31. He was unable to leave the cave on his own, according to a New Jersey-based cave rescue group he is affiliated with.

“Only the most experienced of cavers are capable of reaching him to render aid,” the said in a statement last week. “The location is very remote and the local water resources are limited.”

Starting on Sunday, September 3, doctors began administering IV fluids and blood to Dickey inside the chilly cavern, where the temperature hovered between 39 and 42 degrees Fahrenheit. A team including a doctor and three or four other rescuers took turns staying by Dickey’s side. It’s unclear what caused Dickey’s illness.

After Dickey was medically stabilized, authorities began attempting to extract him on Saturday, September 9.

In order to evacuate Dickey, rescuers had to widen some of the caves’ narrow passages, install ropes to hoist him up vertical shafts, and set up camps to rest along the way, the Associated Press reported. The Morca cave is Turkey’s third-deepest, reaching nearly .8 miles below ground.

shows him strapped tightly to a litter, as rescuers slowly maneuver him around cramped corners. After he emerged, members of his rescue crew celebrated, and some shared their stories with reporters. Zsofia Zador, a Hungarian anesthesiologist, it was her first “big rescue for me as a doctor.”

“This is quite a difficult cave because there are some small narrow passages and the shafts are quite muddy so it is not the easiest cave to traverse,” Zador said.

from his hospital bed on Tuesday, Dickey thanked people for “the outpouring of support and well wishes.”

“It has been a scary experience and the closest to death I’ve been yet,” Dickey said. “I truly appreciate all the people involved in both saving my life and helping me escape from so deep inside a cave.”

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63 Parks Traveler started with a simple goal: to visit every U.S. national park. Avid backpacker and public-lands nerd saved up, built out a tiny van to travel and live in, and hit the road, practicing COVID-19 best safety protocols along the way. The parks as we know them are rapidly changing, and she wanted to see them before it’s too late. Mammoth Cave is her 51st park visit.

A small, gentle waterfall dripped into the gaping mouth of the cavern as I made my way down the stairs on a self-guided tour of the park’s most famous rooms. In no time at all, it was eerily black. The occasional amber tinge emitted by the cave’s illuminated craggy walls striped with ancient water marks, and a tiny bat slept upside down to my right as I moved through a narrow passageway and felt my knees buckle when I arrived at the next chamber.

The is one of the largest in the cave, and as I stared up, slack-jawed, at its enormous domed ceiling, I overheard a ranger whisper that it’s big enough to hold a 737 aircraft. The park was certainly living up to its name.

In spite of its lavish opera-house good looks, the room was once used for quite another industry, one that contributed to uncountable deaths. Thanks to bats that had inhabited the cave for thousands of years, the dirt floor was once covered in guano, a substance rich in calcium nitrate, making the site ripe for the extraction of —one of the primary ingredients used to make black gunpowder, and throughout the War of 1812, a profitable mining operation had sprung up inside Mammoth Cave to keep up with demand.

I walked silently through the colossal passageway, a blown-out mining site wrecked and vacant on my left. Rubble and ruin, I thought to myself, the spoils of war.

Though the cave itself was truly massive, it didn’t have the same drippy, psychedelic rock formations I’d seen in Carlsbad Caverns months earlier. With a bedrock of sandstone and shale, two minerals less water soluble than limestone, the area didn’t lend itself to the familiar stalactites and stalagmites of other subterranean tunnels. Instead, Mammoth Cave was mostly formed by a large, underground river that slowly carved out over 420 miles of halls and rooms, with more still being formed each day as new waters erode the hidden depths.

As if spending my morning underground wasn’t spooky enough, I soon passed a series of roofless stone buildings, evidence of an abandoned that once operated in the large tunnel. Believing the steady temperature and humidity to have curative properties, Dr. John Croghan brought a company of 16 withering patients into the caverns to see if his theory held. Five of them died inside the cave.

When the rain abated, I ditched the netherworld and set off for a short hike along the , shuffling my feet along the forest floor to a deep depression in the earth where part of the ancient cave had collapsed. A small brook churned out from below the mossy coliseum of rock, and a groundhog rustled nearby in the grass. I gazed up at the clouds and smiled in perfectly gloomy reverie.

63 Parks Traveler Mammoth Cave Info

Size: 52,830 acres

Location: Central Kentucky, northeast of Bowling Green

Created In: 1941 (national park)

Best For: History buffs, short hikes, cave tours, paddling

When to Go: Spring (39 to 81 degrees) and fall (40 to 85 degrees) afford the most temperate weather for hiking and paddling aboveground, while summer (64 to 91 degrees) is hot and humid, and winter (29 to 53 degrees) brings fewer crowds. The cave’s temperature remains a constant 54 degrees, though, and the park’s most popular tours run year-round.

Mini ���ϳԹ���: Take a of the caverns. For visitors who don’t like narrow passageways or are short on time, this DIY stroll through some of the park’s most famous limestone formations and passageways will take you past historic saltpeter mines, archeological sites, and the 19th-century tuberculosis ward.

Mega ���ϳԹ���: Spend a solid day on the guided . This four-hour ranger-led walk combines the Frozen Niagara and Domes and Dripstones Tours for a comprehensive showcase of Mammoth Cave’s geologic diversity. Squeeze through slot canyons, marvel at sparkling walls coated with gypsum, and meander through immense underground tunnels.

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Three people at in Iowa, and the alleged gunman appears to have shot himself to death, state officials say.

Located in eastern Iowa, the park is one of the state’s most popular attractions for experienced spelunkers and casual hikers alike. It covers 370 acres and boasts 13 caves and six miles of trails lined with hardwood trees and high bluffs.

Police at the state park’s campground shortly before 6:30 a.m., said Mike Krapfl, the special agent in charge of the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, . As officers searched the campground, they found three people dead. One camper, who investigators believed to be armed, was unaccounted for.

Authorities later found the body of Anthony Orlando Sherwin, 23, a short distance west of the campground, apparently dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. It is unclear whether Sherwin had any relationship to the victims.

The park was locked down at around 8 a.m.,��a Maquoketa Caves employee told the��.��Children attending Camp Shalom, a Christian camp near the park, were also evacuated. , all campers and staff have been accounted for.

State officials said there is no ongoing threat to the public. The entire park is closed until further notice.

“I’m horrified by the shooting this morning at Maquoketa Caves State Park and devastated by the loss of three innocent lives,” Iowa governor Kim Reynolds Friday.

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David Kushner always knew that his assignment to write about a mysterious cave in the rainforest of Ecuador would be challenging and a bit risky. Cueva de los Tayos, or Cave of the Oilbirds, has for decades beckoned adventurers and tantalized fans of the occult who believe that it contains artifacts that could rewrite human history. In recent years, though, Tayos has attracted different kinds of seekers—artists and storytellers hoping to capture its energy and bring it out into the world. People like , daughter of a legendary explorer who helped make the cave famous, and Grammy-nominated British electronic musician Jon Hopkins, who traveled there and came back inspired to create a . But what Kushner never imagined was that his own experience inside the cave would change him forever.

This episode is brought to you by Toyota, a company that wants to help you find joy by exploring America’s scenic byways. No matter what kind of adventure you’re after, there’s a Toyota designed to get you there. Learn more at .

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A pivotal moment in Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s documentary The Rescue is a shot . A small beam of light travels over 13 boys who are huddled together on a ledge in the Tham Luang Nang Non cave in Thailand. A��soccer team and their coach have just been discovered in a chamber more than two miles from the cave entrance. The rescuers ask the group how many boys are present, and the boys ask what day it is. Behind the camera is cave diver John Volanthan, who keeps repeating the word “believe” over and over. He explains in the documentary that he was actually saying the word for his own sake, so incredible did it seem that the entire team had survived the sudden flooding that trapped them in the cave—not to mention almost two weeks in a cold enclosure with limited oxygen and no food or potable water. He had to remind himself that they actually had found the team, and every single member was still alive.

It was a euphoric moment to watch on the news in real time, and it’s just as affecting on the big screen. But it was only the beginning of a nerve-racking rescue. With more than 10,000 people on the scene, no one could imagine how they would safely extract everyone and deliver them through cramped, submerged tunnels amid continued flooding.

Filmmakers Vasarhelyi and Chin have directed two enormously successful climbing documentaries together, Meru and Free Solo, and won an Oscar for the latter. In The Rescue, they take on a new challenge: bringing viewers into a complicated, high-stakes rescue effort in a film that draws from interviews with many key members of the operation, recreated scenes, and 87 hours of newly found footage from the Royal Thai Navy. They manage to fully convey just how astounding the success of that massive effort was (all 13 people made it out of the cave alive, in case you somehow haven’t read the news in the last several years). But they also draw out some emotional individual stories behind the rescue that didn’t originally get much airtime.

At the center of the story is a ragtag group of cave divers from Europe and Australia, considered the A-team of their oddly specific hobby—though all of them still have day jobs like anesthesiologist and IT consultant. They’re called in when organizers realize that there is essentially no one else with the skills and equipment to find the boys, let alone get them out of the cave alive. “I think the idea that they’re volunteers was always something completely stunning,” Vasarhelyi says��in an interview. “I mean, these guys are weekend warriors. They’re the only people in the world who could actually affect the rescue, like all the most elite special forces could not do it.” Once the divers discover the team, of course, they’re in much more unfamiliar territory. The rescuers must navigate dark, muddy water in a complex system of tunnels for hours to reach the chamber, with each one carrying sufficient oxygen for themself and one boy per trip. They also discover early on that they’ll probably have to sedate the boys in order to keep them calm enough to evacuate them. “They have to make impossible decisions in this impossible situation, and they have everything to lose,” Chin says. “They thought if they got one person out, it would be a success.”

The Chiang Rai Province and the locals involved in the effort might have faded into the background with all of these cave diving details, but Chin and Vasarhelyi don’t let viewers forget about the massive number of rescue volunteers who made the operation possible. “One of the reasons why we wanted to make the film was that we are Asian filmmakers and there are very few positive nonfiction depictions of Asians,” Vasarhelyi says. “And we are in a unique position to listen.” They include animations explaining the mythology of the cave, the name of which invokes a myth about a princess from an ancient kingdom, and news footage of a visit from the Buddhist monk Kruba Boonchum, who accurately predicts that the team will be found alive within two days. There are also the impressive contributions of the Royal Thai Navy, members of which attempted to help with the cave diving operations even though they did not have the proper equipment or specialized training. The documentary follows the story of retired Thai Navy SEAL Saman Gunan, an experienced diver who died on a mission to deliver oxygen tanks.

The Rescue is in obvious ways the polar opposite of Free Solo: instead of a professional athlete ascending to unthinkable heights for the sake of his own ambitions, we follow weekend warriors deep into the earth for a mission that they feel is their only option in a dire situation. But as in Free Solo, Vasarhelyi is just as interested in exploring athletes’ interior lives as she is in documenting exceptional physical feats. The cave divers all seem to fit a certain type: a history of being bullied, not involved in a lot of long-term relationships, not big team players. One quips, “The last one picked on the cricket team, the first one called to help with the rescue.” In exploring the psychological underpinnings of a niche sport, The Rescue attempts to answer the biggest question raised by the story: “How did these people come to be, who are able to make such a stunning, absolutely moral decision?” Vasarhelyi says. “When the time came, they were their best selves.”

The Rescue is now playing in theaters.

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A climber was found dead following a fall in Eldorado Canyon last week. According to Carrie Haverfield at the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office (BCSO), a group of four climbers at Rincon Rock called 911 at approximately 5:45 p.m. on Wednesday, October 6 after discovering the fallen climber, 31-year-old Scott Dewey of Golden, who was alone. Dewey was unconscious, not breathing, and had no pulse when the other climbers found him. The BSCO reported that there was no evidence of foul play.

“There weren’t any ropes, harnesses, or protection found at the scene,” Haverfield told Gym Climber over the phone the following day, “so we assume [Dewey] was free soloing. All he had with him was a chalk bag and climbing shoes.” She added that rescuers found no obvious evidence of rockfall or broken holds, though noted that the rescue was performed at night, “so it was quite dark and the scene hasn’t yet been surveyed extensively.”

The four climbers who discovered the body didn’t see or hear a fall, Haverfield added. They merely stumbled across the scene, but the accident was clearly recent. “He definitely hadn’t been out there for days or anything,” she said, “but the time of death is pending a coroner’s report.” Rocky Mountain Rescue Group carried out a recovery of Dewey’s body, which took approximately three hours.

Dewey’s sister, Sara, wrote Gym Climber: “Scott was the most free spirited, easy going, adventurous, and nicest guy you’d ever meet. To quote His dear friend and climbing partner Erin Ann, ‘Scott was a strong climber and a great friend to many. His enthusiasm for climbing was infectious and he was supportive of others whether they were brand new to the sport, or attempting a difficult objective. He was passionate about climbing in Eldorado Canyon. He was very aware of the risks of free soloing.’ My only comfort in his passing is knowing that he died doing what he loved. He was a great soul and will be missed by everyone whose path he crossed. Rest easy ‘Scotty Hotty.’ I love you.”

Dewey was from Salina, Oklahoma, and had been attending the Metropolitan State University of Denver since January 2019, studying applied geology.

Sadly, Eldorado was the scene of another fatal accident not long ago, , causing two roped climbers to fall over 100 feet. The belayer passed away, the leader was seriously injured. , as well.

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They tell me Glen Van Peski is a celebrity, but he remains largely ignored where I first meet him: in Las Vegas in the lobby of the Cosmopolitan Hotel. Glen is hard to miss. At six feet four inches, he towers over me as he peers way, way down below in search of my hand for our initial greeting. While everyone else in the lobby is dressed for dining or gambling or in what they think a celebrity might wear, Glen is wearing tomorrow’s hiking clothes today: quick-dry shirt, convertible pant-shorts zippered at the knee, and Altra Lone Peak foot-shaped minimalist hiking shoes cinched up with brand-new laces.

Glen likes to be ready. He wants to know everything fits and is in working order and that there isn’t too much of it. For Glen, and anyone traveling with him, having too much gear might be worse than having no gear at all.

A couple weeks prior to meeting Glen, my college buddy Dan Buettner invited me to join a group of his friends on an ultralightweight hike through Utah’s —led by, according to Dan, a mythical legend named . Most of the group would convene at the Cosmopolitan, the last civilized outpost before heading into a wilderness where there are no bed linens, pulsating showerheads, or flushing toilets.

Glen’s long arms and legs qualify as lanky, but his accomplishments, confidence, and clarity give him a muscular air of leadership. His angular, expressive face and bald head simultaneously project wit, wisdom, curiosity, delight, and dead seriousness. Five minutes after we meet, he notices my overstuffed pack and suggests we go up to his room, where he’ll teach me how to lighten my load—literally, but also, I soon learn, metaphorically.

Riding the elevator, I notice that Glen talks in numbers more than words—grams and ounces, miles and kilometers. Arithmophobia may be an actual affliction, or maybe I made it up as a clinical-sounding excuse to explain my shortcomings. Either way, I suffer from a fear of math, numbers, and quantification. For example, when I hear Neil Young sing the lyric “She’s been running half her life,” I worry that I’ll be forced into dividing some unknown number by two before I can feel the emotion of the song.

Before Dan’s invitation, I’d never heard of Buckskin Gulch, a bucket-list destination for hikers and canyoneers in the of southern Utah. A creek runs through the gulch for part of the year and feeds into the Paria River, which in turn joins the Colorado River southwest of the Glen Canyon Dam. Numbers that turned up in a Google search about Buckskin terrified me: it is one of the world’s longest slot canyons (15 miles), among the deepest (500 feet), and at times as narrow as two feet. Claustrophobic. Articles warned of subfreezing temperatures and flash flooding. Even…fatalities?

I said, “Sure, I’ll be there.”

Dan Buettner is a National Geographic fellow and bestselling author. He holds three Guinness records for endurance cycling. He created the concept of Blue Zones, regions in the world where people live longer and better. His life is an adventure, and he is often exploring another corner of the world accompanied by diverse groups of friends.

There would be eight of us hiking Buckskin: Dan’s longtime collaborator, National Geographic photographer ; CNN correspondent ; hotel entrepreneur ; Ed Driscoll, CEO of ; Oscar-winning actor Matthew McConaughey; and me, who is often asked a question Matthew McConaughey never gets asked: “What have you done that I would have seen?”

When Dan called, I was completing a writing job for Netflix. I had once again been lulled into the artifice of Hollywood. “Real” to me meant a catered lunch delivered to my desk daily. I hoped a serious hike would recalibrate my senses.

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