Pete introduces Equip Your Trip to the masses.

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Want to see the world?

Well here’s your chance. If you see yourself as an enterprising individual who would like to travel the world and help out in local communities, Your Big Year, could be just what you’re looking for.

Apart from being famous for its breathtakingly picturesque location, Europe has always been associated with Skiing. From France to Greece, you get to choose from some of the most beautiful and less explored skiing destinations in the world. Europe offers far more skiing and snowboarding trails than any other part of the world. Let’s have a look at ten skiing locations that make Europe one of the most sought after ski destination.

Jake Scrace makes the most of the extreme wind with a death-defying 100ft jump over a pier. Jake, 25, used the waves as a ramp to leap 40ft across Worthing Pier in East Sussex, before landing back in the water. His extreme surfer pal Lewis Craften followed.

What kind of world do we live in where small woodland creatures can't take a self-portrait without some hikers crashing the photo?

Congaree National Park, South Carolina

According to the National Park Service, more than 104,000 people made a recreational visit to the park in 2008, compared to the more than 9 million people that visited the Smoky Mountains. Congaree, the largest old-growth floodplain forest in America, is a treasure trove of wildlife, including everything from river otters to marbled salamanders. The swampland is also noted for its hiking trails, fishing, kayaking, and its 2.4-mile elevated boardwalk.

Crater Lake, Oregon

More than 7,000 years ago, Oregon’s Mount Mazama erupted in one of the most violent explosions known to man. The resulting implosion of the mountain created this 6-mile wide, ½-mile deep lake which features some of the clearest blue waters in the world and is the deepest in the United States. According to the Smithsonian’s Global Volcanism Program, Crater Lake was one of very few eruptions since 10,000 B.C. with a Volcanic Explosivity Index of 7. To put it in perspective, Mount Vesuvius (known for the destruction of the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum) was a 4. The region’s long winter season, lasting from October to June, makes it one of the snowiest areas in the Northwest.

Isle Royale, Michigan

Located 55 miles north of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and accessible only by boat or plane, Isle Royal creates an incredibly unique ecosystem where scientists and citizens alike flock to study some of the most untouched wildlife in the world. Many of the island chains’ inhabitants, including grey wolves, moose, and muskrats, are normally found over larger areas. Due to Isle Royale’s smaller habitat and limited amount of natural resources, it creates fierce competition among the wildlife, resulting in a survival of the fittest mind-set. Isle Royale exemplifies virgin, pristine wilderness and the ability of life to adapt and flourish against the odds, and that is what makes this park truly special.

Guadalupe Mountains, Texas

Although the Guadalupe Mountains are located in a desert, one of the biggest attractions is a well-preserved, 250-million-year-old fossilized Coral Reef, a reminder of how much life and landscape can change. In modern time, the mountain elevation creates a biological event uncommon in the Southwest: seasonal leaf change. The cactus is king throughout most of the park, but the temperatures at higher elevations are cool enough for deciduous plants to thrive, resulting in a colorful autumn that seems like September in New England with a Texas twist.

Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller, Vermont

The natural splendor of this national historic park’s Vermont countryside is reminiscent of the land that made our founding fathers fall in love with America. Rolling hills and captivating forests form a backdrop against which the relationship of nature and man is explored. The park is named after four well-known conservationists: George Perkins Marsh, considered by many the father of the American Conservationist Movement; Frederick Billings; and Laurence and Mary Rockefeller. Visitors can tour the mansion and gardens, which were home to all three of the namesakes at different periods of time, as well as enjoy the picturesque woodlands and programs on forestry and other conservation efforts.

Conkles Hollow, Ohio

Located in Ohio’s Hocking Hills State Park, Conkles Hollow is a hiker’s dream. The cooler climate, a holdover from the last ice age, allowed trees such as the Canada yew, Eastern hemlock, and yellow birch to grow farther south than normally found, and Conkles Hollow’s natural coolness has allowed these northern trees to thrive, millennia after the glaciers receded. These trees blend with several native trees, resulting in over 150 different species putting on a colorful display every fall. Several trails lead through this scenic area, including a 3-mile rim trail overlooking the gorge from atop its 200- to 300-foot cliffs.

Great Basin, Nevada

The Great Basin National Park, which was visited by less than 70,000 people in 2008, is only a small piece of the large area known as The Great Basin, which covers virtually all of Nevada and a good portion of the surrounding states. It has an independent hydrology, meaning water here does not flow into larger systems like the Pacific or the Gulf of Mexico, but instead remains self-contained. This national park showcases the best facets of this region. The varying elevation (between 5,000 feet and 13,000 feet) allows a wide variety of life to flourish, and at night stargazers get a chance to see an astounding array, including spectacular views of the Milky Way, with the naked eye.

Redwood National Park, California

Visitors are astounded by the sheer magnitude of the Redwoods towering up to 325 feet overhead—the tallest trees on Earth. Home to salmon-filled streams, grassy meadows, the Pacific coast, and tide pools (rocky formations that hold water during low tide and sustain unique life forms), Redwood National Park has more to offer than the trees. An immense variety of animals, from the aptly named banana slug to the Pacific gray whale, live here. Fewer than 400,000 people visited this pristine forest last year, while neighboring Yosemite hosted more than 3.4 million.

Glacier Bay, Alaska

The name “Glacier Bay” offers unique insight into these icy giants which shaped the natural landscape of North America. In 1794, Captain George Vancouver and his crew surveyed a glacier of immense proportions (4,000 feet thick, 20 miles wide, and 100 miles long). This icy, barren landscape supported little life. However, it retreated some 60 miles over the next 125 years, and a bona fide wildlife haven was left in its wake. Killer whales stalk seals in these icy waters, while their larger relatives, humpbacks and gray whales, come for prey of a much smaller variety—plankton and krill. Another predator, the extremely rare blue bear (or glacier bear) can be found on land in this hidden treasure, along with hundreds of other animals, scenic mountains, and new-growth forests.

Nantahala, North Carolina

The Cherokee, who are native to this national forest, call it Nantahala, meaning the “Land of the Noonday Sun.” High noon is the only time the sun is not blocked by the western North Carolina Appalachians. This forest boasts a wealth of attractions, including awesome waterfalls, 400-year-old trees, scenic gorges, and the 5,200-foot high Wayah Bald. The Nantahala River is known as one of the best places to go whitewater rafting in the United States and is a great spot for fishing. This place also boasts a captivating history. During one of the darkest times in American history, the Cherokee were forcibly removed from much of the southeastern United States in the “Trail of Tears.” However, a brave few used the Nantahala as cover, hiding among the trees and successfully avoiding Andrew Jackson’s forces. They live here to this day, preserving a way of life that was nearly destroyed and demonstrating the resilience of the human spirit.

Waimoku Falls, Hawaii

The adventure of getting to this spectacular Hawaiian waterfall is almost as much fun as seeing it. First, visitors hop on to Maui’s famed Hana Highway, a 60-mile stretch of road known for hairpin turns and breathtaking views. Then, they venture onto Haleakala National Park’s Pipiwai Trail. Roughly 4 miles round trip, this hike showcases scenic waterways, stunning ocean views, and lush vegetation. The trail ends at majestic Waimoku Falls, a 400-foot waterfall that drops over a sheer lava wall into a pool of boulders. Waimoku Falls is one of Hawaii’s “Seven Sacred Pools,” many of which can be seen along the trail.

Black Canyon, Colorado

Narrow walls and stunning, sheer vertical drops of well over 2,000 feet render Black Canyon a sight to behold—for anyone without a fear of heights! The Gunnison River, which runs at the bottom of the canyon, settled on its current course millions of years ago. Slowly but surely, the river has been cutting away ever since, sometimes as slowly as 1 inch every hundred years. The combination of water and time created an awesome natural wonder, as well as a rocky timeline of Earth’s history. From relatively young rock at the top to nearly 2-billion-year old Precambrian-age rock at the bottom, the canyon showcases geology from almost every era of life. Only 160,000 people visited the Black Canyon in 2008, compared to the 2.7 million visitors to Rocky Mountain National Park and over 4.4 million to the Grand Canyon, making it a hidden treasure indeed.

Mammoth Cave, Kentucky

At roughly 367 miles long, Mammoth Cave is the longest cave system in the world. To put its “Mammoth” size in perspective, consider that it is more than 200 miles longer than its runner-up, South Dakota’s Jewel Cave. Mammoth Cave offers beauty in addition to sheer size. Astonishing geological features have been created from thousands of years of water running over limestone. More than 80 forms of trees and 1,200 types of flowering plants reside harmoniously above ground and 300-million-year-old fossils have been discovered in the cave.

North Cascades, Washington

Washington’s Olympic Park, renowned as one of the best national parks in the country, features a fabulous array of different terrains, wildlife, and ecosystems and attracted more than 3 million visitors in 2008. However, visitors who prefer the road less traveled will rave about nearby North Cascades, an off-the-radar wilderness that rivals its interstate neighbor in astonishing natural scenery and ecological diversity. This National Park Service Complex, which also includes Lake Chelan and Ross Lake, is a true gem. The relatively small number of visitors—about 19,000 to North Cascades, 25,000 to Lake Chelan, and 253,000 to Ross Lake in 2008—is astonishing. Those that do come enjoy a serene, tranquil landscape with privacy harder to come by at other, more well-traveled parks.

Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Dakota

Theodore Roosevelt had no idea what was in store when he first came here on a hunting trip in 1883. He, like many at this time, had come to hunt the prized buffalo. After the deaths of both his mother and wife, mere hours apart, he returned here to start a new life as a cattle rancher. This rebuilding period changed Roosevelt. Enchanted by the wide-open spaces and captivating scenery inherent to the Badlands, he realized that America is a special place, full of beauty, and that it is important to preserve it. Without this chapter in his life, we might never have had the conservationist president, whose efforts created the National Park Service as we know it today. This park, which was initially part of the ranching business, is named in his honor. Today, visitors enjoy the same landscape; a wide variety of northern grassland plants and animals, including a healthier bison population; and a spectacular night sky, occasionally featuring the northern lights.

Glacier National Park, Montana

Driving along the “Going to the Sun” highway, visitors will be awestruck by the glacially carved mountain backdrop and 1 million-plus acres of untouched wilderness, teaming with a thousand types of wildflowers and wildlife ranging from bighorn sheep to the Canada lynx. Across the border, Canada’s Waterton-Lakes National Park preserves the uninterrupted natural landscape, and together they form the world’s first international park, appropriately titled Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park.

Christoph Rehage planned to walk about 5,000 km from China to Germany, taking a photo of himself every day for one year—and not shaving once.

You will see in the video that he grew a “mighty long beard” throughout that time. The original goal was to reach Germany from China; however, he did not accomplish his goal on foot. Rehage did walk from Urumqi in the northwest of China to Beijing, which is still a feat, all on its own. Watch the video to his transformation.

Introduction of the meganav

No it's not the latest in GPS technology, its the new and improved navigation menu on equip your trip.

We felt the old navigation was too cluttered and didn't focus on the things that people were interested in and as our product range grew needed to be improved. Out came the single columns of categories and in came a new and improved system that separated brands from activities and then structured the equipment and clothing in an easier to read way.

Let us know your thoughts and anything we can do to improve the site will be much appreciated! Thanks for visiting.

AMID the farmland just north of the Ohio River, thickets of sumac and maple trees hem the edge of a one-lane road, just as they might have lined the way to freedom two centuries ago.

Back then, before concrete paving and electricity transformed the countryside, it was along roads like these that runaway slaves were silently escorted through the shadows by kindly strangers. The sound of dogs barking often punctured the silence, signaling that their furious owners had crossed the river from Kentucky to recapture them. If they were lucky, they would find shelter in a safe house to the north by the time dawn’s light crept over the tobacco fields.

In an effort to help modern-day visitors understand this cardinal chapter of America’s past, the Adventure Cycling Association, a nonprofit organization that promotes bicycle touring, put together a 2,000-mile Underground Railroad Bicycle Route, which roughly traces the network of paths and hideouts that were used by slaves seeking freedom and the abolitionists who ferried them along.

Working with the Center for Minority Health at the University of Pittsburgh, a research and educational institute, the cycling association mapped the route from Mobile, Ala., to Owen Sound, Ontario, with stops along the way that illustrate the story of the internal slave trade and its complex escape arteries.

More than 4,500 maps of the route have been sold since it was released in 2007, indicating what planners say is cycling’s growing popularity not just as recreation but as a dynamic way to experience history.

“Even though you might stay at a bed-and-breakfast or a campsite with a tent, you’re in tune with nature and the elements,” said Ginny Sullivan, routes coordinator with the cycling association. “Especially with the Underground Railroad, cycling makes it more real.”

For those without the time or stamina to bike 2,000 miles, the group has begun promoting day trips along the way, starting with an area around the Ohio River, which was the pivotal demarcation between the slave state of Kentucky and the free state of Ohio.

The verdant valley about an hour southeast of Cincinnati was among the most heavily trafficked corridors of the Underground Railroad, in part because the Ohio River there was then particularly narrow and shallow, thus possible to cross. Residents of Ripley, Ohio, in particular, were so well known for assisting slaves who crossed the river there that slaveholders disparaged the town as an “abolitionist hellhole.”

Pedaling through Ripley one morning in early spring, I gazed on crumbling churches and warehouses, a quiet 19th-century Main Street pocked with empty store windows, and a row of handsome Federal-style houses that line the riverfront like soldiers at attention. Now a sleepy town of about 1,700, Ripley was once twice that size with a booming pork trade and busy boatyards.

Perched high atop a hill overlooking the town is a small, isolated brick farmhouse where John Rankin, a Presbyterian minister who was among the most legendary “conductors” on the Underground Railroad, lived from 1829 to 1863 with his wife and 13 children. Rankin’s house is preserved as a monument to his legacy of having sheltered approximately 2,000 runaway slaves who sought refuge there.

“The bulk of Rankin’s work was done up here, and his older sons did much of the physical work of moving slaves to the next station north,” said Betty Campbell, a lifelong Ripley resident and a trustee of Ripley Heritage, the group that operates the Rankin house, as she walked through its six modest rooms.

From Ripley, I biked about five miles north on a gentle incline toward Redoak, a speck of a town with little more than a cemetery and an 1817 stone church that was frequently used for abolitionist meetings and to harbor runaway slaves. The church is still active although its membership has dwindled to only 21 people, some of whose names appear on its yellowed old registers.

Mary Howelett, a 61-year-old retired health aide whose family has lived near Redoak for five generations, unlocked the church for me to peek inside. For many in the area whose ancestors worked on the Underground Railroad, details of their doings were seldom passed along in family lore, an omission that bespoke the secrecy that surrounded the highly dangerous enterprise.

“My brother thinks that my grandfather’s house was on the second leg of the Underground Railroad after Ripley,” Ms. Howelett said. “But my dad’s cousin said that some things are better left unsaid.”

From there it was about 10 miles to Georgetown, not known for Underground Railroad activity but significant as the childhood home of Ulysses S. Grant. The two-story brick house where Grant lived until age 17 is now a museum, and the schoolhouse where he studied is just down the road.

The swatch of northern Kentucky on the other side of the river is as dense with historic sites as the Ohio side, so on my second day of biking in the area, I started out three miles south of the river in the old town of Washington.

Harriet Beecher Stowe visited Washington in 1833 and witnessed a slave auction on the courthouse lawn there, an experience thought to have inspired her lurid description of a slave auction in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

From there, I biked 20 miles northwest on narrow roads winding through expanses of velvety green grass. There were old plantation houses and silos topped with rusty weather vanes.

I arrived at the town of Augusta, a pristine riverside gem, and there saw White Hall, the 1809 mansion of Arthur Thome, a local mill owner who freed his own slaves before becoming a vocal abolitionist accused of harboring runaways. I also saw the town’s 1811 jail where fugitive slaves were imprisoned.

As I returned eastward along the river, at the point opposite Ripley, I stopped to behold the town dappled in late afternoon sunshine. There was John Rankin’s house, set high above the river like a watchtower, a vivid reminder of the beacon it once was.

IF YOU GO

Maps and information about the Underground Railroad Bicycle Route are available on the Web site of the Adventure Cycling Association (www.adventurecycling.org/ugrr). Day trip maps and information about three cycling loops in Ohio that range from 10 to 30 miles are available at www.freedomslanding.com.

Ripley and the surrounding Ohio River Valley are about 60 miles from Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport. Information on Underground Railroad sites in the area, including the house of John Rankin, right, is available from the Brown County, Ohio, Department of Tourism (937-378-1970; www.browncountytourism.com).

Cincinnati is home to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center (50 East Freedom Way, Cincinnati; 513-333-7500; www.freedomcenter.org).

For advice about bike routes on both the Ohio and Kentucky sides of the river, contact Michael Hart, the owner of Mycle’s Cycles (106 East Cherry Street, Georgetown, Ohio; 937-378-5700; www.myclescycles.com). He also arranges guided bicycle tours of Underground Railroad sites, support van transportation, bicycle rentals, sales and repairs.

The French Quarter Inn (25 East McDonald Parkway, Maysville, Ken.; 606-564-8000; www.frenchquarterinn.com) has rooms and suites that begin at $89.

An academic analysis of more than 33 million images uploaded to the popular Flickr photo-sharing website reveals that the flagship Apple Store in midtown Manhattan is the 28th most photographed place on earth.

The findings show that the Fifth Avenue Apple Store, which opened in May 2006, is more popular than many other well-known tourist sites such as St Paul's Cathedral in London, the Reichstag in Berlin and the Washington Monument in the US capital.

The store, which features a giant glass cube facade with a suspended Apple logo inside, is also the fifth most photographed landmark in New York after sites such as the Empire State Building, Times Square and Grand Central Station.

The research was published in a paper presented at the WWW 2009 conference in Madrid last week by a group of academics from Cornell University who had analysed 33,393,835 photos posted on the website by 307,448 users.

Studying the geotagged data which users attached to their photos, the researchers wanted to establish what the world's most popular landmarks were as judged by the collective wisdom of Flickr users around the world.

Among some of the other findings are:

:: New York City is the world's most photographed city with more than 12 million of the photos taken there.

:: The top seven most photographed landmarks are the Eiffel Tower, Trafalgar Square, the Tate Modern Gallery, Big Ben, Notre Dame, the London Eye, and the Empire State Building.

:: The top 10 most photographed cities are New York, London, San Francisco, Paris, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, Seattle, Rome and Amsterdam.

The research team was led by David Crandall, a former computer engineer at Kodak who is now a post-doctoral associate at Cornell's Department of Computer Science.

"The Apple Store landmark is an interesting and surprising result, but it's important to remember that our Flickr data is a heavily biased representation of the world," Crandall said in an email.

"Flickr seems to be most popular in North America and Western Europe, so landmarks outside those areas are likely to be under-represented."

Crandall added that people who used Flickr were also probably more likely to be interested in technology - and hence more interested in the Apple Store - than the average person.

Flickr, which is owned by Yahoo, is one of the world's most popular photo-sharing sites.

Crandall said the data showed that the five most photographed Australian cities were Sydney (ranked 34th), Melbourne (78th), Brisbane (201st), Perth/Fremantle (223rd), and Canberra (327th).

He said the data showed that the top landmarks in Australia included the Sydney Opera House, the Harbour Bridge, Circular Quay, the Yarra River and Sydney's Centrepoint Tower.

Gaze for too long at these rock formations, and you begin to drift off and forget whether you’re looking at a geological phenomenon or a vast, abstract oil painting. The swirls seem to envelop you, and in Antelope Canyon they actually do. Let’s take a ramble down this most gorgeous of gorges and lose ourselves in the wonderful play of light and patterns that captivate its many visitors each year. Here lies one of the planet’s greatest natural art galleries.

Upper Antelope Canyon

Photo: Lucas Löffler

Antelope Canyon lies on Navajo land in the American southwest, nestled hidden in the Arizona landscape. One of the world’s true natural wonders, it is a place of splendid serenity, the sort of spot where people find themselves talking in hushed whispers without quite knowing why. As a slot canyon, it has been formed over thousands of years by the gradual wear of water rushing through rock.

Lower Antelope Canyon

Photo: X Ceccaldi

Slot canyons are exceptionally narrow, far deeper than they are wide, and Antelope Canyon’s fantastic whorls and contours can be up to 150 feet tall, while being observable only by very small groups shuffling along the sandy floor. The canyon was formed by the erosion of Navajo sandstone, chiefly due to flash floods that still occur here, making this very much artwork still in progress.

Photo: Luca Galuzzi - www.galuzzi.it

Rainwater, particularly in the monsoon season, runs into a large basin overlooking the slot canyon, picking up speed and sand as it runs into the narrow passageways. Grain by grain, the corridors are deepened and the edges smoothed to form the exquisite shapes and graceful curves in the rock. Wind too has played a part in eroding and sanding this majestic canyon.

Photo: X Ceccaldi

The geological rock sculpting here is split into two distinct areas. The Navajo people fittingly call Upper Antelope Canyon Tse’ bighanilini, which means “the place where water runs through rocks”. Lower Antelope Canyon, known to the Navajo as Hasdestwazi, or “spiral rock arches”, is less visited, as it is a longer and tougher hike and must be climbed into via metal stairways.

Photo by Moondigger

Here we see the view from inside Lower Antelope Canyon, looking out with a chink of the sky visible at the top of the frame. The characteristic layering of sandstone is clearly discernible, the layers of sand having built up as a result of sedimentation from water, or from air as in deserts. Scientific explanation assuredly has its place here, and yet these visual delights fit easily into the domain of art.

Photo: Moondigger

The magical gateway into Upper Antelope Canyon – indeed its entire length – is at ground level, which is one reason why it is the more visited of the two carved geological marvels. The other features that explain its greater popularity are the occasional shafts of sunlight that shine down through openings in the top of the canyon; these are more common in the Upper Canyon.

Photo: Raimund Marx

The beams of light are typically seen in the summer months because the sun has to be high in the sky for the angle of its rays to be just right. The phenomenon does not happen so often in the winter, and during this season the colours are slightly more muted, though no less magnificent, as in the photo shown below.

Photo: gerocoT

The summer months themselves offer two different types of lighting, according to the time at which they are witnessed. The play of light is a dazzling phenomenon, seen below catching and reflecting off the edges of the canyon. The way the light constantly changes seems to emulate the continual evolution of the rock faces.

Photo: Rob Inh00d

Sometimes the pillars of light from overhead appear to evoke some kind of spiritual episode, like the stereotypical scene of a god speaking from on high. It comes as little surprise that to the Navajo people, the canyon has always been a place of reverence.

Photo: mandj98

There is a strong sense that this is some kind of sacred space, a womb-like sanctum perhaps, and to the older Navajos entering such a place would surely have been like entering a cathedral. They would likely have left feeling enlightened by nature and in harmony with something greater than themselves. Being inside Antelope Canyon will always be something of a spiritual or transformative experience.

Photo: meckimac

At times the rock forms seem to bear a resemblance to human or animal bodies in their shape and appearance, making the canyon all the more like a living, breathing entity. Here faces seem to come out of the wall, looking down quietly yet imposingly on those below.

Photo: StephanB

Antelope Canyon really is a photographer’s dream; however it also presents difficult challenges due to the way the light enters the area, the large differences in light levels, and the wide exposure range caused by light reflecting off the steep canyon walls.

Photo: yep yep

As mentioned, it is not just the light but the stratification of sandstone that makes Antelope Canyon such an enchanting experience for spectators. It really does call to mind the idea of an immense painter, working with light and rock instead of with oils. Each rock surface is a canvas for nature’s very own swirling compositions.

Photo: Luca Galuzzi - www.galuzzi.it

Yet despite the beauty and light of Antelope Canyon, this place also has darker, more dangerous aspect. This was all too apparent in 1997 when eleven tourists were killed in Lower Antelope Canyon by a flash flood that also washed away the then wooden ladders that may have provided a means of escape.

Photo: Leto A.

In the fatal 1997 event, the rain did not need to fall close to the canyon itself for the floods to come rushing down through its corridors. To trigger a flash flood here, all it needs is for a storm to deposit large quantities of water in the canyon basin, miles upstream.

Photo: Gerd Müller

The risk of sudden flooding is one reason why Antelope Canyon can only be visited through guided tours led by authorised guides. The canyon is also only accessible with a permit, and is a source of tourism trade for the Navajo on whose homeland it stands.

Photo: bass nroll

In the shot below, we see just how narrow the passages can get, particularly in the V-shaped Lower Canyon, which can be tricky underfoot at times. Sightseers can stretch out their arms and touch both sides in places. However amazing it may be, Antelope Canyon is not for the claustrophobic.

Photo: Moondigger

So we reach the end of our own tour through this wondrous temple of Mother Nature’s. Part natural phenomenon, part tranquil art gallery, part giant artwork in itself, Antelope Canyon will undoubtedly continue to leave visitors both speechless and restored, as it has done for thousands of years.

If the name Dry Fork Coyote Gulch does not give fair warning that this is not your average hike, then the haunting drive to the trailhead will remove all doubt. The sandy Hole-in-the-Rock Road is one of the few routes that even attempt to enter the biblical expanse of desert in southern Utah called the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and when I made a pilgrimage there last summer, I didn’t pass a single car, let alone a sign of human habitation.

But my total isolation didn’t really strike home until I stepped from my 4x4 onto the edge of a mesa above Coyote Gulch, a ravine whose golden sandstone hides three gorgeous, narrow slot canyons. The lonely trailhead offered none of the familiar national park comforts like ranger huts or wooden welcome signs — certainly no dubious snack vendors. There was nothing but expanses of rock stretching toward the horizon, which at 10 a.m. were already glowing like embers under the intense Utah sun. Only a few stone cairns far below indicated that there was any hiking trail at all.

I gamely reminded myself that this was precisely what I’d been looking for — a landscape unchanged since 1872 — and set off into the piercing light.

I’d gone to southern Utah on the trail of an improbable outdoor adventurer — Frederick Samuel Dellenbaugh, who at the ripe age of 18 joined the last great voyage of exploration in the Old West. This Gilded Age Hardy Boy made it through the raw desert in May and June 1872 with a group of amateur explorers who were hardly more qualified than himself. In his later years, Dellenbaugh traveled the world as an artist and writer, and helped to found, in 1904, the esteemed Explorers Club, now on 70th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

But I was fascinated by his teenage adventure, largely forgotten today, when he and his friends found the first route through southern Utah’s maze of canyons, discovering the last unknown river in the continental United States, the Escalante, and the last mountain range, the Henrys. They were the first to peer into that phantasmagoric expanse of Bryce Canyon and the first to cross what is now Capitol Reef National Park.

At one particularly tricky canyon crossroad, they tried to convince a Ute Indian to act as a guide, “for the labyrinth ahead was a puzzle,” Dellenbaugh later recalled. After the man wandered off, the group pressed on anyway, trusting to their spirit and wits.

This corner of the southern Utah has since been immortalized by the painter Maynard Dixon, the novelist Zane Grey, the photographer Ansel Adams and countless Hollywood westerns. And yet, it still qualifies as the best-kept secret in the West. While millions of travelers are drawn every year to Zion National Parks, Grand Staircase-Escalante and its surrounding area offer a seemingly endless choice of natural wonders that lie blissfully forgotten and empty. It’s America’s Outback.

SHORTLY after starting the Coyote Gulch hike, I had to wonder if I might not disappear into the desert void. Back in the town of Escalante, some rangers had given me a printout of directions to the three slot canyons.

“These are unmarked routes,” it screamed in bold print. “Hikers must pay attention to landmarks so they can find their way out.”

I had lost sight of the first stone cairns almost immediately, as I stumbled down to the dry river wash at the bottom of the ravine. (“Water is scarce,” the printout helpfully noted.) After a few false leads, I made it to Peek-a-Boo Canyon, whose hard-to-spot entrance was surrounded by what looked like a shallow pool: I took a step in and sank straight up to my thighs in thick mud. As the sun continued to climb in the sky, I wished for my own Ute guide — or at least a GPS tracking system.

Hugging the canyon wall for shade, I pressed on heroically and found Spooky Canyon, named for its otherworldly atmosphere. It was only an 18-inch-wide crack in the rock, but to me it yawned like the gateway to Shangri-La.

As I squeezed inside, the air was immediately cool and fragrant. The sky appeared to be an electric blue sliver far above, and the reflected light made the golden sandstone seem to glow from within. I remained utterly still, in a lizardlike state, knowing that I couldn’t hide in there forever.

Finally, I drank the last of my water and staggered across the rock like a sun-struck character out of “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” I was parched, scratched, encrusted with mud — but triumphant. Out there in Coyote Gulch, I had a sense, however distant, of what Dellenbaugh and his companions had been up against back in 1872.

Back home in Manhattan, I had often walked past the Gothic facade of the Explorers Club and thought with more than a twinge of envy of the halcyon days of travel. The club’s founders had grown up after the Civil War, when you could hop on a train from Grand Central and plunge into the West like a character from a dime novel. They were a tough bunch who set off with little more than their hobnailed boots and a month’s supply of bread and bacon.

Frederick Dellenbaugh, fresh from high school in Buffalo in 1871, heard that John Wesley Powell was looking for men to join his second expedition down the Colorado River. Powell had become a celebrity for conquering the Grand Canyon in 1869; this time, the white-water trip would be combined with the mapping of the Colorado plateau. Hundreds volunteered, but Powell liked to pick his crews from friends and relatives, and Dellenbaugh, who was connected on Powell’s brother-in-law’s side, became the expedition’s artist.

The adventure lasted nearly 18 months and involved plenty of near-death encounters on the river. But its most striking achievement came in May 1872, when Powell sent his second in command, Almon Thompson — a self-taught surveyor nicknamed the Prof — on a monthlong horseback trek through the unknown deserts of southern Utah. Dellenbaugh went along, and 36 years later, in 1908, he published his classic account of the Thompson expedition, “A Canyon Voyage,” which became an American bestseller.

I’d had this book in my library for years and had regularly tried to connect the stories on a map. Finally, I decided to trace some of the grand adventure myself.

My journey began in Kanab, a tidy little Mormon outpost of mowed lawns and municipal buildings framed by glowing red bluffs. Powell set up his winter base there, in wood-floored canvas tents not far from a fort. Kanab in 1872 was no Deadwood: “Not a grog-shop, or gambling saloon, or dance-hall was to be seen,” Dellenbaugh wrote. Liquor was in such short supply that one of the photographers actually made cocktails from his photographic alcohol.

Life has loosened up slightly in Kanab today. You can buy alcohol, from the State Liquor Store, including the Utah brew Polygamy Porter (“Why Have Just One?”). After dark, I found a brand new bistro filled with stray Europeans enjoying quinoa salads and sauvignon blanc.

In the heyday of the western movie, Kanab became an unlikely boomtown as Utah’s Little Hollywood, a film location for dozens of famous movies. Photographs of forgotten black-and-white stars in Stetsons line the main street in a Western Walk of Fame, and you can find a whole theme park of cinematic relics like Clint Eastwood’s cabin in “The Outlaw Josey Wales.” (For true nostalgia buffs, the remains of the “Gunsmoke” set are quietly decaying on private land a few miles out of town, visible from the road).

The Parry Lodge, a string of retro cabins where most of the stars holed up — including Charlton Heston while filming “Planet of the Apes” — presents scratchy reel movies every summer’s night in an old barn. The real-life adventurers, Powell and his men, seem overshadowed by these celluloid demigods. I had difficulty even locating Powell’s modest stone monument, marking the site of his winter camp. It’s parked on a side street outside an elementary school. An ideal starting point, I thought, for finding the history behind the Western myth.

It was late in May when the half-dozen riders on the Thompson expedition broke away from Powell’s main group in Kanab, leading a train of pack mules and a wagon. They descended “gullies and gulches barren and dry,” as Dellenbaugh wrote in “A Canyon Voyage,” past the grave of a Mormon boy whose bones had been scattered by wolves. “The broken country was a bewildering sight,” Dellenbaugh found at one point, “especially as the night enveloped it, deepening the mystery of its gorges and cliffs.”

I set off on the same spectacular route, now Route 89, entering a terrain that seems to obey no existing rules of geology. North of Kanab, the horizon expands to reveal a series of plateaus, bone-white to chocolate, gray, coral pink and Pompeian red. The combination creates the illusion that the earth is rising in titanic steps — hence the name, Grand Staircase.

But despite the grandeur, it required a touch of effort at first to recapture the Gilded Age ambience. I pulled in for the night at Bryce Canyon National Park, where hundreds of stone fingers, called hoodoos, rise out of the depths. Dellenbaugh had gaped at their eerie shapes from a lonely camp on the southern rim of Bryce Canyon, but today, it’s the only place on his 1872 route where tour buses are in evidence.

To avoid the crush, I rose at 4.30 a.m. in the log Bryce Canyon Lodge (quite coincidentally, in the Powell Room) and stumbled downstairs in the dark. The elderly security guard apologized that there was no coffee.

“But you could go out and see the meteor storm,” he said. “I been watching it all night.”

Sure enough, lights were trailing across the desert sky as I drove to the canyon amphitheater. Than, as the sky paled, I followed the Navajo Trail into a silent forest of hoodoos, blissfully alone. I felt as if I was wandering through an abandoned Anasazi city, creeping under natural portals and along tight stone alleys — until I was snapped from my reverie by the sound of cracking twigs behind me, still unexplained. I envisioned a headline: “Foolhardy Traveler Devoured by Mountain Lions.”

Driving east from Bryce Canyon, it was far easier to envision Dellenbaugh and company traipsing through the “tangled sandstone labyrinth,” their horses picking their way carefully down steep, slippery switchbacks. Route 12, one of the most dramatic roads in the United States, is carved through the enormous Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, which covers 1.9 million acres, an area slightly larger than Delaware.

Driving it, the year 1872 felt closer by the mile. The crowds evaporated. Towns looked abandoned, the doors of sun-bleached frontier houses flapping in the wind. Even gas stations became rare.

Out there, you get your travel info where you can. In the ghostly hamlet of Escalante, where Dellenbaugh’s party once also camped, a ranger gave me a 10-day permit to pitch my tent pretty well anywhere I wanted within those 1.9 million acres.

Even more inspiring was the town’s information office: an 1880 Mormon pioneer cabin, staffed by a 70-something retired wrangler, Arnold Alvey (“Horse Breeding and Training” read his card), and his wife, Dion. After they heartily denounced President Bill Clinton for handing such a vast area of land to federal control in 1996 (I haven’t been back to see how they feel about the likely wilderness-preservation policies of the Obama administration), Mr. Arnold recommended that I make haste to camp at a little place called Calf Creek.

“It’s not the end of the world,” he said, “but you can see it from there.”

One of the charming things about “A Canyon Journey” is how Dellenbaugh revels in this desert’s unexpected slivers of paradise, rare gullies that contain water and shade. (Of one such leafy oasis, he wrote, “In gratitude we called the stream Pleasant Creek without an attempt at originality.”) Calf Creek must have been one of them.

Like a sun-struck armadillo, I crawled in my dust-encrusted Suzuki into that cool crevice. Shaded tent sites were laid out along a crystalline stream where trout darted over smooth pebbles; the air itself smelled of cool stone.

The next morning, I set out in search of a waterfall said to be upriver. I followed the creek for three miles, passing ocher pictographs painted by the Fremont Indians and the remains of their stone granaries; this lush green refuge had teemed with people around the time of the First Crusade.

At last, I found myself at the base of a 126-foot-high cascade with a circular pool surrounded by ferns and graced by a pristine gold-sand beach — paradise itself.

Stripping down, I threw myself in the water, registered its near-freezing temperature and leaped straight back out. From then on, I simply lounged in the sun, gently sprayed by waterfall mist. I tried to imagine all those summer travelers jostling through Grand Canyon and Zion National Parks, only a Western-size stone’s throw away. Right now, I was fine with my own private park.

East of Calf Creek, the landscape becomes even more strange and unearthly. The Creator was having fun out there. Canyons yawn. Arches sprout from nowhere, not to mention spires, buttes, towers and pinnacles. The earth erupts and convulses. There are raw desert lookouts where not one single man-made light distracts from the stars.

No wonder local T-shirts read “Utah Rocks!”

At this stage of his journey, Dellenbaugh seems to have been too concerned about being lost to recall the scenery with lyrical flourishes. The Thompson expedition had to navigate a way through the 100-mile-long Waterpocket Fold, a bewildering formation where the planet’s crust is ripped open and rears from the desert like the spine of an enraged stegosaurus. Today, this is Capitol Reef National Park; its regal name comes from one of the rounder protrusions, which resembles the dome of the United States Capitol.

Even more daunting in 1872 were the Unknown Mountains — now known as the Henrys — which resemble enormous shark fins.

At last, the dust-caked explorers found a lookout above the Colorado River. “The view from our camp was extensive and magnificent,” Dellenbaugh wrote, “the whole Dirty Devil region lying open, like a book, below us.”

And Dellenbaugh recalled, self-deprecatingly, “We had at last traversed from the unknown to the unknown, and felt well satisfied with our success.” In fact, several professionally trained surveyors had tried to find a route there and failed.

As for me, I arrived at the side of a road and realized I was at the same 1,000-foot precipice. It’s still a breathtaking view, even though the mighty Colorado River was tamed by the Glen Canyon Dam in 1966, and the river’s water level has risen to fill the canyon and become the turquoise Lake Powell.

From there, Dellenbaugh and his party rejoined Powell, boating in the Grand Canyon rapids and then returning to Kanab for a second winter to draw the survey map. In early 1873, Dellenbaugh sealed this precious document into a long metal tube and rode with it through blizzards to Salt Lake City, where it was rushed by rail to Washington. Later in his life, as an accomplished artist, Dellenbaugh would return to the Southwest regularly to paint.

I HAD one last step to make in my own journey. When I got back to New York, I hopped the subway to the Upper East Side to the Explorers Club. In the 1920s, it became Dellenbaugh’s home away from home, and I wondered if it still held any of his artifacts.

Entering those slightly forbidding stone ramparts, I made my way past the stuffed polar bear on the second floor to the club’s library. The archivist, Dorthea Sartain, unearthed for me a few of Dellenbaugh’s handwritten letters, along with some faded photographic portraits of him as a wizened, balding man with a handlebar moustache, wearing a neat tweed suit.

Ever the volunteer, Dellenbaugh designed the Explorers Club flag, which is still in use: red and blue separated by a white diagonal and the motif based on a compass. His hand-stitched prototype was framed on one wall. Copies have been taken up Mount Everest, into the Amazon and Congo. A pocket version was carried on the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Was there anything else of Dellenbaugh’s, I wondered?

“Well, the catalog says we have one of his paintings,” Ms. Sartain said hesitantly. “If I can find it.”

We went into the club’s storeroom. It was an oversize cupboard crowded with dusty relics, including a stuffed armadillo and a bust of Admiral Peary’s Eskimo guide. Climbing onto a ledge, she soon passed me down a tiny canvas of a desert landscape. The colors were murky with age, but I could clearly make out the name of the artist.

I wish I could say the painting immortalized the remote wonders of the Escalante River, Capitol Reef or Calf Creek, but it didn’t. It was a view of the Grand Canyon.

Even Fred Dellenbaugh, it seemed, joined the throngs sometimes.

A STILL WILD WEST

HOW TO GET THERE

Distances are vast in this corner of the Southwest, but that’s part of its allure. The closest major airport to southern Utah is Las Vegas; from there, Kanab is about a four-hour drive.

WHERE TO STAY

Since the 1930s, when Kanab became known as Little Hollywood, the place to stay has been Parry Lodge (89 East Center Street; 888-289-1722; www.parrylodge.com). It has 89 rooms (rates start at $62), including seven comfortable, retro-chic suites with kitchenettes. Western films that were made in the area are shown in the old barn on summer evenings; I caught Jack Nicholson’s little-known 1965 performance in “Ride in the Whirlwind.”

At the historic Bryce Canyon Lodge (888-297-2757; www.brycecanyonlodge.com), which is open April through October, doubles start at $130. Although the rooms are rather charmless, the antique log main building, which has four of the 114 rooms, itself is wonderful and the location unbeatable.

Beyond Bryce, cheap motels predominate. The great exception is the Lodge at Red River Ranch (800-205-6343; www.redriverranch.com) near Torrey, at the gateway to Capitol Reef National Park. It is a lavishly decorated old-style Western lodge on 2,500 acres, with gorgeous views over blood-red bluffs and 15 rooms from $160.

WHERE TO EAT

You may have to search, but a surprising number of decent restaurants are hidden away in southern Utah. In Kanab, the Rocking V Cafe (97 West Center Street; 435-644-8001; www.rockingvcafe.com) is a bistro and art gallery where the eclectic menu includes Thai curry and garlic lemon shrimp (around $80 for two, including wine). On weekend nights, you actually need a reservation.

In Torrey, the garden tables at the Cafe Diablo (599 West Main Street; 435-425-3070; www.cafediablo.net) provide a pleasant setting for the upscale Southwestern cuisine (about $80 for two, with drinks).

Even the one-horse town of Escalante has an improbably excellent, if very casual, dining option: the cafe inside Escalante Outfitters (310 West Main Street; 435-826-4266; www.escalanteoutfitters.com) has good pizza ($12.50 to $20), salads and (believe it or not) cappuccinos, plus cold beer on tap. The company offers guided fly-fishing trips and rents mountain bikes ($35 a day).

By TONY PERROTTET from the NY TImes

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