United States
Big Bend
Santa Elena Canyon walls rising fifteen hundred feet on either side of the Rio Grande.
Santa Elena announces itself as a wall, limestone rising fifteen hundred feet either side of the Rio Grande with Mexico forming one cliff and Texas the other. The river slows, the light narrows to a strip overhead, and a paddle stroke echoes back at you from another country.
Big Bend spreads across 801,000 acres of far West Texas where the Rio Grande makes the turn that names the park, a prime stretch of Chihuahuan Desert with the Chisos Mountains rising as a green island from its middle. That sky island grows its own weather, cool and wet enough for species found almost nowhere else north of the border, the Colima warbler famous among them, part of a bird list running past 450 species. The park's own words for its night skies are dark as coal, and its own summer warning is one word, HOT. More than 150 miles of trails run from river cane to mountain rim, and the emptiness of far West Texas does the rest.
Solo
Backpack the Chisos rim, soak at the riverside hot springs and learn what a night sky described as coal-dark actually does overhead.
Friends
Paddle the Santa Elena corridor together, hike the South Rim's twenty-mile view into Mexico and finish with chilli in the ghost town at the gate.
- Santa Elena Canyon's fifteen-hundred-foot walls put Mexico on one side of your canoe and Texas on the other.
- The Chisos Mountains form a sky island cool enough for species found almost nowhere else in the United States, on a bird list past 450 species.
- The park's own description of its night skies is dark as coal, among the darkest in the country.
- Over 150 miles of trails run from the river cane to the mountain rim across 801,000 desert acres.
Stock the cooler at the gateway settlements; the park's official summer forecast is one word, HOT, and services inside are scarce by design.
A bowl of red where it earned its crown: the desert around the gate hosts the chilli world championships each November.
Mount Olympus
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Home of the gods — clouds swirl around 2,918 metres of limestone and myth.
Jebel Saghro
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Black volcanic towers break a winter desert where mule trails vanish between water sources.
Hoy
Scotland
A 137-metre sandstone stack stands alone in the Atlantic, defying every storm thrown at it.
Phu Kradueng
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A lung-busting ascent to a bell-shaped plateau of pine forests and red maples.
Kodiak Island
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The world's largest brown bears fish salmon streams on America's second-largest island.
Channel Islands
United States
Five islands, no shops, no hotels, and cat-sized foxes found nowhere else on Earth.
Boundary Waters
United States
Eleven hundred lakes joined by portage trails where paddles rule and wolves still howl.
Katmai National Park
United States
Brown bears shoulder-deep in the rapids, snatching leaping salmon straight out of the air.