Browse Through the Traveler Content

Talk about ambitious. The folks at Zion National Park are planning to do the first substantial rehabilitation of the Mount Carmel Highway in nearly 80 years, something that will not be an overnight job.

A 34-year-old Colorado climber working on one of Zion National Park's more popular climbing routes has fallen an estimated 300 feet to his death.

It was just about a year ago that I wrote about the invasion of "GPS Rangers" into the national parks. Back then I wasn't so keen on this hand-held electronic tour gizmo, but there does seem to be a hidden blessing in it.

A 23-year old canyoneer is badly hurt after a botched rappel sent her tumbling 100 feet into Zion National Park’s Pine Creek Canyon.

Zion National Park has become a magnet for canyoneering enthusiasts. With more than four dozen remote and technical slot canyons feeding into Zion Canyon, the park is just about as good as it gets for practitioners of this rapidly growing extreme sport.

On a clear day, you often can see for miles and miles. But as a report from the National Parks Conservation Association points out, clear days are harder and harder to find in our national parks under the Bush administration's relatively laissez-faire approach to coal-fired power plants.

Critics of the National Park Service's mandate to conserve natural resources often say the national parks were not intended to be kept inside bell jars. And that's certainly not happening. Proof can be seen in how the loss of cougars is thought to be adversely affecting Yosemite National Park and the recent rush to find uranium near Grand Canyon National Park.

It won't be quite so crowded in Zion Narrows under the new backcountry management plan adopted by Zion National Park.

Students are back in school, the weather is turning, the leaves have mostly fallen. Also falling are the costs of booking a room in national park lodges for the next few months.

The other day a federal judge tossed out a lawsuit that aimed to open Surprise Canyon in Death Valley National Park to ORV traffic. That post generated a lot of debate over the propriety of a road in that rugged canyon. Those who filed the lawsuit claimed they had a right to the road thanks to a Civil War-era statute known as R.S. 2477. Well, Death Valley isn't the only park that could suffer from this statute.

If you're heading to Zion National Park, I hope you're not planning to head into the backcountry. Beginning today park officials have shut down backcountry travel, including canyoneering, because of fires burning there.

It's been a rough few days in the national parks. A three-day search in Mount Rainier has led to the discovery of the body of a missing hiker, while in Yosemite another hiker has died while trying to negotiate Half Dome.