A Nebraska-born photographer who was charmed by Iceland’s epic landscapes is capturing the otherworldly beauty of glacial caves on film. The cocktail of light, color, and texture in these unbelievable natural formations will leave you spellbound. Ryan Newburn, 33, was born in Omaha, Nebraska. He has lived in Reykjavik, Iceland, for five years where he…

A strange gust of cool air billowed from within Lookout Mountain—and led one explorer to discover a most coveted American natural treasure. Excavators felt the unexpected cool rush blow from the newly-drilled opening, and, curiosity piqued, Leo Lambert sought to track down the source of the mystery breeze. During their 1928 Tennessee dig, Lambert embarked…

A gargantuan stone arch marks the entrance to a vast “Paleolithic Cathedral” recently stumbled upon by explorers in Spain. This hulking beam of eroded living rock—set along Spain’s impressive Almadenes Canyon—took millennia to form. It now comprises the great façade of a newly-discovered, sprawling cave system. Aptly called Cueva del Arco (Cave of the Arch),…

For thousands of years, men have painted no less than 35,000 rock paintings on the walls of the caves in the Drakensberg. Nowhere else in the world can one find such a high number of rock artworks. What do these works tell us? …

Soar with the seabirds over the wild and beautiful north coast of California. The rugged coastline of Mendocino is a vast wilderness full of wildlife, sea caves, bird colonies, and crashing waves that can only be fully appreciated from an aerial view. …

Near the village of Shiyan Beicun in Zhejiang province, China, lies the Longyou caves—an extensive, magnificent, and rare underground realm, considered in China to be “the ninth wonder of the ancient world.” The Longyou grottoes, which are thought to date back at least 2,000 years, represent one of the largest underground excavations of ancient times…

At first glance, it may look like a computer-generated scenery from a fantasy film, but the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East is a living, breathing, erupting landscape as real as the day is long. The 777-mile-long peninsula, spanning from the Pacific Ocean on its east coast to the Sea of Okhotsk on the…

By Jessica Yadegaran From The Mercury News DESCHUTES NATIONAL FOREST, Calif. — We are in one of the darkest, quietest places on earth: an ancient subterranean cave in Central Oregon’s volcanic, sage-covered high desert. At this moment, 30 feet underground and about 3,000 feet deep, our naturalist guide has instructed us to turn off our…

Lynn O’Rourke Hayes FamilyTravel.com What lies beneath can be cold, damp and compelling. Learn about dry and wet caves, the creatures that live in them and the characteristics that create these natural settings. Here are five places to explore underground: 1. Kartchner Caverns, Benson, Arizona In 1974, two University of Arizona students and amateur cavers…

A stalagmite from a Western Australian (WA) cave has revealed that prior to European settlement in the state, low-intensity bushfires were quite frequent, whereas, from the late 1800’s infrequent but high-intensity bushfires have become common. The stalagmite studied was extracted from Yonderup Cave in WA, and preserved a record of climate conditions and fires, enabling…