If scary roller coasters are not your thing because they’re not scare enough, you may be ready for the Cave Creek Aerial Stairway at Amangiri, Utah which had its opening last week.
The 60-metre long walk’s 120 steps pass over (122 metres over) the desert floor and rugged rock escarpments. Each of the steps is a thin slat of metal, connected to the others by a wire skeleton. It’s sort of like a hanging bridge—except that it goes up, not just across.
Before you get too enthusiastic: There’s a hitch. To get to it, you have to start in Amangiri, and follow one of the ‘via ferrata’ (iron way) trails that are essentially rock climbs with metal climbing rungs sunk into the cliffs. It will take you about three hours to get to the stairway; bring your PB&J, there’s no cafe when you get there.
This looks very much like the steeper stairway I climbed up the side of a container ship. It hadn’t occurred to this acrophobic how I’d be getting on & off before I booked it. Going up was not good but coming down was beyond bad. So I asked one of the men if he’d go down just in front of me while I had one hand on the railing, the other on his shoulder. I lived.