Abandoned slate mine in Wales now world's deepest hotel

Snowdonia, Wales — The Welsh countryside offers stunning vistas, with rugged peaks framing sweeping landscapes. But from the Deep Sleep Hotel, you'll see none of that, but it's no less spectacular, and getting there is half the adventure.

At check-in, guests receive a hard hat, head lamp, boots and a mountain guide.

The journey — about 1,400 feet underground to the world's deepest hotel in the north Wales region of Snowdonia — takes nerve.

Guests descend into dark caverns, navigate flooded tunnels, zip-line across a vast abyss and squeeze through some pretty tight places.

For more than 200 years, miners extracted slate from Mount Snowdon, much of the work done by candlelight. In the process, they created a maze of tunnels.

"It goes miles that way, and it goes miles that way," explains guide Jeanine Cathrein. "Yeah, it's a huge place."

The exhausting journey to the Deep Sleep Hotel, which first opened in April 2023, takes about four hours. Guests arrive at the hotel to find climate-controlled cabins, and groundwater helps generate electricity.

There's Wi-Fi and a bathroom. Running water comes from a spring, but there is no shower.

Dinner comes in a pouch.  

"You can't pass this up," guest Mark Green said.

It's a "once in a lifetime opportunity," guest Sam Frith added.

The price tag to get some deep sleep in a cabin for two runs nearly $500 a night. 

In:
• United Kingdom

Ian Lee

Ian Lee is a CBS News correspondent based in London, where he reports for CBS News, CBS Newspath and CBS News Streaming Network. Lee, who joined CBS News in March 2019, is a multi-award-winning journalist, whose work covering major international stories has earned him some of journalism's top honors, including an Emmy, Peabody and the Investigative Reporters and Editors' Tom Renner award.

Twitter Instagram