MERUS Adventure Park, ClearedDirect, & Golden Hour Tech combine terrain mapping and mission-adaptive operations software across 5,500 acres in Palo Duro Canyon.
CLAUDE, TX, UNITED STATES, June 2, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Three Texas-based companies have partnered to change how private adventure parks operate. MERUS Adventure Park, the 5,500-acre off-road and outdoor destination in Palo Duro Canyon, has joined with Austin aerial intelligence firm ClearedDirect and Austin-based software company Golden Hour Technologies to build a terrain intelligence and operations platform new to the private outdoor recreation industry.
ClearedDirect created a full-property LiDAR map of MERUS using the YellowScan Voyager drone-mounted sensor system — making MERUS, to its knowledge, the first private adventure park in the United States to map its terrain at sub-centimeter resolution. The survey captures every rock face, trail obstacle, and canyon feature across the park’s 68-mile trail system at 0.5 cm RMS precision, using 32-echo multi-return technology that penetrates dense canyon vegetation to reach bare earth beneath the canopy, and an integrated 61-megapixel RGB camera that produces a fully colorized 3D point cloud of all 5,500 acres. That precision standard has previously been reserved for federal land management, infrastructure engineering, and mining.
Golden Hour Technologies, a veteran-led software company currently in field trial at MERUS, layers mission-adaptive logistics and communications software on top of that terrain foundation. Its platform combines live telemetry, AI-assisted decision support, and radio-agnostic communications built to function in the dead zones that define canyon terrain. In practice, it lets MERUS staff rapidly configure their own automated workflows and a self-healing mesh radio network, maintaining real-time situational awareness across a property where cell coverage is limited and guest-safety decisions must be made quickly.
“What we’re building here with ClearedDirect and Golden Hour isn’t a single feature — it’s infrastructure,” said Pete Newell, Partner at MERUS Adventure Park.
The partnership targets two long-standing gaps in how private outdoor destinations operate. Most parks communicate terrain through hand-drawn ratings and word-of-mouth, and manage field operations through radio check-ins and manual coordination. For MERUS, which hosted more than 8,000 visitors from all 50 states and Canada in 2025, neither is sufficient. The LiDAR dataset will support precise obstacle specifications on MERUS’s partnered mapping platforms and the park’s STAGE5 professional off-road training curriculum, while the Golden Hour platform supports asset coordination, guest communications, and operational decisions across 5,500 acres of remote terrain.
“This project is a proof of concept for what geospatial technology can do when it moves outside its traditional industries,” said Jason Milewski, CEO of ClearedDirect. “MERUS understood immediately that the value wasn’t just in the map — it was in what you do with the data over time. That’s the same conversation we have with infrastructure clients, and it’s the right way to think about land stewardship at any scale.”
“Palo Duro Canyon is exactly the kind of environment our platform was built for — remote, technically demanding, and zero tolerance for communication failure,” said Ian Newell, Founder of Golden Hour Technologies. “When you combine what ClearedDirect has captured with a software layer that can act on it in real time, you stop reacting to your terrain and start managing it.”
About MERUS Adventure Park: MERUS Adventure Park is a private outdoor destination open to the public within Palo Duro Canyon in the Texas Panhandle, offering more than 5,500 acres for off-roading, overlanding, hiking, caving, and camping. Founded in 2021, it operates a 68-mile trail system rated beginner to expert, with primitive campsites, full-hookup RV sites, and canyon-view cabins. Learn more at merusadventure.com.
About ClearedDirect: ClearedDirect is an Austin, Texas-based aerial intelligence firm specializing in survey-grade LiDAR capture for infrastructure, environmental, and commercial applications. The company delivers NDAA-compliant geospatial datasets used across infrastructure, utilities, mining, and land management. Learn more at ClearedDirect.com.
About Golden Hour Technologies: Golden Hour Technologies is an Austin, Texas-based, veteran-led software company building mission-adaptive logistics and communications platforms for organizations that plan, move, and coordinate assets where connectivity is unreliable. Founded in 2024, it is currently in field trial at MERUS Adventure Park. Learn more at goldenhour.tech.
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