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Arches National Park

Delicate Arch

7.18.04

David had Air Force drill in Baltimore yesterday, so Iva drove the car out from San Francisco to Salt Lake City . After reuniting at the airport this morning and engulfing a great many iced drinks on our drive south, we reached Arches National Park around 4pm . It was still around 105 degrees. We decided that we would see what we could by car, and then do the lone long hike at the very end of the park to see a number of the more remote arches the next day.

Items of note included the Windows Arches, the Turret Arch, and the famous Delicate Arch. There was also a thin tower that David took about 20 pictures of.

The two Windows Arches (North and South) are visible from many points in the park, but it was truly fantastic to see them up close. They are essentially gigantic holes in what was once a long rock fin. Viewed from the correct angle, they look like a pair of eyes surveying the countryside. We walked up and around the arches and snapped a ton of photos. The Turret Arch, just opposite the Windows, resembles an arched doorway with a small circular window to the side - like an entryway to a hobbit house.

The hike to Delicate Arch was about 1.5 miles each way and required a bit of scrambling over Utah slick rock. Since the trail was over rock, it was usually marked by small piles of stones, known as cairns . We reached the arch about two hours before sunset. It stands on the rim of a circular bowl carved by swirling sand. Unlike most of the other arches that we had seen, Delicate Arch was purely freestanding and not a hole in a larger rock face. At least not anymore. We were most impressed by the sheer size of the Arch (take a look at how large the Arch looks compared to us) and by the fact that it hadn't toppled over yet, seeing how thin it was in places. We joined roughly 30 other people waiting for the sunset, and took way too many photographs as the declining sun reflected of the rock. Unfortunately, a low cloud cover prevented us from seeing the arch at sunset, so we headed back a little before the sun went down all the way.

Our late arrival at Arches meant that we were unable to get a campsite inside the park. We drove about 5 miles outside the park to the Goose Island campground, a BLM managed park alongside the Colorado River . We arrived after sunset and set the tent up in near darkness. The air was still so hot that we both slept on top of our sleeping bags.

7.19.04

This was a day of great distances, both on foot and on wheels. We were up around 6am and packed up quickly without breakfast. The sun came up high enough to light up the giant rock face over our campsite just before we left. It was nice to be one of the few first people in the park - a nice break from the crowds of yesterday. We drove past some familiar sites before entering the further end of the park. There were only two other cars by the trailhead, and three diehard joggers floated by, getting their exercise in before the heat of the day. We filled up our bottles and set out on a narrow path between two walls of vertical rock. It was 7:15am.

This part of the park is all the color of washed out red or reddish yellow-brown. The rising sun set them aglow, welcoming us to the day's adventure. We decided to do the part of the trail with most of the arches last, as a way of reward for our efforts. And efforts they were. Though the morning turned out to be mostly overcast, it was very hot right from the start. The path changed between sand, hard-packed earth and rock. The whole area at this end of the park is traversed by long thin walls of rounded rock, side by side. Where the rock eroded and thinned out the wall, a hole appeared and an arch formed. We walked alongside the walls, sometimes on top of them, and weaved between different rock formations. Some places required a bit of climbing, using hands and trusting the soles of our shoes to stick to the smooth rock.

The first arch we saw was Landscape Arch, a magnificent thin bridge between one part of a rock and another. It was probably the thinnest and certainly by far the largest arch we saw. It can often be seen in photographs with a fearless runner on top of it to demonstrate courage or adventurous nature. We did not go nearer this arch though because we took a turn to do the Primitive Trail loop the other way round. Since most people start out later and do the more scenic part of the trail first (or only), the first half of our hike we did not see a human soul. We did, however, encounter many animals: three dear and a baby, rabbits of all sizes, chipmunks, one ground squirrel (despite the fact that Corey told us the place is full of them!), little brown lizards, a large dotted lizard, and birds.

At half-point we encountered the first people, just a couple, and then throughout the second part of our hike, the trickle slowly increased until the very end when we were meeting people who just came to see the first few arches and would not do the whole trail. At half-point we saw Private Arch, a short side hike off the main trail. About 30 ft wide and 15 ft tall, it opened into the next rock wall. Other arches though offered magnificent views of the landscape below. We saw Partition Arch, Double O (two arches on top of each other), Navajo Arch and others. We also took a side hike to see the Dark Angel (a tall blackened rock) and some views of the wanna-be-green plain below, intersected by the road to Moab.

One after another, the arches were beautiful and astonishing. We were left wondering how nature could carve out the sides of a rock wall so thin that part of it would crumble without simultaneously bringing down the top. Actually all of the arches will eventually be eroded to the point where they fall, and a large chunk of the Landscape Arch apparently fell several years ago, prompting the park service to prohibit close access to it. But as each arch is eroded new ones can be seen forming all along the way.

The total hike was 7.2 miles long and took us 2 hours and 45 minutes. It was amazingly beautiful and we felt like we had spent our time at Arches well. After washing off some of the red dust at the park entrance, we continued southward through Utah on I-15.

More pictures at Ofoto