Moab, Utah is a town like I had never been in before. It had the certain feel of a tourist spot, yet at the same time, it seemed to have such a small desert town feel about it. Off road recreation is at the center of it all though as people come from all over the country and as I later found out, the world, to take part of the beautiful and functional terrain that the area has to offer. As I drove down U.S. Route 191, the highway gave way and temporarily became the main drag, offering River rafting trips, Jeep, Humvee, and ATV rentals, skydiving, hang-gliding. The works. I couldn't count the number of shops offering Cams, Caribeaners, and other rock climbing gear and apparel. There is a gross amount of bike shops to accommodate the booming market of mountain biking and trail riding. Various unique diners and southwest food restaurants sprinkled in here and there made Moab one of the most entertaining towns Ive traveled to. There was even a store in which the sign in front read 'River Rafting photos and Ice Cream'. I had my choice of camp grounds to stay in that night and everything I could possibly need was at my fingertips, including swanky custom T-shirt shops and an antique bookstore. The beauty was that as much as Ive said was going on there, it still carried a feel that it wasn't overdone and made to feel tacky.
The morning after my arrival in Moab, Utah, I ventured into the first of the National Parks situated in the immediate area. About a two mile drive back north on the 191 takes you to the entrance station into Arches National Park. A visitor center is immediately to the right once through the gate, but I continued up the road through a series of switchbacks that took me to the top of an enormous sandstone ridge. Once at the top you begin to descend into the proper park. An endless plain stretches out ahead with jagged sandstone towers and mesas scattered here and there. A few more minutes and you reach the three gossips area. I immediately recognized the giant three tiered monument from its appearance in the opening scenes of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, when young Indiana has many escapades in the desert in an attempt to rescue a gold cross that once belonged to Coronado. The more into the park you venture, more becomes familiar. The long span of the Landscape Arch, the Double Arch. All there in reality as I had seen so many times on television and in the movies.
My first goal was to simply drive to the end of the park to get a feel for the area, then to work my way back to the beginning, hoping not to miss a thing. In the early morning of what was sure to become a picturesque day, I began the hike to Landscape Arch. A short hike of a mile and a half down a moderate trail, it becomes clear to you only a few hundred yards away. It is considered to be the longest natural arch in the world reaching 290 feet across. In 1991 tourists were filming beneath it when they were a sudden snap like a crack of lightning, seconds later a slab of rock 70 feet long fell from the narrowest section of the arch, forcing the Park to forever close the trail which had once passed beneath. After the short time it took reaching Landscape Arch, I decided to hike down the primitive part of the trail to find the Double-O arch, which lies another mile down a path marked only by cairns. After hiking further up a trail I cam
e to a narrow between two slabs of sandstone fin. Up I climbed and reached the top, which was primarily a large sheet of slick rock with very little sand or vegetation. I was able to follow the cairns for about a half mile before the abruptly stopped and I was standing at the edge of a cliff. Backtracking was the next option, had I missed one it could have been easy to get off trail. Still no more cairns. The hour was almost noon and the sun was getting very high and very warm in the sky, so I decided it best to give up my hunt for the Double-O arch and head back for the more frequently traveled trail to the Landscape Arch.
The symbol of Arches National Park, and in many ways, Utah as a whole is the Delicate Arch. It is located off on its own a little bit off the main road of the park, about a mile drive to the trail head. A slightly more strenuous trail leads you a mile and a half, mostly up a relatively steep slick rock slab to the top of a ridge, which gives way to sand for a few hundred yards before you end up on even more slick rock climbing further higher. At no point in the hike do you ever see the arch coming, so one begins to wonder if it is even real. I wound up making some of the hike with an older man, probably in his early sixties. He was good company for a bit, but told me to go off on my own as he was slowing me down. It was his goal to do as many hikes as he could as he told me that he had an open wound on his leg and that doctors may decide to cut it off any day. His philosophy was that he only had to get to the destination, if he couldn't go back the good people of the parks service would have to haul him back down.
At the top of the ridge the view finally opens up into a natural amphitheater in which the Delicate Arch is located. To the left from where you enter, it is as if nature set this area up perfectly for the viewing of this geologic wonder. It had begun to cloud over as I had made my hike, so the sandstone wasn't glowing like I had seen in pictures and postcards, but I felt a need to photograph it none the less. I set up the tripod and at various points in the bowl I would sit on the slope patiently waiting while other people went underneath the arch for various pictures of themselves proclaiming to the world that they had indeed been to this majestic place, and to prove it, they stood right beneath a fragile structure that could snap at any moment, just as Landscape did nineteen years ago. In fact, early in the development of Arches, the NPS investigated the possibility of applying a clear plastic coating to protect the arch from further erosion and prevent its eventual collapse, but this idea was abandoned as it was contrary to the principles of the NPS.
As you view the Delicate arch, and it frames the La Sal mountains to the southeast of the park, you realize what the park has to offer. The natural beauty of the red sandstone cliffs and desert in the distance, and the sudden rise to the snow capped peaks towering more than 12,000 feet above. The land becomes a symbol for itself. Abruptly one thing ends and an entirely new environment rises above the rest. The whole of that southwest can be personified in this one spot viewing this scene, the very scene that Utah decided to depict on the license plate of their state.
On my way out of Arches I stopped and hiked to several of the other things to be seen, the Skyline Arch is quite impressive, as is the Double Arch. There are a few short hiking trails to be had around the park, but not too many. At the sand dunes arch I waited for a good ten minutes to get a good picture of it as a elderly couple had set up their chairs in the shadow of the arch itself and set there laughing as their toddler grandson made the thirty foot climb to the top of the arch and said “Look at me look at me!” A few fellow hikers and I had a
good laugh at the irresponsibility of what we were witnessing. All in all, there park is small and its points of
interest are pretty spectacular. It lacks any long hikes or back country camping opportunities. Aside from that,
Arches is a must see of southern Utah.
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