Sunday, June 30, 2013

Arches National Park

After leaving the Needles, we drove north to Moab, happy to be back in the air conditioning in our Jeep.  A fine, white haze seemed to hang over the mountains to the East as we drove.  Mary rolled down the window, took a sniff and declared that it smelled like smoke.  We were a bit alarmed, thinking that there may be a forest fire somewhere nearby.  The road we were on was the only route out of the Needles, however, so we figured we had best keep driving.  Surely the authorities would take some kind of action if there was a fire that threatened the road.

As the path climbed high into the mountains, the views diminished to only a couple of miles, the rest blocked out by white smoke.  We would later learn that this smoke was from distant wildfires in Colorado and New Mexico, blown hundreds of miles across the desert.  By the time we reached Moab, the skies were clear again.

We grabbed a campsite just outside of town, setting up camp as quickly as possible in the mid-day heat. The rest of the afternoon was spent hiding from the heat in the air conditioned public library. 

By 6 PM we decided it was now or never if we were going to go hiking.  The weather was still oppressively hot, but at least the sun had moved off to the horizon in the west, instead of beating down directly overhead.  

The drive into Arches National Park was a beautiful one.  Past the entrance gate, the park road climbed a series of tightly woven switch-backs up an impressive cliff face.  Views into the Colorado River canyon and Moab opened up as we drove.  Frequent pull-outs were provided for photo opportunities along the way.

Eventually, the road broke out onto the flat terrain of Arches National Park, with Moab and the canyon no longer visible.  The La Sal Mountains loomed to the Northeast, patches of snow still visible on their higher elevations.  To the north, a seemingly endless terrain of desert scrublands lent a barren feel to the landscape.

The road into Arches passed many famous landmarks as it made its way deeper into the park.  Arches is a great national park for visitors that aren't able to hike, as most of the attractions can be seen from the road.  Our first destination was Balanced Rock.  Appropriately named, Balanced Rock is a large boulder that appears to be balanced on a smaller spire of rock, likely more than 100 feet above the ground.  The rock is the result of the forces of erosion working on different types of rock at the same time.  The spire is made of a type of rock that eroded  away more quickly, while the boulder is of a more durable material that took longer to wear away.  Eventually, the forces of nature will have their way with Balanced Rock, and the spire will no longer be able to support the boulder.  Someday, it will come crashing to the earth.  

The trail took an easy 0.3 mile path around the rock, providing many interesting view points along the way.  We stopped for photos in a few spots before hopping back in the Jeep and heading to our next hike.

The Windows are a series of arches that are built into rock faces, creating the appearance of "windows" through the rock.  A 1 mile loop trail circles these rocks, mostly crossing open, arid terrain. We took the loop hike in a counter-clockwise direction, and were rewarded with a really cool view of the La Sal Mountains as we climbed the slick rock up and around to the other side of the formation.  

As we passed the windows from the back side, several visitors had managed to climb the the base of the arches.  The abundance of slick rock in Arches makes it possible to climb  just about anything, but getting back down can be much harder than it seems!

By the time we were finishing the loop, it looked like storm clouds were rising over the La Sal Mountains and opening up.  Sheets of rain could be seen draping down to the mountainsides like fingers of pale light.  Framed by the arch windows, it made for a pretty impressive scene.  Walking around the arches at twilight turned out to be a great choice, as the fading sunlight and colorful skies did some really neat things to the rocks.

Our last hike of the evening was the Park Avenue hike.  Early visitors to the park named this section for its resemblance to the tall buildings in New York.  The Park Avenue Trail is a 1 mile path through a small canyon between large fins of rock that resemble sky scrapers.  We left from the higher end, a dubious choice considering the up-hill we faced on the return trip!  The day's light was fast fading, so we only hiked about half of the trail before turning around and making the climb back up the the trail head.  Even the modest, 200 foot climb left us exhausted in the desert heat.

We drove out of Arches with limited daylight left, returning to our campsite for dinner.  Cooking in the dark had its challenges, but at least it was finally below 100 degrees outside!  It was a miserable night of sleep, as the heat never subsided much in our tent.  I was somewhat relieved when it was light out again and I could at least get out of the tent.  

We were back in Arches before 8 am, hoping to take advantage of the "cooler" weather in the early morning hours.  It was only 90 degrees in the park when we started hiking.
  
The Devil's Garden trail is the longest and most challenging hike in Arches National Park, a park not known for difficult hiking trails.  The hike is an out and back trail that visits a number of famous landmarks in this more remote corner of the park.  If hikers take the optional primitive trail back from the far end of the main trail, it becomes a difficult 7.4 mile loop.  We would decide that the main trail was difficult enough in the heat, and only do the 5 mile out and back along the main trail.

The first mile of the trail was a well-maintained pathway, with fences along the sides to keep hikers on the path and off of the fragile cryptobiotic soil of the surrounding landscape.  The path had a number of spur trails that lead to attractions along the way, including Navajo Arch, Landscape Arch, and Pine Tree Arch.  We stopped for pictures at each of these locations.  Much of the trail was delightfully shady during the morning.

Past Landscape Arch, a thin, spectacular arch that looked ready to fall, the trail suddenly became much more difficult.  A challenging, 100 foot climb up slick rock took us to a higher plateau.  Much of the next mile was spent rock hopping, scrambling up slick rock and walking along the spine of some of the "fins," or large narrow rock formations common in this terrain.  The views were amazing along much of this section of the hike.  I had the distinct feeling of walking along the top of the world.

The last major arch on the hike was Double O Arch.  Double O is a pair of arches that are nearly stacked on top of one another.  Some hikers had managed to climb on top of the arch, which seemed like a bad idea to me.  It was at least a hundred feet straight down, and the arch has to collapse someday!

Beyond Double O, the trail dropped gradually over sandstone ledges, reaching the desert floor.  The rest of the trail to Dark Angel was an easy walk on soft sand through desert scrubland.  Dark Angel is a spire jutting straight out of the desert. Over a hundred feet in heigh, this spire of rock has a shiny black color to it, possibly the inspiration for the name.

The return hike to the trailhead was a bit easier in most places, as it seemed to go more downhill than up.  A few of the scrambles down slick rock made for slow, careful going, however.  By the time we returned to the main pathway, it was almost noon, and the sun was quickly becoming oppressive.  Our packs were both drained of water by the time we reached the trailhead.  

We ate a picnic lunch in the Jeep with air conditioning running.  It was 109 degrees outside in the mid-day heat.  After eating, we headed for the Moab Aquatic Center, the perfect place to survive the hottest heat of the day.  For only $7, we got not only a shower (the first in a quite a few days), but also access to the indoor and outdoor pools, complete with water slide and crazy-high diving boards. 

We stayed at the pools for as long as we could stand to wait for dinner, avoiding the worst of the day's heat.  In the evening, we visited a couple of classic Moab destinations.  We had dinner at the Moab Brewery.  We had purchased a few of their brews at convenience stores across Utah during our trip, and were eager to check the place out.  They had a large selection of vegetarian food, which we enjoyed with a sampler of their microbrews.  Utah has peculiar and difficult to understand liquor laws.  One result is that their beers are all low percentage (below 4), which is very unusual for a microbrew.  That said, they are all very good, and in the desert heat I'm not sure we would want more!

After dinner we stopped at Milt's for milkshakes.  Milt's is Moab's oldest restaurant.  Located in a tiny building a block off of Main Street, they only have a couple of tables and a counter for seating, but fry up burgers, fries, and tater-tots, along with awesome milk shakes.  An oreo shake was the perfect way to wrap up a great day in Moab.  This quirky little town really is an oasis in the desert for outdoor enthusiasts. 

We have one more day in Moab, before we finally head for Colorado and mercifully cooler weather.  We've had a blast here, but are more than ready to escape the heat!