Arches

(not the golden ones)

Thursday, September 22nd, 2022

Some say we are loving our National Parks to death. This may be especially true since the onset of the recent pandemic. Increasing numbers of people are turning to outdoor recreation and experiences in our nation’s parks. Nowhere is this truer than Arches National Park near Moab, Utah.

I am not a fan of crowds, nor do I like waiting in long lines. When I set up camp near Moab, I had no intent to visit Arches. I planned to do some hiking in nearby Canyonlands National Park. However, upon arrival, I learned that Arches had enacted a “timed entry” system.

I first experienced the Timed Entry system in 2020, when visiting Rocky Mountain National Park with 3 friends. There it worked well for us. It consists of hourly tickets that must be reserved in order to enter. Each ticket covers 1 hour starting at 6 a.m. and ending at 5 p.m. Visitors must go online to reserve a ticket for a specific day and hour when the park can be entered. After 5 p.m. anyone can enter. However, most vacationers are dining at that time, and sundown is the time when most people exit for the day. The ticket is by vehicle rather than by person and has a minimal fee of $2.

The ticketing system allows the park service to control the number of vehicles, and indirectly the number of people, entering the park in each hour. Vehicles are the biggest problem. Most visitor centers, scenic overlooks, wildlife viewing areas, and trailheads have limited parking. While the trails and backcountry spread the usage by hikers, parking lots are a choke point where huge traffic jams can and do originate.

Tickets are available 3 months ahead of time. But of course, you must be aware of that and reserve them. I did this in 2020, obtaining tickets for 5 days in a row at 6 a.m. But I had not done this for Arches. However, I checked with the park service and found that they held back a set number of tickets, and each day at 6 p.m. they offered these online for the following day. At 6 p.m. sharp, I was on the website and was able to reserve a 6 a.m. ticket.

You might wonder, why 6 a.m.? It is a simple answer. Vacationers like to sleep in. They typically set alarm clocks for work, not vacations. But that is not all. The best time to see wildlife is shortly before and after dawn. And the best photographs with saturated colors are taken before the sun gets very high in the sky.

So, I set my alarm for 4:30 a.m. the next morning. I got up, made coffee and scrambled eggs, and then dressed for a hike. I am camped on a hillside out in the desert, where it was so dark I could not see my white pickup truck. I did see a vast veil of distant stars going from horizon to horizon, the Milky Way, and once my eyes adjusted, was able to climb in and start the truck. I drove 15 miles down the canyon to the park entrance, arriving at 5:45, received my park map from the attendant ranger, who motioned me through early, into the park with no line of cars and no wait.

I still had 18 miles to travel to get to the farthest north trailhead where my hike would start. The road climbs up switchbacks and winds through unseen terrain. I can only see my headlights shining on the road ahead. I have no sense of what is to either side. At times, I get the distinct feeling of a huge void off to the right or the left. Occasionally I glimpse a rock wall rising out of the cone of light. I will have to wait until after the hike, to see the world through which the road took me. Arriving at the end loop parking area, I shut off the engine and wait. It is still over 45 minutes before the sun rises and I can start my walk.

I close my eyes for a few minutes at a time. Each time I open them, I can see a little more of my location. I am at Devil’s Garden Trailhead. The name seems descriptive, but of what? As the light slowly increases, I can see rock formations highlighted against the background sky. The shapes are very strange. I am in an oval of flat sage, and Utah Juniper covered sand. The rock begins to resolve into massive blades and plates of parallel sandstone. There are no sharp edges. All appears eroded and worn round by wind. A devil’s garden and fitting description.

A little before sunrise, I can see well enough to avoid stepping on a rattlesnake, so I grab my knapsack and start out on the trail to Landscape Arch. To gain access, I must walk between 2 of the massive plates of sandstone.

As the sun begins to crest the La Sal mountains to the east, and burn through the thin clouds, I start to see the nature of the cliffs and rock walls all around me. There is danger here. The danger is that you will screw your head off your shoulders, spinning around and around to see all the possible pictures you should take. Every direction are colors, shapes and light blended in fantastic scenes. I feel like laughing and giggling out loud. The few other hikers I see are doing the same. As I get close to others, conversations start instantly, all with variations of the same “I can’t believe what I am seeing”. One gentleman sums it up with “good thing they invented digital photos on memory cards. I would already have had to change my film a dozen times”.

And then I see the arches. They appear magically as I walk. One minute I see a rock face, and the next, as my angle changes, there is a large hole with brilliant blue sky on the other side. There are also arches that have not yet eroded through their plate or blade of sand. They appear as giant eyes under brows dark and ominous, leering down at you. I cannot easily get a sense of scale, until some daring hiker climbs up and stands under the arch and then you see it is dozens or hundreds of feet high. I will not pose under some, as they look as though they should crash down upon you at any moment.

After Landscape Arch, I turn back. There are more formations further out, but the guide map talks about the difficulty of the trail and uses the word “exposure”. That does not mean it is a nudists’ trail. It means you will be exposed to falling to your death if you trip or stumble. I don’t like heights. So, I head back to the truck. It is now well after 9 a.m. and as I hike out, I meet dozens hiking in. They will see the arches and the rock formations, but they will miss the blazing reds and oranges that saturated the rock as the morning sun rose. They will also miss the deer, gliding through the juniper, all but unseen and of course, the quiet.

The adventure does not end back at the parking area. Now I get to see and
experience the terrain through which I traveled in the dark. There are cliffs,
drop-offs and other giant rock formations erupting through the hills of sand.
There is the Fiery Furnace, a formation of blades and cliffs of sand worn with
passages, forming a huge maze. You must obtain a permit to hike there, as
many go in, but can’t find their way out, without help from rangers. And
finally, there are the East and West Window Arches and huge caps of rock
balancing on pedestals of narrow rock, before you wind down the switchbacks of
the Moab Fault to the visitor center and exit.

Remember the entrance that I passed through at 5:45 a.m.? It is 10 in the morning, and now there are 4 lanes of cars waiting to enter, possibly 300 vehicles.

Set your alarm.