A Day Without Pictures

Arches National Park, Moab, Utah
October 14, 2010

This was my second visit to this national park of arches. My first visit was a short one, late on a winter day, limited to scenic stops with no hiking. Today I had the whole day to soak in the park. I decided I did not want to be burdened with a camera and the compulsion to photograph the many views I would see today; I left my camera in my motel room to remove this burden. Of the places and people I met today, I was able to think, to analyze, to imagine, to laugh, to question, to opine, and mostly to smile. Not through the camera lens but through all of my senses.

Once I got back to my motel room, I was able to relive the day by scribing notes of the day, and here are my notes:

• A great entrance to the park. The entrance gate and visitor center are near the highway, but the park attractions cannot be seen from the highway. But you get a thrill in seeing a road switchback up the 760-foot high canyon wall that will lead you to the arches.
• The motto walking to the visitor center:  “Extraordinary arches and awe-inspiring landscapes”.
• In addition to arches, the park has balanced rocks, fins, potholes, spires and pinnacles, petrified dunes.
• I liked the 3D relief maps that the larger parks have in their visitor centers. The one in Arches gives you a great overview including the road climbing up the canyon wall.
• This is a new visitor center completed in 2005 which was not here when I last visited in  January 2002.
• The last time I was here, it was a short winter day, and we arrived late in the day with not much time left. We headed straight to the end of the road and Landscape Arch. The shadows were long because the sun was going down and dusk was fast approaching.
• A number of movies have been filmed here. Recent ones include Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Thelma and Louise, and The Hulk.
• It was created as a national monument in 1929 by President Hoover and expanded by Presidents Roosevelt, Johnson, and Clinton. President Eisenhower actually reduced its size by 240 acres.
• The park has over 2,000 arches.
• There is one way in, one way out. This is good so you don’t have to look in the mirror to see if there is anything you are missing. You will see it on the way out.
• Such grand scenery and variety that sometimes you forget you are in a desert.
• The petrified sand dunes are dunes that hardened into rock from 200 million years ago. The dunes are now Navajo sandstone.
• The arches in the park are in various stages of life. Some are not yet born, but you can see where future arches will be created. Some are babies … small, spreading out in the middle of the rock, still more rock than arch. Some are teenagers and middle-age where the arch has reached its maturity. Some are elderly where the rock has eroded to the bottom and the overlying arch rock is getting thinner and thinner … you can foretell that the arch will soon be broken. And then the dead arches where you use your imagination to see where the arch once was.
• Balanced Rock is an excellent example of seeing how the different rock layers created the feature. On top is the Slick Rock Member of Entrada Sandstone, on bottom is the Dewey Bridge Member of the Canal Formation (mudstone).
•  The information exhibit shows a photograph of a much smaller balanced rock near Balanced Rock before it toppled in 1975-1976.
• Rock climbing is allowed in parts of the park. Two climbers were on the solitary rock 200 yards southeast of Balanced Rock.
• The Double Arch is the third longest (144’) and highest (112’) arch in the park. The two arches start at the same spot and then branch out … the roof between the two arches has dropped. I was sitting in the shade at the bottom of the smaller arch next to a steep drop off and could look both ways. The smaller arch has not yet eroded to the ground.
• The Delicate Arch parking lot was full … the hike is popular especially with families (parents carrying their babies and toddlers on their backs). I saw some people that probably should not have made the hike including an elderly gentleman in his 70’s with an oxygen tank (however, he made it!). It is photogenic because it stands by itself on a portion of a ridge. It can be reached easily on the north, east, and west sides and you can stand underneath with no problem. The south side is steeper and drops off to a canyon. It is on a ridge with two small canyons on each side. Because it is south facing, you get great shadows on the north shadow. There is a good viewing platform on the ridge to the north that parallels the arch around 50 yards away … there is a basin in the ridge between the arch and this viewing platform. The La Sal Mountains provide a background to the southeast from the viewing ridge. Some people had mobile phone coverage … one middle-age gentleman was even talking business in view of the arch. It was like an amusement park with people lining up to get their photo taken underneath the arch. I circled back on the hike and saw the arch from the west end of the basin. So many people hike this trail that the trail was worn into the slick rock.
• The hike was 3.0 miles round trip with an elevation change going up of 480 feet. The hike begins at Wolfe Ranch, across Salt Wash, then a switch back dirt trail to get you up a ridge, and then down into a wash, then up-up slick rock which has most of the elevation gain, then down into another wash, then climb up to the ridge with the last part of the trail on the north side of the ridge and steps and the path carved into the rock. Then you emerge into an opening and the viewing platform of Delicate Arch.
• Wolfe Ranch, at the bottom of the trail to Delicate Arch, was a working ranch in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. What a way to eke out a living. John Wesley Wolfe, a Civil War veteran, and family moved out here in late 1800’s. He had 100 acres along Salt Wash which was a little grassland along an intermittent stream. Not much, but enough for a few cattle. They had a small one-room cabin made of wood and mud, no more than 15’ x 15’ and less than 10 feet tall. And this was the upgrade version that was built in 1906. The family moved back to Ohio in 1910. Mr. Wolfe died on October 22, 1913 in Etna, Ohio at the age of 84.
• Devil’s Garden Trail. As you enter, you come across a sandstone wall that goes straight up, then into a narrow canyon of sandstone fins. I made it to Landscape Arch … last time I was here was around 4:30 pm on January 1, 2002. You can clearly see where some of the under-rock of the arch fell off during the 1991 slide. This is definitely an old arch … the thinnest portion of the arch is around 10 feet. It may not be long (especially in geologic time) before this will be an arch no more. The arch is 290 feet long and is considered the longest arch in the world (Kolob Arch in Zion NP is not far behind.) This arch is not as photogenic as Delicate Arch because of all the debris below the arch and it is smaller in proportion to the total rock mass and rock below it.
• Pine Tree Arch named because of the Pinyon pines near the base of the arch. The sun was close to setting, and I came across five amateur professional photographers at the arch. They were focusing on the trees, the wall north of the arch, and a rock to the northeast which was lit by the setting sun.
• Tunnel Arch. On a rock wall to the east of the arch, you can see the shadows of the arch created by the setting sun. The lit arch opening in the shadow slowly rises as the sun sets further down and looks like an inverted teardrop. You can clearly see on the wall the shadows of the tops of the ridge above the arch. If you stare at it long enough, you can see the lit opening of the arch move slowly upwards or so you think. The shape of the lit opening subtlety changes as it moves upward. I began watching the shadows when the bottom of the lit opening was at ground level and it is now at the middle of the wall. It is a bright yellow white with the shadows on a shaded sandstone red with black streaks that go up-and-down. The shadows start to engulf the lit opening of the arch and the lit opening is now starting to collapse. Within three minutes, it slowly disintegrates from the lower left to the upper right. It becomes a crescent of slight red and then it is gone. The sun dropped below the rocks to the west and sunlight no longer passed through the arch. Tunnel Arch is in a ridge of two layers of rock: the east half contains the arch, the west half has a u-shaped notch which allows light through the arch. I spent over a half hour here watching the sun set.