The Utah Parks Part II: Arches
Arches is a beautiful park. We did 2 magnificent hikes here, and, not surprisingly, we saw many many natural arches. The first trail we did was Devils Garden Loop Trail with 7 Arches. It is a 7.5 mile hike and it was stunning. This time we started sufficiently early to beat the worst of the heat and most of the crowds. We got to the trailhead around 7am and had the trail almost entirely to ourselves for the first two-thirds of the day. The elevation change on this hike was minimal but due to the rocky terrain and almost non-existent early morning hikers, it was a bit tricky to follow the trail. Did you know that the little rock piles on a trail to mark the way have a name? And that name is cairn? Well, Nicolas and I started making a game out of spotting the cairns and calling them by name. And a few times Nicolas searched out some appropriately sized rocks to create some new ones of his own. The great thing about this trail is that there a several bonus spurs you can choose to hike, each with its own geological payoff. We chose to do all of them, including ~.75 mile offshoot to see a massive rock formation known as Dark Angel.
Dark Angel
The most impressive of the arches on the trail is probably Landscape Arch, which is considered to be the 5th longest natural arch in the world. This arch is one of the closest to the trailhead and is definitely worth seeing even if you don’t plan to hike the rest of the loop. You used to be able to walk right up to the arch but after some major slabs fell in the 90’s, they closed off the last part of the trail. Landscape arch is incredibly thin, especially when you consider how long it is, and it seems like only a matter of time before the rest of it succumbs to weathering, erosion, and gravity.
Landscape Arch
How are these beautiful arches formed, you probably didn’t ask? Well I am not a geologist, per se, but I am a former science teacher so I will attempt to explain it here. Hint, it’s more complicated than it seems. The story starts about 300 million years ago when this part of Utah was actually part of an inland sea. When the sea evaporated, it left behind salt deposits of various thicknesses on the plateau. Next came millions of years of debris blowing and washing into the area. When these sediments piled up in an area, the pressure of the material on top caused compaction. Combine this with water flowing and evaporating over it as well and you get cementation. Keep this up for long enough and voilà, you get sedimentary rocks. This is the first part of the story.
Landscape Arch
Next, the weight of this new rock layer caused the salt deposits underneath to liquify. This caused the salt layer to thrust upward, creating salt domes in the rock. Erosion tore away most of the younger rocks on the surface, leaving mostly the oldest two layers. Water seeped into cracks in the rocks, dissolving some of the salt layers; ice froze and expanded (which is something very cool that ice does), creating pressure; and wind did its usual work on the surface layers. Eventually most of the structures collapsed. The ones with the right strength and balance remained. These are the arches and formations we see today. Cool, right?
Lizard Friend: my herps people, do you know who this is?
The second hike we did in Arches turned out to have one of the biggest payoffs of any of our hikes, Delicate Arch. This iconic arch is what most people visualize if (and when) they think about Arches National Park. With well known and often photographed sites such as this, it is common to have one of two reactions: this is crowded and/or disappointing OR I understand why this is as popular as it is. Both Nicolas and I had the latter reaction. Delicate arch is as impressive as it is beautiful. Standing underneath it, you can see how dwarfed by it we are.
Delicate Arch: can you spot us underneath?
We started this hike early as well, probably around 7am. But this time it was not so much to beat the heat, it’s only a 3.1 mile trail, it was to beat the crowds. This is the most crowded trail in the park and it is especially popular around sunrise and sunset. The arch is the most photographed in the park but what is most surprising when you are there is that it stands on the edge of what looks like a large stone basin, which definitely adds to its majesty.
Delicate Arch
On our last night in Arches, I convinced Nicolas that we needed to drive into the park at night to do some star gazing. It sounded lovely and romantic and after so much time in New York City, I was feeling very star deprived. Although we did manage to find a nice spot to pull off the main road and we tried to convince ourselves that we were comfortable lying on the rocks, the sky was cloudy and we couldn’t see much. But it was the mosquitos that finally did us in though, and we gave up on the endeavor after only about 10 minutes.
The park is full of other trails. arches, and interesting rock formations. It is easy to see them from the road in the park or by walking a short path to them. Balanced rock is one of the more impressive formations. It reminds me of a circus performer balancing an object on the tip of their finger.
I highly recommend Arches to anyone looking for a great national park.
Balanced Rock
