Originally we planned to spend the 3rd day of our vacation driving to our next destination in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. But Beth and I were enjoying the Utah scenery and weather so much, that we decided to extend our stay another day so we could hike Devil's Garden, the longest of the maintained trails in Arches National Park. It was a great decision, the hike was one of the main highlights of our entire vacation.

The National Park Service describes the hike as follows. "Devils Garden Primitive Loop (strenuous) - 7.2 miles (11.5 km) round trip, including all spur trails to points of interest. This trail leads to eight awe-inspiring arches. Expect narrow ledges with rocky surface hiking and scrambling on slickrock. Not recommended when rock is wet or snowy."

Could my knee handle this type of hike? Probably not, but that was not going to stop me today! The first mile of the hike was a flat, gravel surfaced trail that led directly to Landscape Arch. This arch is one of the longest natural stone spans in the world, measuring 306 feet across the base. I would guess that this arch is photographed more than any other, with the exception of Delicate Arch.

On Sept. 1, 1991, a slab 60 feet long 11 feet wide, and 4 feet thick fell off of Landscape Arch, while tourists watched in astonishment. The Natural Arch and Bridge Society has a web page that describes this event and a few more recent occurrences of rocks falling from the arch. You can still see much of the debris on the ground below the arch, and close-up access to the arch was not being permitted because of the unstable nature of the formation. These recent events have caused rampant speculation about how close this arch is to complete collapse.

At this point we decided to leave the company of the other visitors, and continue on the primitive trail portion of the hike. The primitive trail leads through Fin Canyon and eventually re-joins the main trail at Double O Arch. The trail starts by following a dry wash, so the going was slow and sandy to begin with. However it didn't take long before we started seeing and hiking through the slabs and fins that make this area famous.

The park lies atop an underground salt bed that was deposited across the Colorado Plateau 300 million years ago. A sea flowed into the region and eventually evaporated, leaving salt beds well over a thousand feet thick in places. Over millions of years, the salt was covered with residue from winds and floods, and much of this debris was compressed into rock. The salt bed below the rock is unstable under pressure, and the weight of the rock cover caused the salt layer to shift and buckle. Vertical layers of rock were thrust upward, while other sections dropped into the cavities, causing large slabs to appear on the landscape such as the ones shown here.

Erosion cracks and deepens the slabs, eventually causing the slabs to break into smaller structures called fins. The previous picture showed slabs that are starting to develop the vertical cracks that will eventually erode and widen, forming the fin structures. This image shows some more slabs in the background, but many of the rocks in the foreground have eroded away and have either collapsed or become free standing fins.

Eventually water, ice, and wind sculpt the fins into arches and spires. The left side of this image shows some fairly sturdy fins, while several fins on the right side of the image have eroded into arch like structures. Weather erosion is a relatively slow process, but it is constantly, gradually creating dynamic landscapes. Here is a web page from ParkNet that includes a nice picture of the geology and the natural forces that took place to form the fins and arches in the area.

The primitive trail led us directly through the canyons formed by the fins and slabs of sandstone. The trail started at the base of the canyons, but before we were finished we were required to use both hands and feet to scramble up through narrow cracks and along rocky ledges. When we began our adventure on the primitive trail we did not understand why it was considered to be "strenuous", but before we had finished climbing out of the canyons we understood.

On past vacations, I have occasionally purchased a disposable panoramic camera for those sweeping views that can best be appreciated by a wide angle picture. However, I failed to do that on this trip (I'll blame it on not having any room in our Miata for anything else :-), so this image is one of my attempts at creating a panoramic picture by joining two seperate images together using an image processing program. Some brightness and contrast adjustments were necessary, as well as some scaling and translation of the images. It's not perfect, but I am fairly satisified with the results.

Towards the end of the primitive trail, we hiked the half mile spur trail into the "recently discovered" Private Arch. Noel de Nevers (a University of Utah professor) and a group of fellow hikers found the arch in the 1970's and assumed that it was a well known arch. After conferring with Dr. Dale Stevens (co-author of "The Arches of Arches National Park") it was decided that Private Arch was indeed an undocumented arch. The front page of the February 28, 1992, the Salt Lake City Deseret News announced Private Arch and its location to the world and many shocked "arch hunters". Because of the sun's angle and the limited number of places to stand to take a good photograph, my picture of Private Arch did not turn out real well. However, from the sandstone rocks just above the arch, here is another set of pictures that I pasted into a two-image mosaic.

The primitive trail ended at Double O Arch (not to be confused with Double Arch, which is also located elsewhere in the park), where we re-joined the main trail (or so we thought, more on this comment in a minute :-). Double O Arch is at the very end of the main trail, approximately 2 miles from the Devil's Garden Trailhead. This view of the two arches was taken as we were approaching the end of the primitive trail, and was the first time the second, smaller arch came into view.

By climbing through the lower arch, we now could look back through the larger, upper arch to see some of the fins that we had just hiked in Fin Canyon. This picture is probably my favorite picture from the entire vacation. The shadows surrounding the upper arch create a picture frame effect, that makes the scenery of Devil's Garden almost appear as if it is a completely different picture hanging on a sandstone wall.

At this point we made a major blunder. We noticed several hikers coming and going through an entry into a canyon just above where we took the last picture. We mistakenly assumed that must be the start of the trail back to the parking area. It wasn't, and before long we were lost and wondering how to get back to Double O Arch. Rock cairns were no longer in sight, and we had wandered too far before we realized our mistake. We were sure we knew the way back, but several trips into canyons formed by the massive fins ended in narrow rock ledges where cliffs dropped to the valley floor below. Finally we found our way to higher ground and by spotting a few hikers, we were able to determine the correct path back to the arches. Whew, it was certainly easy to see how someone could panic and get completely lost in the area.

Back on the main trail, we started the hike back to the trailhead. But my knee, and a shortage of water because of our little mis-adventure, caused us not to visit all of the spur trails to the other arches during our return to the car. We missed Navajo Arch, Partition Arch, Pine Tree Arch , and Tunnel Arch, as well as the Dark Angel Spire. We'll definitely be back to the area, and will visit this hike again to see those arches as well as some of the unmarked arches that can be found along the primitive trail (Hidden, Private, Box, Black, and Crystal Arches are just a few). Right before returning to Landscape Arch, we did spot Wall Arch from the main trail, which is the picture you see here.

This was a terrific hike, which we will definitely do again. That evening, we had a nice dinner and stroll in downtown Moab. Most of the next day would be spent driving, so we wanted to make sure our feet and legs were so tired, they wouldn't mind being in the Miata for more than 8 hours :-). Our next stop is Jackson Hole, Wyoming, however we did get to enjoy the scenery at Flaming Gorge Reservoir along the way.