Arches Nat'l Park - Day 3: Devil's Garden and Windows Section

Dawn & John - in front of "Partition Arch"

Tuesday, March 28th was our 3rd day in Arches National Park. This has been a bit of a challenge for John. It could be that it is Spring Break in Canada (and maybe in the States too) but the crowds are really something this week and it doesn’t endear the Park to John… We waited over ½ hr to get through the Park gates (which is pretty typical for the other days we’ve visited). Today was all about doing the 2 things that the Park Ranger (Lee) recommended to us when we got our Fiery Furnace hiking permit. He said these 2 things were really “what the Park is about”. So, what the heck. We planned our day around Lee’s recommendations.

We did a 7.2 mile hike through "Devil's Garden" and a 3/4 mile hike up to the "Double Arches" in the Windows Section of the Park (about 1/2 hr drive from the Devil's Garden).
 

The crowds, heading into Devil's Garden

John, bundled up!!!  Brrrrrr....

It was certainly a different experience than yesterday! First of all, it was about 10 deg C cooler than it was yesterday. We both had on all our layers of clothes and it was still chilly.  It drizzled for the first hour or so of our hike then the rain stopped and it was easier to take pictures!  

Devil's Garden is an area in the Park that is wild and untamed.  Arches is uplifted and therefore has formations that don’t exist anywhere else because of the Moab Fault.  The Devil’s Garden area is fractured by a salt uplift which creates the fins, but they’re not as expansive nor as close together as in Fiery Furnace and so a trail has been created in order to see a half of a dozen arches that are “features” in the park. 

It's my opinion that this was the most challenging hike that we've done this whole trip.  A little over 7 miles took us almost 4-1/2 hrs, which is quite a bit off our normal pace.  John commented that the trail was not as well directed as it could have been. We spent a bit of time trying to figure out where the trail went a couple of times!  The masses of people disappeared after the first arch and we were on our own for the most part.  The trail markers were pretty well non-existent, and when you're hiking on rock (vs sand which has foot prints) that is an issue.  

Sandstone fins

This hike had some VERY difficult upslope scambles (which I'm thankful we did going UP vs DOWN, thanks to Lee's recommendation).  There was a long line of hikers waiting to navigate their way down the slope in one particular section. We just worked around them on our way up.

Line up of hikers trying to get DOWN the slope.

Unfortunately, there are only 3 ways to navigate the fins themselves … around the base of them in the sand washes, walking the top of them (which has a couple hundred feet drop offs on both sides) or a combination of both of those (which involves ascents and descents).  The Devil’s Garden loop hike – which is a little over 7 miles long – is a combination of all 3 of those.  John likens walking on the top of the fin to walking on a submarine that is 300 feet tall with no water underneath it.  But factor in the 40 mile/hour wind that we had and it becomes a bit hair-raising.  AND for the second day in a row, we wished we had better shoes!!

John, in front of "Private Arch" on the primitive part of the trail

But... aside from the journey TO the arches, the arches themselves were really something to see. This particular hike has a BUNCH of different looking arches that, I think, make the journey worthwhile.

"Double O Arch"; note the smaller hole below the larger one

Black Arch Overlook - Black Arch looks like a tunnel below

Partition Arch with lovely view though it.

One of my favourites - "Navaho Arch" with Utah Juniper behind

Landscape Arch - over 300 ft span (largest in world); 11 ft thick at smallest point... not long for the world

 We had lunch at Dark Angel rock formation, which was a bit lucky as this particular column helped put us back on the right trail later in the day as we knew what it looked like and John was able to orient us based on where it was.  We love Dark Angel!!

Panoramic view of the fins and red sandstone rock walls

We rejoined the main trail (and the people) at a particularly steep spot!

Fiery Furnace area, in the distance

We travelled from the Devil's Garden section to the Windows section of Arches park, and it was absolutely amazing.  I could stand in any one spot, spin 360 deg and see arches everywhere I looked.  I would have liked to have spent more time in that area of the Park, but we were out of time.  There is construction going on (mostly road construction) and so the Park closes at 7 pm each night right now.  So, depending on where you are, you may have to be leaving the parking lot at 6 pm, or 6:15 or 6:30.  There are Park Rangers posted at the various parking lots, making sure people don't get on to the trails too late in the day.  Frankly, we're tired by that time of the day and ready to be exiting the Park, but there was a short (less than a mile) hike I totally would have done had we had more time. 

As it turned out, we just had time to do the hike to the Double Arch, which was featured in the first Indiana Jones movie. It was totally amazing; one of the highlights for me.  It should be called "Triple Arch" because there's really 3 spans that are separated by peeks at the sky.  If you look closely, you can see people hiking up to the base of the spans... again, they look like ants.  This thing is immense.  And gorgeous.

We exited the Park for the last time after the Double Arches hike, and I took a picture of a rock formation that I had named "Nefertiti" on the first day we drove in... Had to include "her" in the blog.  I said goodnight to her every time we left the Park...