Arches and more arches!

We went online on Thursday night and were able to secure an entry ticket into Arches National Park for 9 am. on Friday. Previous tickets, I had only been able to get a pass beginning at 2 pm. However they release additional entry tickets at 7 pm the night before, so I watched the time and made sure I was logged in to get one.

We had a bit of cloud on Friday morning, but by the time we got to the park we had full sun. The entrance was fairly smooth – show our day pass and park entrance pass along with ID and away we went. We stopped at a couple of viewpoints but then made the decision to drive out the windows and double arch road for some hiking.

Double arch was first on the list. A double arch is formed from potholes in the sandstone. A pothole that forms above an alcove in the face of the rock eventually wears through, forming an arch. In the case of the double arch, the same thing happened on the back side of the cliff, resulting in a double arch.

I stopped at the end of the trail but Paul kept going and joined all the others who were climbing right under the arch to look out the other side.

After returning to the start of the trail, Paul went to the other side of the parking lot to hike the windows trail. I opted to save my energy to hike to view the Delicate Arch which had some definite elevation change.

Once Paul returned, we headed down the road until we reached the trail to view the Delicate Arch. There is a trail to take you right to the arch, but it is a 5 km round trip with about 500’ elevation gain. At our stop there were two viewpoints. The first was a very short walk and then if you carried on from there, it was a 1.6 km round trip to the upper loop. There was an elevation gain of 170’ and the stats told us some of the incline was as much as 41% and 45% of the trail had inclines of 8% or greater.

We did have a nice view of the arch once we were up.

Much of the incline was hard packed, but with loose sand from everyone walking it. Coming down was just as slow as going up!

In addition to the arches, we also went through areas of valleys with lots of sagebrush.

We drove to the end of the road in the park and then headed back to the visitor centre to watch the video of the park before we headed to the trailer. Tomorrow the plan is drive the La Sal Loop.