Arches National Park (May 2010)

Written by ceddammit

In May of 2010, I headed out with a few friends on our roughly annual western Colorado mountain biking trip. But this time, we went farther than western Colorado: to the town of Moab in eastern Utah. My friends, who were all in much better shape and much more skilled in mountain biking than I, planned to try a very long and very technically challenging trail on our second day in Moab. Upon hearing the description of the trail, I decided it would not be safe for me, so I instead spent that day exploring the nearby Arches National Park by car and on foot. I quickly learned arches are not the only thing found in this national park. There are in fact, loads of rock formations. Enjoy a few of them, please:

As you drive deeper into the park, it doesn’t take long before the place starts to look like the Arizona portion of Monument Valley. Take a look for yourself:

Looks suspiciously like one of the mitten rocks, doesn’t it?

They built the park’s main road in such a way as to illustrate the development of these arches as you go, so you can see arch fetuses and infant arches before you get to the arches that are all grown up. For an arch to get started, there generally needs to be a vertical layer (or “fin”) of rock, like this one…

…or this immense fin.
A desert wildflower of some form…
…and some general landscape shots…
I forget what mountain range that is.
They have rocks in Utah now?

Out here, the arches (and countless other holes in the rock) are mostly ground out of the living rock by wind-borne sand. The prospect of being out here hiking when such a sandstorm rolls in helped me to feel better when a light breeze brought in some rain later in the day. Here are some examples of erosion in action:

Here you can some holes / depressions in the rock, some of which may develop into arches.
Not sure whether this one is a future arch, space dock, blast door, or just plain cave.
Multiple fetal arches are gestating in this mass of rock.
This one is clearly still in the developmental stages.
Finally, a newborn infant arch!

Now we get to the grown-up arches. To see these adults in their natural habitat requires a bit of a hike. The hike doesn’t include any dramatic elevation changes, but it was rocky enough that it’s not wheelchair friendly. I also would imagine it’s very hot and dry out here for most of the year, so be careful out there, folks! Now, have some (non-golden) arches:

For a sense of scale, look closely…there are people walking around at the bottom of the picture.
Today’s ThrowBack Thursday is brought to you by the letter C…for cactus…
…and by the letter W, for wildflower.

The most famous of the arches here is known as Delicate Arch. Whether you know it or not, you have almost certainly seen photos of Delicate Arch. It was to be my next stop, but that’s when the rain arrived. So, I just drove around the rest of the park, occasionally stopping to take a quick pic, but I didn’t see anything else that required a hike. Just roadside stuff…

Does this count as an arch?
Oh, yeah! I forgot I was stalking someone back then.
There are hundreds (if not thousands) of “balanced rocks” across the American west…
…this one is certainly one of the most impressive I’ve seen.

That concludes my only visit (so far) to Arches National Park. This is a place I definitely want to get back to! When? I don’t know. Time and arthritis will tell. Next week on ThrowBack Thursday, I’ll be throwing out my back. Or maybe I’ll take you to Boreas Pass. We’ll see.

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