West Trip Day 6 – Arches National Park

We headed back into Arches National Park for a second day.  After a brief stop on the drive in at Fiery Furnace, we headed to Landscape Arch, or rather, the trail head near it.  Prior to Landscape arch, we stopped at Pine Tree Arch, which as you may guess, is an arch with a  pine tree growing in it.  Landscape Arch is naturally an arch that lends itself well to being shown in landscape format (as opposed to portrait).  It’s also, I think, the most recent site of a collapse and the only one caught on picture.  Landscape Arch is open for distance viewing only from a defined path, maybe because of the recent collapse, maybe because it’s just kind of rough terrain to get to it.

After Landscape Arch, we continued around the trail which I think was about 7 miles total passing 5 or 6 other arches  I believe all of these, other than the upper of Double O Arch were open and could be wandered through and around.  The first were Navajo Arch and Partition Arch(es) followed by Double O Arch where Mooslie and Manatee made their daily appearance.   We skipped out on the side trail to Dark Angel after starting down the wrong path, but we did take the detour to Private Arch.  The trail kind of went along one set of fins, down into the Fin Canyon shown on the map, through another set of fins, followed a mostly dry river bed (not the Fin Canyon river shown on the map) around the backside of those fins and then went between the fins on the way back.  The hike along the ridge early on in the trail gave me my fill of heights for the day.

The hike took the majority of the day, at least the way we did it, with lots of stops for lots of pictures, which involved lots of tripod setups and takedowns.  On the way out of the park, we stopped back at Balancing Rock for sunset pictures.  We then noticed all the people, largely photographers, set up next to Balancing Rock.  We went to see what the deal was and realized it was a prime vantage point for taking pictures of multiple things in the 10 minute timeframe of perfect sunset lighting.

So, after doing what I  could to capture that lighting in picture, we headed out of Arches and toward Zion.

On our way into the park on the second day we stopped at Fiery Furnace and found all the karns.

I think this was taken at Fiery Furnace based on the image number, but I'm not 100% sure.

Pine Tree Arch, the first visit of the hike.

Landscape Arch, the second visit of the hike. This one is interesting because A. it is huge and B. there happened to be someone in the middle of taking a picture when the latest chunk (on the right) fell off and it's captured on film.

This was on the way to Navajo Arch, you could put your hand through some of the holes (after carefully checking for snakes).

Navaho Arch - we got to this one just in time to get pictures before people arrived. It was a bit soggy getting in.

Sandstone fins taken from atop another sandstone fin. These are what eventually become arches.

Partition Arch

Double O Arch - there's a second arch on top of this one. Note the stowaways.

Double O Arch further back so you can see the pair.

I think this one was taken as we were leaving the far side of the hike and coming back.

Private Arch - so named because it was rather out of the way to get to. It The picture doesn't show it well because of the time of day, but it was open and we could wander through it.

We hiked up just a bit further out toward the end of the fin. This is on what I would call the far side of the canyon, looking back at the other side. The fins ran pretty much perpendicular to the canyon. You can see the people out on the fin - I was not interest in being that close to any edge that high up.

Looking back toward the far side of the canyon.

We didn't hike over to those, this was kind of off the East of where we were.

This isn't any named structure, but I liked the reflection in the pool which had formed from the earlier rain.

Everyone was doing it.

I don't remember the name of the arch we were going to, but this was on the trail leading to it. The fact that it's a cool picture taken of something that didn't have a sign informing us that it was of interest means it was taken by Janet. I only take pictures of things with signs.

Janet wanted a planking picture to share with friends at work.

I call this the "low energy plank." I may be missing the point.

Balancing Rock near sunset as we were leaving the park.

Balancing Rock just as the sun went beyond it an on to the formations in the distance.

Balancing Rock just moments later when all the sun hit was the clouds over the mountains.

Arches National Park Map snippet courtesy of the national park service: http://www.nps.gov/arch/planyourvisit/upload/archmap.pdf

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