We were up early today – before 6am – so we could drive into Arches National Park and straight to the infamous Wolf Ranch Trail to Delicate Arch. It’s the arch you see everywhere, the most iconic symbol of Utah. This is the one place I’ve always wanted to go and the one thing I’ve always wanted to see. I’ve been dreading this strenuous hike for over a year. I didn’t sleep much last night, lying awake and wondering if I would be able to make it. Distance-wise, the trail is only 1.5 miles each way, but in difficulty? It’s listed as difficult. We’ve found that the difficulty ratings of the National Park trails out west are a little deceiving to us. What they determine easy out-west are usually easy or moderate to us from flat Ohio. We’d be hiking to Delicate Arch around the 5,000 ft elevation mark and going up 500 ft in a very short distance (meaning, STEEP). I can hike on relatively flat or moderate trails for miles at a time, sometimes 6 or 7 miles round trip, but the steep trails with significant elevation gain kill me. The trail to Delicate Arch is listed by the National Park as difficult – which I would normally not attempt, but I’d been waiting for this for over a year and told myself I’d try it, go slow, and if I needed to turn around and come down, I would. On top of all that, the last stretch of the trail before reaching the arch is a narrow ledge on the side of the canyon. My son and I aren’t terribly fond of heights, so I was worried about that too. We had a deal that if either one of us couldn’t do it, the other would come back down with them.
So, with all of that lead-in to the story, here’s what happened:
We arrived at Arches and drove straight to the Wolf Ranch trail head. We arrived at 7:30am and the parking lot was already almost full. It wasn’t too hot, but the sky was clear and the sun was shining. We knew it wouldn’t take long for the desert heat to start baking us, so we put on our sunscreen and packed as many water bottles as we could carry, and set out on the hike. I was nervous, but I decided to use one hiking stick, and hubby and the kids (who are in better shape than I am) said they would carry the water and my camera in their backpacks so that I wouldn’t have to carry them. (Awe, aren’t they sweet?) We started up the trail and the first few tenths of a mile weren’t that bad. They were packed gravel/dirt and a bit rolling, but mostly flat, by western US standards. We came to a steep paved switchback and I made it up that pretty well. I had decided that if things got really tough, I would take things 200 steps at a time, and if it was really, really tough, I would take it 100 steps at a time. So far, I didn’t need to count steps. I was winded, but not too bad – and it still wasn’t that hot. We hiked a bit more through the desert sandy trail, up moderate hills with some stone steps – so far so good. Then I saw it – the very steep section of slickrock that seemed to go up forever. People ahead of us going up looked like tiny ants disappearing over the top. After a moment of panic, I said, “I’m doing this” and kept on. As we started up the slickrock, I was pleased to realize it wasn’t “slick” at all. My trail running shoes gripped it like suction cups – sweet! However after the first hundred yards or so, my calves were on fire, but I kept going a little further. Hubby kept saying, “Don’t go too fast! Slow down.” But what he doesn’t understand is that even at home, when I hike hills, I have a song in my head and I hike to the rhythm of the song (I think at the time it was Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” - seriously, not kidding). Anyway, in total, I think we stopped for breaks every 100 steps all the way up the slickrock section. The kids were great. They would hike ahead and find a shady spot off to the side of the trail and wait for us to get there, and say, “We found you a spot, mom!”
With the slickrock section completed, we hiked the more manageable, but still uphill sections of the trail until I saw the narrow ledge. I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t nearly as narrow as I had imagined, and I was pretty confident my son and I would be fine. I started to get excited because it finally felt like I was going to make it and see my arch. We made our way across the ledge, and around one corner I called back to my husband, “I see cameras!” I knew that the people with cameras just up ahead were taking photos of the arch and we were almost there. Sure enough, we came around the final corner, and there she was, Delicate Arch. I made it.
It was beautiful, and exhilarating, and exciting, and emotional, but mostly I was just happy. I had wondered if I would cry (I didn’t). I was just, happy. We took tons of pictures from the ledges above the arch, and one of us said, “Are we climbing down in there along the bowl of the canyon to go out and stand under the arch?” and I said, “Hell yeah!” We climbed down there and got in the short line to have our picture taken under the arch. One woman cut in front of us in line (she didn’t realize there was a line) and started to walk out, but became scared, so she came back and called to her family who were positioned on the other side of the canyon to take her picture, that she was too scared and couldn’t do it. So, what does my hubby do? He asks the woman if she would like him to walk her out to the ledge under the arch so she can have her picture taken and that he’d come back and get her to escort her back off the ledge after her picture. He looked like an usher at a wedding; it was so sweet. Afterwards she thanked him and told him how sweet he was.
All in all, we spent about 20 or 30 minutes hanging out with other people who were sitting around in the shade of the canyon bowl, just looking at the arch, talking, and taking pictures. I managed to act quickly and get a picture of the arch without people, as one group was trading places with another. About 10 minutes later, after it started to get much more crowded and the line to go out under the arch was getting really long, one man in the group said something very loudly in French. The only thing I could make out (from my years of French in high school) was “please for just one minute.” He repeated it twice and then someone in his group told him “en Englais” or “in English” – so he said, “Could everyone wait please for just one minute so we can have pictures with no people?” So everyone waited for a few minutes so we could all get good shots without people under the arch. It was pretty cool.
We finally decided it was time to go and make our way back down (which was WAY easier). I took pictures all the way down. When we reached the car, the parking lot was full and there were tons of people just starting out. It was very hot now and many of the groups were going up with no water. We had drunk almost all of the water we had taken up with us.
Feeling accomplished, we decided to go to the Devil’s Garden area of the park to take short hikes to see Tunnel Arch and Pine Arch. It was getting really hot by this point, and we were getting hungry, so we decided to leave the park and drive in to the town of Moab for lunch. We stopped at Balanced Rock and the Visitor Center to stamp our passports on the way out of the park, then went to the Moab Brewery for lunch. I had a super-good open-faced turkey sandwich with mushrooms and swiss, yum!
After lunch, hubby surprised the kids with a UTV rental. They gave us a map and showed us some trails to take it on. I was expecting that they’d send us on some or the old uranium mine roads we had heard about being used for ATVs and such. But no. They sent us up the side of a canyon on a road that crumbled away down a cliff. OMG, I seriously was terrified. There may have been some tears shed. There were some areas where you could go off-road a bit and climb some hills and rocks – more “technical” sections they called it, so hubby decided to try it (I was in the back with my daughter at this point, and my son was in the front. I closed my eyes). We drove up a dune-type thing near the edge of the canyon – hitting a big rock in the process – but we didn’t die. I swear I thought we were going over the side several times. Once it was over, I can say it was fun. Perhaps not so much for me while it was happening. (Hubby and the kids loved it though!) Check out the videos below. By the way, we were driving this UTV in the area near where they filmed the car/helicopter scene in the movie, Need for Speed. The road in the movie where they almost drive off the cliff several times? I'm pretty sure that's the road we were on, or at least one that's very similar!)
When we returned the UTV rental, we went back to the Arches NP visitor center to explore the exhibits and watch the movie there. We were getting pretty tired, so we hit a grocery store for a few things, then headed back up to our campsite at Dead Horse State Park. We stopped so hubby could talk to the camp host and learn about what types of duties they do and how to get a job like that. He also talked to the bus drivers at Rocky Mountain National Park – I think he’d love driving the shuttle buses - and no, campground hosts are not required to clean restrooms, at least not all of them. I think it varies by location, but you do get to ask and make some stipulations when you volunteer for the job, which is great, because I definitely will NOT clean restrooms.
We basically just hung out and rested at the campsite for the rest of the evening. We had some local beer and played cards in our shelter while we watched the sunset. After the sun went down, I brought my camera out to play around with taking some night sky photos. I need to read the manual for my remote shutter release, because I couldn’t get it to do long exposures. More practiced needed.
We all took showers in the motorhome – the base of the shower turned orange from the desert sand that was stuck on our bodies. We went to bed, ready for another early start. We have to leave the campsite and return the rental car in the morning before we head to Capitol Reef National Park and then down to Page, Arizona for Antelope Canyon!
Statistics: All total, we hiked a little over 7 miles at Arches today (although hubby got some “extra-credit” on his FitBit while driving the UTV).
