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October 25, 1999
The following day
(10-25) was my day to visit Arches National Park. I decided on the way to the Visitor
Center that I would seek some advice there regarding the advisability of going to the
Black Canyon this time of year. I got some good help from a Ranger Supervisor/bicyclist
named Sandy. It turns out that the Black Canyon is located on the edge of the same high
desert that I’ve been spending all of my time in lately. It’s at about 8000 feet
elevation, but is only 15 miles east of Montrose, Colorado, which is at about 6000 feet
elevation. The weather forecast was favorable for the next few days.
Now I could make a final
decision – and hopefully an intelligent one. Checking my maps again, I figured that
if I "pushed it" a little, I could get to Montrose in two days, then could leave
my stuff at a campground and do a one-day "up and back" visit to the new park.
Actually, I had pretty well already decided to go to the Black Canyon before I ever got to
the Visitor Center. It came down to the same rationale I used for this yearlong journey in
the first place. In simplest terms, I knew I would regret it later if I didn’t do it.
Arches is a great National
Park. I was kind of expecting to ride through a big valley and see a lot of arches from
the road. However, I soon found out (when I saw the road go up and up and up behind the
Visitor Center) that I was going to have to work hard to see the great sights here. The
main road has several big climbs, and the two "side" roads are up and down as
well. For the most part, the arches and other features are not visible from the road or
the parking lots. I walked a number of trails to see some of the best sights. Most (maybe
all) of the arches have names, so it’s fairly easy to associate arch names with
photographs. At least it sounds easy now while it’s fresh in my mind – may not
be so easy in a few days when I try to identify the photographs. But who besides me will
know anyway – I mean I have such great credibility after the Mt. Rainier story.
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 Click on thumbnails
to see full photographs.
I first rode to the north end
of the park (about 18 miles) with the idea of working my way back to the entrance from
there. At the north end, near the campground, is the Devil’s Garden Trailhead that
includes several of the best known arches in the park. Those that I saw and photographed
include Landscape Arch (306’ span is the longest in the park), Wall Arch, Partition
Arch and Navaho Arch..
From there, I took a side
road to view Delicate Arch, perhaps the best known feature of the park (after all, it does
appear on the Utah license plate). I could only spare time to view it from a distance, as
the hiking trail that goes right up to (and under) the arch would have taken me a couple
of hours.
I then came back to the
Windows Section of the park, and took hiking trails to view Turret Arch, the North and
South Windows and the Double Arch, which was probably my personal favorite. The longer
part of the Double Arch has a span of 144’ (third longest in the park) and a height
of 112’ (highest in the park). |
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The
arches in the park seem to have formed in two ways, although geologists admit the evidence
is somewhat circumstantial. The Double Arch is what is known as a pothole arch. It began
as a depression near a narrow cliff face. Pools of water collected and slowly deepened the
pothole. Over time, water seeped through the cliff face, forming alcoves on the two
opposing sides. Eventually, the enlarging pothole met the roofs of the expanding alcoves,
and openings were created. As erosion continued, the arch matured – the openings got
larger and the arches got narrower. In time, it will reach a point where the arches cannot
continue to support their own weight, and they will collapse.
Most of the arches in the
park were created in another way, however. These are made of either Entrada or Navaho
Sandstone, and came about after the sandstone had been eroded into "fins" by the
forces of wind and water. On many of these fins, wind and water continued to erode the
sandstone until the cementing material gave way and chunks of rock fell out. This caused
many of the fins to collapse, but where just the right degree of hardness and balance
occurred, the fins survived without their missing sections. These, of course, became the
famous arches.
The park is dynamic. There is
much evidence of new arches being created, but this kind of change occurs slowly, so
don’t hold your breath waiting for something new and dramatic. On the other hand, in
1991, a slab of rock about 60 feet long, 11 feet wide and 4 feet thick fell from the
underside of Landscape Arch, leaving a precariously thin ribbon of rock. I don’t know
that I’ve said this about many of our nation’s scenic wonders, but this is one
arch that may not be there if you wait too long to pay it a visit.
Besides the arches, the park
has a lot of other interesting formations including the Three Gossips, which I had
mistaken for the Three Wise Men with back-packs (hey, they had to carry that Myrrh
somewhere). There was also just a lot of beautiful, colorful scenery.
Click on thumbnails to see full photographs. |
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My park brochure
doesn’t tell me just when this became a National Park. I know it was a National
Monument first, and it may have been upgraded to a National Park in 1949. At least
I saw a plaque honoring a superintendent that had served here from 1949 to 1972. History,
smistory (spell-check has no suggestions for that one!) – just come out and see this
place before Landscape Arch is gone. |
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This page was last updated on 10/24/02.
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(Great
Adventures to Scenic Places)
