Arches NP: Devils Garden

With it spitting rain on and off, we opted to try one of the more popular walks, Devil's Garden.  A fairly extensive trail with several options, strange and whimsical rock formations abound.

The entrance is through a fin and gap formation, sheer rock walls on either side.





Arches for miles.





Running out of arch-like names, they started naming them after a nearby landmark...




This is landscape arch.  A few decades ago, about half the arches thickness broke away.  Thankfully the 20 or so people below got away in time!  Needless to say, tourists are not allowed to walk below anymore.





With almost no soil, the low areas rapidly become washes, filling with the sand that erodes from the surrounding rock.  After the last night's rain, there was fresh signs that this track was a stream.



Part of the track traverses the spine of numerous fins.  Hard to go wrong, but many folks managed to take the wrong path, only to get canyoned in, and forced to backtrack.  Despite the rain the sandstone provides good grip.



















You can see from fresh fins forming.  The sandstone here has been uplifted and rotated on its side.  As a weak spot forms in a fin, the water will break through, sometimes forming an arch.

Arches NP: Salt Valley Road

By Jen.

After the busyness of Delicate Arch despite the rain, we thought we would try a more remote section of the park. On the map, we found “Salt Valley Road (Impassable after heavy rains).” While it had been raining all day, we weren’t sure if it had been “heavy rains,” so we thought we would drive to the entrance and find out. It was still open, so we figured we would go as far as we could until we saw something we had to turn around for. The road was empty and fairly nice, though we did find out why it was impassable after heavy rains. It runs right through the valley bottom, where it will wash lots of sand across the road, possibly making it impassable.

Along the road.

Salt Valley.

After 20 minutes or so of driving, we came up to the Tower Arch Trail, a nearly deserted trail through hoodoos and sculptured sandstone that was indeed very scenic.

There was a rather steep climb right at the beginning, where the path was barely distinguishable along the rocks.

Fun views from the top, though.

Those clumps of darker dirt are actually living microbes that stabilize the sand.

A bird of prey surveyed the area for dinner.

You can faintly make out an orange sand dune in the distance. We follow that up the U-shaped gap between the towers in distance.

View back from the sand dune.

Gorgeous area, even in the rain.

Weathered rock can be beautiful.

A double arch!

The storm clouds were beautiful too.

This is a massive arch that you can walk under.

When the clouds parted a little, you could see a fresh dusting of snow on the mountains that we stayed at the night before.

We finished our tour of the trail and returned to our van. Instead of going back through the park, we decided to use Salt Valley Road to exit towards the north of the park.

More views along the Salt Valley Road.

The rains are coming.

We camped outside of the park, but near the road. And decided to re-enter the park the same way the next day. It had definitely rained hard the night before. The road was a bit more difficult to navigate, but Jonathan managed it like a pro.

Remember the nice, grated surface from the day before?

It was solid-enough though, and someone else had crossed before us.