Morning: Into the Fiery Furnace

Fiery Furnace Area. Do Not Hike Without a Permit or Park Ranger.

So I pay a very reasonable ten bucks at the visitor center and reserve a spot for today in a 25-person, 3-hour guided tour through a labyrinth of rock walls, hidden arches, and cooling corners that provide respite from the heat of a startlingly clear sky.

We wind in and out of dead-ends, squeeze through tight spaces, and get lessons in desert living from our knowledgeable park ranger, Victoria, in this very special part of Arches NP. My little Pocket PC did pretty well with the photos, but you have to imagine even deeper, brighter colors than it could capture.

Outside the Fiery Furnace.
At sunset, the fins (rows of walls) glow a bright red, resembling embers in the distance.

Victoria shares enlarged photos of the bacteria that form the vital desert crust.

Into the furnace (the easy part).

Ooooooohh.

An interior arch...

...leading to an open-air chamber.

Crawling through, well, Crawl Arch. It’s definitely a tight fit. This one just qualifies as an arch: it’s at least 3 feet wide and not across water (that’s considered a bridge). It will grow bigger in the centuries to come.

The skinny little exit from Crawl Arch.

Daylight again.

Scale takes on new meaning.

A living pothole. Victoria is waving her hand above it to detect critter movement within (no touching the water, which can harm it with body oils). Mostly mosquito larvae in this one, but potholes are known to breed a desert frog that has an extremely short, two-week tadpole stage. Spades on the frog’s feet enable it to burrow up to three feet underground to await the next rainstorm and breed. The black edges of potholes are also alive with bear mites, tiny critters that can shrivel themselves up and await the next water supply to rehydrate. They can live in a desiccated state for hundreds of years, so even dry potholes are taboo to walk on when on the rocks.

Skull Arch (seen as if from the inside and upside down).

An acorn...in the desert?!

Most of us scrambled this down-over-and-up, but the long-legged ones leapt across as if it were a puddle.

Wait, wait, another photo op!

We reach a long, wide crevice, and Victoria teaches us ways to navigate it:

The Arch.

The Penguin.

The Butt Slide.

Our turn.

After using penguin and arch walks, I resort to the butt slide for the final awkward drop to flat ground.

Out in the open for a breather.

Victoria points out some interesting rock formations...

...like this hole-riddled sandstone, formed by water.

Looks tight, but we had been through squeezier areas.

I called this squat rock formation The Train Conductor; I liked his chest button and hat.

Surprise Arch, because no one expected to find one in this spot.

We soak up the cooling quiet under the arch.

An egg laid by a roc?

Darn, the tour’s over.

Raindrops and Lizard Tracks

For a less crowded and altogether different canyon flavor, Island in the Sky, in Canyonlands National Park, is the place to be. A 1.8-mile hike through lizard condo-land gets me to Murphy Point, where I pause to sit at the edge of the world. The morning light is exquisite on the canyons. It is so quiet I can hear the whir of violet-green swallows catching breakfast bugs on the wing. When I sit very still, they zoom within two feet of me. A chipmunk chirps nearby.

Then, wow. Raindrops! Pattering one by one on stone, my clothes, my daypack beside me. The wet drops feel cool against my bare legs, arms, and shoulders. It’s a spit of water, dry almost as fast as it lands on hot rock. But the swallows are gone as soon as it starts. It lasts four minutes. Breezes return. The swallows come back after the bugs. And the bugs come back after me.

I drive to Grand View Point Overlook and take the easy 1-mile hike to the southmost outcropping for more amazing views of the river-carved landscape. I finish in the early afternoon with a swing by Mesa Arch, where I climb on top of the arch and stare down into a canyon hundreds of feet deep beneath me (but not for very long).

The road to Canyonlands park entrance. This area is still used for cattle grazing, if the cattle grates and signs are any indication.

Part of trail to Murphy Point.

Lizard tracks.

“Don’t Bust the Crust” is the desert slogan and plea to stay on the trails. Crust is a living network of bacteria that takes up to 200 years to grow a fraction of an inch. It plays a vital role in the water retention, nutrient exchange, and survival of the entire desert ecosystem.

A closer look at crust.

Trail-defining branches help keep feet from straying onto crust.

Desert still life.

Raindrop prints.

At a stop on the trail.

The world is an exciting place from a cliff edge.

A piece-it-together-yourself panorama shot. View to the left. The Green River is just visible snaking in that canyon basin. The Colorado is on the other (east) side of this peninsular plateau. The rivers meet south of Grand View Point and continue on as the Colorado.

View to center.

View to the right.

Near the end of line at Murphy Point. Note the stone cairns that mark the trail.

I forget what this formation is called, but it’s visible from a lot of places. Here from Murphy Point...

...and here, closer, from Grand View Point.

At Grand View Point, looking southeast.

And southwest.

I was fascinated by the many ways water affected the rock. Everywhere I looked was sculpture.

One scraggly hanger-on.

Sandstone seems to invite more than water to carve it.

Lichen does some weird things.

Trees will grow anywhere, even on a troll’s face.

Footprints to Mesa Arch.

The arch.

A view through Mesa.

On top of Mesa Arch. It’s not nearly as scary to climb as it looks.

Boots on the Arches

As most of us know from National Geographic and Time-LIFE coffee table books, the bulk of Utah is ancient rock weathered into arches and canyons. Eroded rock explored as caverns and corridors and mesas. Rock transformed by wind and water into needles and dollops of frosting.

The stand-by must-sees of Arches National Park, like the highlights of so many national parks, have been photographed to death by far better photographers than I with my little Pocket PC, Perry. Balanced Rock. Courthouse Towers. Windows Arches. Delicate Arch (Utah’s unofficial state image). This park is both popular and very, very crowded at these and other famous pullouts.

So today I went to the northmost end of the area, Devil’s Garden, where fewer people go because you have to really do some hiking to get to the arches in this area. And even I didn’t make it to the farthest ones.

The trail itself was the fun part of this hike. Finding and following stone cairns (small rock piles) to keep on track. Walking the top of a high rock fin (the ridgeline of those “walls” that stack next to each other like pages in a book). Crawling into an arch hole at Double O to discover the most amazing cooling breeze to make the hot trek worthwhile.

This park is intimate because you can walk around and through most of the arches. It’s also a bit distancing because of the many miles you must drive to get to each area. But, really, at the end of the day, it’s all about a bunch of people flocking to see a bunch of holes in a bunch of rocks. And I was right in line with them.

Above: Pine Tree Arch; I have no idea why it's called that, except that there was a 6' pine tree by its sign.

I dubbed this one The Prow.

Clamshells? Whipped cream? Your call.

Everywhere a photo op!

A surprisingly photo-friendly lizard.

A fin between two walls (I nearly walked off the end of this one...oops, not on trail!).

Partition Arch.

Rock fin ahead (note tiny people on top).

On trail.

This one's ready for Wile E. Coyote to send over the cliff.

Double O Arch.

A zippy visitor at Double O.

Curious chipmunk.

Not on trail, but a beautiful detour.

View from a fin.

A tree grows through it.

March of the Elephants (they really do look like petrified pachyderms).

The infamous Three Gossips.

Tomorrow to Canyonlands NP.