Pullin' Chocks

The Iconic Delicate Arch and bonus of Double Arch

We thought there were better arches than Delicate Arch... until we saw it in person. Delicate Arch is depicted all over on businesses associated with Moab and Utah. The Utah automobile plates even have the Delicate Arch image on them. Now we understand why. When we saw pretty much every other arch, they are all surrounded or encompassed by other rocks, which is nice.... but it detracts from the arch itself. Not so with Delicate Arch. Delicate Arch stands alone. Alone in its perfect essence of itself as an Arch. Not only does it stand starkly alone, it is placed in a natural theater. It stands on its own raised pedestal, the ground around it sinking into a bowl, then rising again parabolically with seating for the mortal observer, as if in a natural theater. We hope it translates in pictures for you.

An unidentified arch seen on the hike to Delicate Arch.

We arrived at the trail-head. It was a fairly long hike because almost half of it was uphill. It is a 3 mile round trip, but the elevation changes 500 feet along that route. The going up takes a lot of energy, and the coming down is hard on the knees. The hike starts out innocently enough with a nice paved path. Do you see the tan color at the top? That is an enormous rock that slopes up hill almost forever...

At the steepest point the park service carved nice steps into the rock. It's a good thing that Steve has his walking stick today!

Keep on going, just 2 or 3 days to go.... up, up, and up, one step at a time.

Parking Lot or Trail... hmmmm very tempting, our chance to go back....

This rock goes on forever... OK you get the idea.

Finally into some different and less uphill terrain.

Beautiful scenery along the way...

We follow the line of hikers around that ledge. We can see the Buttonhole Arch from here, we must be getting close...

But wait, first a surprise along the way! A little window arch... it looks like we could get up there for a closer look.

So Mountain Goat Steve climbs up, as Gari gets the evidence from below....

What does Steve see? Oh my gosh, Delicate Arch! It is magnificent!

Gari comes up, but it's too late, the crowd has seen what we have done and now everyone is coming up to this magical spot! Gari retreats from the throng!

After a few minutes the excitement waned and we were able to get a Hero Shot of Gari in the little window arch.

Time to come down from the window and walk around the corner and see Delicate Arch up close.

Gari leans into the narrow ledge that you have to walk around to get to Delicate Arch.

It was a bit windy up there and a long way down!

We had a nice view of Buttonhole Arch across the canyon from the ledge path.

Almost to the corner and the crowd backs up a bit.

Turn the corner and BOOM there is the Delicate Arch in all its glory!

Gari stands in front of Delicate Arch.

All alone and standing tall.

Steve stands under the arch and provides size perspective.

Steve stands back to get a side shot of the arch.

Side view. That one leg does look a bit delicate. The ground really drops away fast at the backside of the arch.

Gari pauses by a weathered and interesting cedar on the trek back to the truck.

Wait, just one last shot of Delicate Arch.... nothing but arch!

Next stop Double Arch. We found a parking spot on the opposite side of the parking loop from the trail-head. It is most always a challenge parking Pepé, because he measures in at 96" wide (with the mirrors folded in) and 22 ft long. Not just any standard automobile parking spot will do. No problem though, we like to walk, and we walked over the parking loop hill to the trail-head on a nice park constructed hiking path.

Gari pauses at the top of the loop trail. The arch behind Gari looks small from here but believe me it was a big one up close.

This is a closer shot of Turret Arch, see the tiny people underneath?

OK back to the Double Arch trail; as soon as we started a nice local Mormon couple stopped us and insisted that they take a picture of the two of us together, so we let them. Thank you nice people!