That was a bad attempt at a joke 🙂īefore government officials had their say in the matter, locals gave it fun nicknames like “Cowboy’s Chaps” and “Schoolmarm’s Bloomers” … and yeah … it kinda does look like both of those things. As a fan of design and photography, I think a better pair of names for these formations would have been Landscape Arch and Portrait Arch. Having seen the former just the day before, I definitely understand how that rumour came to be. A rumour persists that “Landscape Arch” and Delicate Arch had their names accidentally swapped by an errant surveyor. It’s not at all clear why “Delicate Arch” has the name it does, aside from the fact that any free-standing sandstone arch must be necessarily “delicate” in a geological sense. Carved stone steps along the trail to Delicate Arch. On the way, you pass the oft-neglected “Twisted Donut Arch” which itself would make an excellent payoff for a hike in pretty much any other state. The trail then traverses along an awesome “sidewalk” carved out of a cliff face. The final stretch of trail levels out after some gorgeous stone steps carved directly into the red sandstone. The dawn’s early light en route to Delicate Arch at sunrise. The sky grew lighter, and a crescent moon hung just above the horizon. The trail alternated between sandy desert path, through scrub brush, and bare slick rock. The ascent grew a bit steeper as I approach the high, rocky ridge upon which Delicate Arch holds court. Despite being only 5 am, the trail already had a decent amount of traffic! Upwards towards the arch I could see the trail ahead of and behind me, dotted with a couple dozen other headlamps. I didn’t mind this so much it allowed my eyes to still take in all the stars, along with the faint glow of dawn at the horizon. My headlamp was low on battery, providing a somewhat feeble glow to illuminate my immediate path. Hikers with headlamps make their ascent to Delicate Arch. It also provides for some amazing mood lighting. But a sunrise or sunset hike avoids both these pitfalls for anyone with a headlamp and a small sense of adventure. It also features little to no shade along its steady ascent. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this hike gets mobbed during the daytime. But this hike provides the only safe route for getting up close and personal with the park’s largest free-standing arch. You can view the famous formation from a distance at a point further down the roadway. The hike follows a worn path with small cairns during sections traversing smooth rock. The ascent from Wolfe Ranch to Delicate Arch clocks in at just over 1.5 miles with a vertical rise of roughly 500 feet. Clouds thinly veil a crescent moon as I begin my hike to see Delicate Arch at sunrise. Overhead I saw a vast canvas of stars, occasionally blacked out by one of the park’s hulking sandstone monoliths.Ībout 20 minutes in, I arrived at the Wolfe Ranch parking area: the point of departure for ascents to Delicate Arch. I ascended the switchbacks of the park roadway onto the high plateau of its expansive interior.
And so I found myself breezing past a shuttered entrance booth at Arches National Park around 4:30 in the morning. But in Moab, Utah, the early bird catches brisk hikes to incredible sunrises-and way fewer crowds. They say the early bird catches the worm.
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