Devil's Garden Trail - Arches National Park

Today we headed back to Arches National Park and drove to the end of the paved roadway to the trailhead for Devil's Garden Trail.  This is another one of the "Best Day Hikes in National Parks" by the National Geographic Society.  The initial section of the trail is wide and well-used to the area where Landscape Arch looms.  In September, 1991, a large section of the arch fell dumping 181 tons of rock

fell ... fortunately no one was injured ... but, it does appear as if this arch may not last much longer as an arch ...

The next section of the trail was steep and strenuous rock scrambling up a sandstone fin strewn with boulders ... my acrophobia left me with adrenaline running and backing up down the trail ... too steep for me.  Paul suggested using the primitive trail which circumvented the steep scramble ... we backtracked and took the primitive trail.  It added an additional mile to our trip and, frankly it involved significant rock scrambling and traveling along the tops of the sandstone fins ... the longer we traveled, the easier it became as we traveled the rocky slopes.

Finally arriving at the Double O Arch ... the smaller O is at the bottom of the larger O ...

We decided to return via the main trail (despite the heights) and were able to see Black Arch and Panorama Arch ...

The trip down the steepest section was accomplished by following in Paul's footsteps (avoiding looking down or ahead) and a final scoot down on my butt to get down the steepest section ... not pretty, not graceful, but I made it down the steepest section and we ended a truly lovely hike.

Even added some new flowers to our spring time floral collection ...

And, the end of every hike comes the data ...

Over 2,000 arches in Arches National Park ... we only visited a few ... and we were both struck by how captivating these "holes" in the rocks were ... basically holes in the rocks created by erosion and will continue to be destroyed ... but, they were enchanting as "windows" on an amazing landscape.