Time Arches On

Someone said, “It’s what we’ve done that makes us who we are.” We think it was Jim Croce. And on birthday weekend, we’re shaking up time in a bottle and letting it rip!

Arches National Park was the last of the Mighty Five on our 2019 Utah Spring Tour. We went from Z to A – Zion to Bryce, Capitol Reef to Canyonlands and the yesterday, the Arches to witness the product of nature’s forces of erosion, water, gravity and time.

Since we were doing Arches in a day, Ranger Dan at the Visitor Center recommended we drive 18 miles to Devil’s Playground, grab one of the few RV parking spots and hike to the Double O. En route we could see iconic structures like Park Avenue, Balanced Rock and Delicate Arch while making a few scenic pullovers for gawking.

When you get to Landscape Arch, the longest natural arch in the world at 303 feet, you can order the Double O hike straight up or the hard way. We took the hard way – advertised as twice as long and difficult with rock scramble. After qualifying for extreme UTV, we should certainly be ready for this.

The first 4 miles were tame, hiking on a well marked dirt trail bordered by massive rock formations, flowering prickly pears and leaf covered trees. Fun and fabulous! The temp climbed with us as we shed layers and moved into more challenging bouldering. Then came the dreaded pass.

Like Geico says, so easy a middle schooler can do it. In the picture it doesn’t look that bad. We watched more than a dozen people scale up and down – a man with a knee brace, an elderly woman with cane, 100 tweenagers. Sheri tried and froze, certain she would fall to her death. In between her profuse sobbing and professing profound love for Eric, he lovingly helped her off the ledge and they retraced 4 miles to do Double O straight up. And straight up it was.

The march to the arch was paved in slickrock. We followed the conga line to the break where people where snapping photos of a disappointing Double O. The lady in the pink shirt ahead of us who, in her best broken English said, “Really? All that work for this?”

We laughed together, noting that it looked more like a capital O and a little o, but overall, it was a fake O. Turning back we noted that we had not hiked 4 miles, but a mere 2.5, perhaps there was something more ahead. Validated by a sign, we kept going.

And going

And going

Until an hour later when we found Double O. And the guy with the knee brace and the lady with the cane and the 100 middle schoolers. They were all happy to see us, astonished that we abandoned the pass, backtracked, climbed and met back up at the same time. The lady in the pink shirt had had enough and Sheri stopped feeling bad that she couldn’t muster the courage and celebrated the 24,000 steps. You can’t really see her, but she’s standing in the little O with two big thumbs up.

We had been hiking 6 hours and we were tired, but there were blogs to post and BLM campsites to find. We admired the scenery on the 23 miles back to Moab, where we uploaded posts, backed up iPhones and researched camping near the Needles region of Canyonlands, 80 miles up the road. Not satisfied with the Island in the Sky experience, we decided to give Needles the chance to secure Canyonlands spot in the Mighty 5 and not be relegated to a “plus 1.”

Cause in the game of life who wants to be a “plus 1?”