ARCHES AND DEAD HORSE POINT

As always, you can view the photographic narrative for this story below. What is a photographic narrative?

On our first full day in Moab, we first set out to explore Arches National Park. The winter weather system that had now become the theme of this trip had followed us to Moab, and we woke up to overcast skies and fog. As we drove into the park, following the bends in the road and keeping track of those bends on the national park map to tell where we were, the fog made viewing the landmarks we passed along the way impossible as we drove past the signs marking their locations. But rather than pulling off to get closer, we continued deeper into the park to our planned first destination: Delicate Arch. This is probably the most famous of all the iconic rock features in Arches National Park, so we wanted to get there early before it became overcrowded. As we drove closer to the trailhead we lost elevation giving us a break from the fog and improving visibility. After pulling into the relatively empty parking lot, we set out on a short trek up into the rocks until we reached Delicate Arch. And at that time in the morning, there were only two other people there, giving us the opportunity to get up close and personal with the arch without waiting in any lines (a concept I still find ridiculous when visiting national parks, where the goal –at least for me– is getting away from crowds). 

After Delicate Arch we drove to the parking area for Landscape Arch and again set out toward the desired rock feature. This time, however, the trail was completely snow covered, and as we hiked deeper away from the road, the snowfall continually increased. After viewing the arch, it was obvious that the weather wasn’t exactly cooperating, so we packed up and headed back to Moab for some dinner. 

The next morning we awoke  with plans to head back to Arches to “finish” our visit, cut short the day prior by weather. However, upon arriving at the entrance a large orange flashing roadside sign said “Arches Closed”. Snowfall blanketed the access road we’d used yesterday and a Ranger looked out at us sipping coffee in his government issued truck. This forced a pivot in our agenda. Later in the day we’d planned to visit Canyonlands National Park, so we simply moved this up in the agenda. Learning from our first closure encounter, we checked the Canyonlands website and were a bit discouraged to see that it too was closed due to the overnight snowfall. However, the state park immediately adjacent to Canyonlands National Park, Dead Horse Point State Park, was open to the public. The roads to the state park, managed by the state rather than a federal agency, had been cleared by the department of transportation snow plows, whereas the National Parks were left to fend for themselves with regard to snow clearance. So off to Dead Horse Point State Park we went, adventuring over the snowy and icy roads in the go-anywhere Chevy Cruze. We pulled into the empty parking lot and perused the visitors center museum. On the second floor was a balcony overlooking the small cliffside area where there was no doubt a lookout over the canyon below. However, the path to that lookout was a bit ambiguous now residing under about a foot of snow. I trudged down from the second floor and started off toward the canyon’s edge following what I thought was the smoothest surface snow, surmising that this smoothness resulted from having collected atop an underlying paved path. The first time I postholed and felt my foot land solidly on an asphalt surface, I was proven correct and continued out toward the staggering views of the canyons below. 

After a bit of time trekking through the snow at the canyon’s edge at Dead Horse Point State Park, we headed back to Arches, which had in the meantime opened to the public. And once there, we spent the rest of the day under cloudless skies exploring Double Arch, Balanced Rock, Broken Arch, Turret Arch, and many of the other famous rock features we’d missed the day before.