Arches National Park March 2022

We are walking!

We hopped across the Atlantic from Glasgow to Denver and holed up in the University and all-round outdoorsy town of Boulder, Colorado, for two nights. Here we shopped for hiking food for 17 days and packed two boxes to send forward with supplies: one to Caleb at Needles Outpost just outside Canyonlands National Park and one to the post office in Hanksville Utah. We will hopefully meet those boxes again!

Winter was still lingering in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains near Boulder. Paths amongst trees held compacted old snow and the vegetation was parched. We went for a walk around the Flat Irons (rock formations above the town) in bright sunshine and cold clear air.

In the afternoon of the second day we returned the hire car at Denver airport: feet only from now on! A 45 minute flight in a bus size plane took us over the Rockies to Moab airport with one rucksack each, all our belongings within and 3 days food.

We walked from the desert airport across Highway 191 and towards the Klondike bluffs, a wall of red rock formations at the edge of Arches National Park. A couple of hours on but still outside the park, we made our first camp, snowy hills to the East in the glow of the setting sun, the warm air juniper scented and the distant hum of unfeasibly large American trucks..we were back!!!

Now, three days later, we have seen many rock arches, tiptoed over prickly balls of Russian thistle (a sort of angry tumble weed with spikes that gets blown around where it is flat), been checked out by Ravens as a potential source of titbits more than once, exclaimed at the sight of lizards on the rock, pointed out interesting paw prints in the sand to each other (coyote, beaver), seen one live and one dead jack rabbit, drunk water from a stream, crossed the same stream over and over again, watched the sun rise, shared a canyon with a flock a turkeys for the night, found some marvellous petroglyphs and pictographs in insanely scenic places and exclaimed at every new flower that has opened around us as spring is slowly unfurling (not many leaves on the trees here yet either).

Now we are having our first town stop in Moab, another outdoorsy place. To our great delight it has been raining last night and today which will fill the rock holes, boost the streams and enliven the springs we depend on for water as we hike on along the mighty Colorado from here.

Hiker Notes

Route We had plenty of time to spend in Arches NP to align with our permits for the next section so took a longer indirect more scenic route in parts than the Hayduke. We walked from Moab Canyonlands Airport, across H191 to Tower Arch, then NE across Salt Valley to the Devils Garden, back SW across salt Valley following the pipeline to the Hayduke and Courthouse Wash.

Willow Springs 03/27/22- Good pools before and small flow around the junction with Willow Springs.

Upper Courthouse Wash 03/27/22- Good flow down to Sevenmile Canyon then dry to near the road. We had a fair bit of bushwhacking after Sevenmile but may not have found the best route.

This year we followed the Hayduke route down Upper Courthouse Wash as opposed to 2014 where we took an another route described by Nic Barth ‘Arches Slickrock Alternate’ (green on the map). This slickrock line was way more enjoyable and scenic in my opinion – but did involve some Class 4 downclimbing down into the canyon.

Lower Courthouse Wash 03/27/22- Pretty mellow hiking but with more beaver activity this time than we saw in 2014.