I drove down to Arches Nat'l Park today, started off at 5 AM and arrived at 9. Unfortunately, my hike took longer than expected, as I lost the trail at some point -- even though the trail was marked as "difficult", I simply can't believe that the national park administration expect one to climb a wall which would need either mountaineering equipment or take a freeclimber to succeed... I suspect that some prankster placed additional trail markers (a small pile of rocks) to confuse hikers. The folks coming from that direction, Frenchmen BTW, at least didn't know anything about three meter high walls of rock... Not wanting to waste another hour searching for the right directions I went back and tried a normal trail instead.
But I wouldn't have expected the normal trails being that difficult. They start as paved way, then gravel, then sandbox, then -- sandstone rocks. To the left: eight meter down. To the right: 100 meter down. No rails. Just the bare fin of the mountain. The right thing for people with height anxiety like me. Luckily, sandstone gives excellent grip and I have good shoes.
Even though the trail is quite dangerous, lots of people up there. The kind of people you don't want to meet, young American couples, families with countless kids... As much as I hate family pictures (don't want to call that photography), I can understand that others value them. But blocking the view on an arch for fucking twenty minutes just for some stupid family album snapshot goes too far. I don't want to have stupid squeeking blond white trash on my photographs.
But apart from this, and getting sand blasted by the wind (guess how those famous rock formations came into existence...), and me wanting to walk much faster than healthy... Arches is definately on my "have to visit again" list. Extremely scenic, totally different vegetation from the other desert national parks I've been to.
Right now I'm sitting in an overpriced motel in Moab -- everything else is booked out. I managed to negotiate a $ 10 lower price, but with $ 60 it is still too expensive. Luckily, it's just one night, tomorrow I'll drive to Canyonlands Nat'l Park and along some scenic routes.
BTW, the WLAN here has the SSID "NeedToSecureRouter".
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timduru.livejournal.com 18 years, 8 months ago
yeah arches need more fursuiters instead of families ;)
Link | Replysakayra.livejournal.com 18 years, 8 months ago
Ah, memories! Makes me bring out the map...
So, you went out all the way to Double O? I never got near those trails; after spending all the day in the front parts of the park, it was getting dark when I came to Landscape Arch. Snowy too, even without high anxiety I wouldn't have tried a "difficult" path there. "Some exposure to heights", riiiight ;-)
The sunset at Fiery Furnace was gorgeous, as was the star sky at La Sal after sunset, when all the people were gone and just the light from Moab was shining at the horizon... Love the place.
-- Cairyn --
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