Big View to Big Arch

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I drove out of Moab the way I came in, heading northwest.

Just beyond town limits, I crossed something I didn’t notice in the dark, the Colorado River.

Since I’m upstream of Glen Canyon Dam (see Long, Empty, Glorious Southwest), the river looks the way a desert river should, muddy brown from silt.

Red cliffs appear on all sides.

Moab was founded here because it’s the only safe crossing spot for hundreds of miles.

Dead Horse Point State Park

Past the river, the road enters the pair of slip faults from yesterday.

It eventually encounters a lonely road junction at the entrance to a canyon to the east.

The only thing here is a big sign discussing Canyonlands National Park.

The road goes to another of the park’s four districts, the Island in the Sky.

It’s a huge mesa located on the plateau above the slip fault.

The sights are great, and many people go there.

Fewer know that the same road goes to another set of viewpoints, some of the most dramatic in Utah.





The side road heads into the canyon, all red sandstone.

It soon reaches the end and climbs through a series of switchbacks.

The road then tops the plateau, with long views in all directions.

To the northeast, a long red ridge appears with a series of big alcoves.

The La Sal Mountains appear to the southwest with a long ridge of broken red rocks in front.

The rest is flat scrub stretching to the horizon.

Compared to what comes next, this view is just an appetizer.

Sadly, the highway has no safe places to pull over and take a picture of any of it, until the parking lot for a jeep trail.





Further along, the highway forks.

Straight ahead goes to Canyonlands.

The branch to the left has a sign stating Dead Horse Point State Park.

People who want stupendous views and lots of people continue straight.

Those who want possibly even better views and fewer crowds turn left to Dead Horse.

The park is Utah’s most popular, so it still sees plenty of people, but not what Canyonlands gets.

I turned toward Dead Horse.

The road crosses empty desert scrub with scattered slickrock mounds until it reaches the entrance station, and then the visitor’s center.

The change in scenery is abrupt, as the visitor’s center sits on the edge of an eight hundred foot cliff.





The view from here shows a steep canyon leading to a wide gorge carved directly into red sandstone.

The source of the carving, the Colorado River, twists through the bottom.

A maze of twisty little canyons appears on either side of the river.

A few buttes poke up here and there.

Behind them sits the ridge of red rocky knobs seen earlier, which has the strange name ‘Behind the Rocks’.

That leads to the La Sal Mountains.

Only one thing mars the incredible scenery, unnaturally blue ponds near the river.

They are evaporation ponds for a potash plant.





Believe it or not, that view is also just an appetizer.

The road crosses more desert plateau, now with some pine trees.

It reaches a narrow neck of land that appears barely wider than the road where two canyons almost touch.

For obvious reasons, most people don’t know what the surrounding land looks like here.

Thankfully, the crossing is over quickly and the mesa widens out.

The road then passes some picnic areas and ends at a large parking lot.





A paved trail leads from the parking lot to the point, revealing one of the most jaw dropping views in Utah.

Dead Horse Point sits at the northeastern corner of the huge complex of canyons known as the Canyonlands, much of which is protected by the national park of the same name.

The view covers a big part of it, plus the land to the east beyond Moab.

A big canyon comes in from the left, with a plateau halfway down, the Colorado River.

It passes through a number of entrenched meanders (see Incredible Foliage and a Big Red Fold), including a long dramatic one near the point.

A smaller dry canyon with steep red walls sits on the right, Shafer Canyon, with the Island In the Sky Mesa beyond it.

The two canyons join and the river twists to the horizon past uncountable canyons.

One of them in the far distance is larger than the others, the Green River.

The rocky knobs of Behind The Rocks appear behind the canyon on the far left, with the La Sal Mountains behind them.





Sadly, the potash ponds appear in this view too.

A thin dirt track runs from the ponds across the plateau within the canyon, ultimately entering the canyon on the right.

I heard the jeeps on the track.

Like Bryce Canyon (see Hoodoo: a Weird Name for Weird Rocks), the area has so little ambient noise that any sound carries a long way.





The viewpoint is amazing, but also attracts people.

The way to have the view to myself (mostly) is to hike.

A trail loops around the edge of the mesa back to the neck the road crossed.

It’s nearly flat and mostly crosses rocks.

The rocks are covered in pine trees and bushes.

Like most in the area, it’s marked only with cairns, which are really hard to find.

Hikers must do so, because all soil here is covered in the black mounds of cryptobiotic crust (see Large Rocks With Holes).

The reward is frequent overlooks into the canyons, with no company and no guardrails!





Heading counterclockwise, the viewpoints first show Behind the Rocks and the La Sal Mountains.

Parts also show parts of the peninsula, with steep drop-offs just beyond the edge.

The canyons here are stark: steep walls, broken rock, multiple rock layers, and no vegetation whatsoever.

The earth looks ripped apart.





At one point, a side trail goes along the edge of a cliff.

It’s protected by a stone wall.

The end reveals a sweeping view of Behind the Rocks across the Colorado, plus something a little frightening.

The left side shows the neck the road crosses.

It’s a cousin of the trail to Angel’s Landing (see To Reach Where Angels Land, Master Fear), a narrow ribbon of rock next to two tall vertical cliffs.





After the viewpoint, the path continues around the peninsula top, inevitably growing closer to the neck.

The cairns finally swing around a little dome, and there it is.

On foot, I can see that the neck is actually about two yards wider than the road.

The road has big rocks on either side to act as safety barriers.

After that, two canyons drop steeply down on either side, with long views painfully close.





An old style wooden fence, made of tree branches, appears on either side of the road at the narrowest part of the neck.

It’s a modern reproduction of how the point got its name.

In the early days of settlement, wild horses grazed on the plateau.

Cowboys rounded them up and confined them on the point in the late 1800s.

The fence across the narrow neck made the point a big natural corral.

The cowboys then took the horses they wanted and left the rest to wander off on their own.

The point has no water source, so many of the horses left behind soon weren’t horses any longer.





Officially, the trail crosses the neck near the road.

This involves walking on sand about a foot from a drop-off with no handholds.

For obvious reasons, most hikers decide to hike this stretch on the road instead.

Afterward, the trail heads left over more bare rock ledges.

It finally reaches Meander Overlook, which has an even better view of the Colorado meanders than Dead Horse Point.

A thin butte sits on the right, another sits in the middle of the Colorado curve, and the canyonlands stretch to seeming infinity beyond.





The path continues around the mesa, ultimately reaching the visitor’s center.

This requires a hike of over five miles, so I turned around.

After the neck, the trail splits.

I took the right branch to continue around the canyon edge.

The cairns for this branch were really hard to find at the junction.

The path first leads to an overlook of the other canyon that leads to the neck.

Like its counterpart on the other side, it’s composed of layered red rock, and very steep.





After that view, the path crosses over lots of sandstone outcrops.

For some reason, cairns a few and hard to spot during this stretch, making it all the more important to walk on the rocks instead of the cryptobiotic crust between them.

It passed some more overlooks, mostly of the dry canyon and the huge mesa on the far side.

It then arrived at a paved area with benches.

This overlooks the Colorado meander, giving a view similar to Meander Point.

The paved trail led back to Dead Horse Point itself, and the hike is over.





I had lunch today at the Moab Diner.

The food was classic American comfort food, with a good milkshake.

The prices are low too, which is important in a tourist town.

The diner has pictures of various Moab landmarks on the walls, including a striking one of a small plane flying under an enormous natural arch.



After lunch, I went to the local visitors’ center to get ideas for hikes.

The people who work here are incredibly helpful; they had plenty.

The counter person then asked “How about a natural arch so big someone flew a plane under it?”

Potash Road

The arch in question, Corona Arch, is located in a canyon along the Colorado River.

Just past the river bridge, a narrow road branches off downstream.

It soon enters a low canyon with vertical red walls along the river and rocky knobs above.

The canyon is the inner gorge canyon I saw from Dead Horse Point earlier, and the roadway leads to the potash plant.

Trucks use this route regularly, so drive carefully.





Quickly, the road is sandwiched between the canyon wall and the river.

Vertical walls of red sandstone tower above.

At this point, the highway passes something odd, signs for pedestrians in the road next to a long series of pullouts.

When I saw a truck in one of the pullouts I had my answer to the mystery.

These cliffs are a favorite of local rock climbers, and the only place to set safety ropes is on the edge of the road.





Next, it passes a dirt road climbing into a steep ravine on the right.

The road is signed “dinosaur tracks.”

The steep road quickly ends in a parking lot overlooking the main canyon.

Part of the wall has crumbled here, leaving a slide of flat slabs down to the river.

A sign at the parking lot shows how to find two dinosaur footprints near the edge of one of the slabs high up the wall.

They are subtle enough that I never would have noticed them without aid.

The dinosaur made small three-toed tracks in mud, which later hardened into the rock.





Further along, the river and canyon curves to the left, providing a fantastic vista.

A big picnic area sits inside the curve.

An obvious canyon branches away to the right, Bootlegger Canyon.

It contains the arch.





Before hiking to it, I drove down the road a ways to see an arch on the other end of the scale, Jug Handle Arch.

The road passes right by a rock fin.

A thin slab of it no wider than a foot split away from the surface just enough to qualify as an arch.

The gap is so thin that daylight only appears in it from the right angle, otherwise it looks like just another rock slab.

Corona won’t have that issue.

Corona Arch Trail

Back at the picnic area, another dirt road heads into the side canyon.

It quickly ends at a large parking lot.

The trail starts here.

It climbs the canyon wall through a series of steep switchbacks, with a glorious view of the Colorado River and the sandstone knobs behind it.

It then reaches something unexpected, a railroad track.

The track runs from the potash plant up Bootlegger Canyon to a long tunnel.





After crossing the tracks, the trail enters a steep wash.

A long sandstone wall rises in the distance containing a number of large alcoves.

One on the far right extends vertically into the rock.

It’s another arch, Pinto Arch.

The path climbs steeply through the wash as it narrows, finally arriving on the sandstone shelf above.

The path continues to follow the wash through a huge bowl covered in desert scrub, surrounded by rounded sandstone walls.

Most contain alcoves, but no arches.





After much work, the trail gets close to the sandstone wall on the far side of the bowl.

At this point, another sandstone cliff appears in the distance.

This one contains a huge alcove.

The trail follows the wall to the end of the bowl.

It crests a rise revealing a big stretch of slickrock, a rise between the bowl and Bootlegger Canyon.

The cliff with the alcove sits on the far side.





At this point, the path disappears.

The only markings of where to go next are tiny cairns.

They lead across the slickrock to a point where it starts to tilt into the canyon, with the railroad below.

Rounded sandstone walls, many with small alcoves, tower above the canyon.

The slickrock tilts some more.

The path reaches a cable strung across rock that slants into the canyon.

After Angel’s Landing, crossing this was easy.





On the far side, the path reaches a rock shelf.

It shows the canyon and the rounded sandstone above.

Still no arch, though.

The rock beyond is tilted, and then a vertical drop.

I stopped to drink water here, and dropped one of my bottles!

It rolled down that tilted rock, and I thought it would be lost forever.

Instead, it hit a rock and stopped; that was close.





On the shelf, previous hikers have covered an old log with hundreds of little rocks.

It now looks like a long rocky wall.

Some of the rocks are precisely balanced, like the rock piles from Bryce Canyon.





After the log the rock shelf rounds a corner into the canyon, and steadily narrows until it becomes two feet wide.

The drop beyond is rather steep.

It disappears entirely at a side canyon.

This canyon is short.

A big vertical cliff appears on the far side, containing two arches.

The one on the left is at the top and the hole is almost vertical.

It’s called Bowtie Arch.

The right arch is a long and thick ribbon of sandstone stretching from the top of the wall to the shelf below.

This is Corona Arch, the third largest in the world.

(I saw the largest, Landscape, yesterday. The second largest is Kolob Arch, deep in the backcountry near Zion Canyon).





The trail continues, although anyone afraid of heights should turn around.

The only way forward is to climb the side of canyon to an obvious shelf above.

Someone blasted steps into the rocks.

Each one is about wide enough for a boot.

Since they are sandstone, they are heavily eroded.

A cable runs up the wall next to the steps for balance aid.

Falling will be quite painful, if not fatal.

I scrambled up slowly, one step at a time.

That led to a scramble over sandstone slabs, and then a climb over an eight foot ledge on a rickety ladder.

After this, the trail flattens out.





On the rock shelf, it wraps around the canyon.

It has long views of the drop into the canyon throughout, along with the two arches on the far wall.

The edge is rounded, so it looks more dangerous than it really is.

Finally, it reaches the head of the side canyon.

It’s directly under Bowtie Arch.

A big alcove appears under the rock shelf at this point.

More importantly, a line of algae runs from the side canyon to underneath Bowtie Arch.

This means that the arch crosses a watercourse, so it’s technically a bridge.





From Bowtie, Corona Arch dominates the view in the distance.

Hiking toward it, the arch just grows and grows.

It’s a thick arc of stone extruding directly from the sandstone wall.

Landscape Arch is much longer, but this arch is higher and much thicker.

From this angle, the source of its other name, Little Rainbow Bridge, should be obvious.

The trail ends directly under the arch.

Unlike Landscape Arch, this one is thick enough to safely walk under.





The trail ends at the arch, so the only way out is the way I came in.

While hiking the canyon, I noticed another faint rustling noise.

Thanks to my experience in Horseshoe Canyon (see Indiana Jones Meets Southern Utah) I suspected quickly what it was.

Speaking normally showed that Greek nymph Echo lives here too, thanks to the smooth canyon walls, although not as dramatically as Horseshoe.





I ate dinner at a spot recommended by my host, Buck’s Grill House.

It looks like a hunting lodge outside and a log cabin within.

The look should give away that they specialize in game.

Any type of meat people want, they probably serve it.

Some of it was quite expensive.

After all the repetitive comfort food in much of southern Utah, this was a welcome change.

My meal was pricy and very good.

Moab is by far the most interesting community south of Salt Lake City, and places like this are part of the reason why.

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Photos

Deadhorse Point!
Colorado River and the Canyonlands from Deadhorse Point

Canyonlands
Closeup of the heart of the Canyonlands from Deadhorse Point.

La Sal Mountains
Behind the Rocks and the La Sal Mountains, from the Deadhorse Point visitors' center

Colorado Meander
Entrenched Meander of the Colorado River, from Deadhorse Point

The neck
View of the neck connecting Dead Horse Point to the rest of the mesa. Its just as steep on the other side

Schafer Canyon
View of a branch of Schafer Canyon from the neck, with Island in the Sky behind it.

Cliff Walk
Walking the cliff top trail near Deadhorse Point

Dinosaur Tracks
The dinosaur tracks on a rock slab along the Potash Road

Jug Handle Arch
One of the smallest official natural arches in Utah

Colorado Canyon.
View of the Colorado River canyon from the trail to Corona Arch. Note the flat line on the center right, the potash railroad.

Slickrock bowl
Huge bowl of slickrock on the way to Bootlegger Canyon. Pinto Arch is on the far left.

Rocky log
Log absolutely covered in rocks by hikers

Cable climb
The trail goes directly up this cliff

Corona and Bowtie Arches
Canyon wall with Bowtie (left alcove) and Corona Arches (right)

Corona Arch
Corona Arch, the third largest natural arch in the world