Revenge of the Muddy Goblins (1/2) December 29 - 30, 2001 On Arches disappearing into clouds, spousal submissiveness, and a petrified vortex (first part of two).

	Delicate Arch classic picture from Arches National Park

Around Christmas, I sadly watched the rainy skies, jumped over puddles in the pavement, and wondered how it would feel to be overwhelmed by lots and lots of snow. At home, I griped about it, and demanded that there be snow. I could not have it any other way -- during our four-day holiday, we had to leave the warm coast of California, and drive into the wild inland.

	Care to enter an enchanted castle? This is Double Arch in a winter cloud

Last year, we liked it at Arches, and now we did not want to risk anything (just like with our trip to Joshua Tree on Thanksgiving): we reserved a room (something we rarely do) at one of the hotels in Moab, UT, that sports a hot tub.

We started early on Friday, to bite off as much as possible from the thousand miles ahead of us. Overnighted in Tehachapi, a small town in a mountain pass of the same name, and had breakfast in a stylish hotel bar decorated with branding irons and ancient photograps of a famous railroad loop (trains would not overcome steep incline to the pass, so the engineers solved the problem by building tracks in a spiralling loop, going through a hill and around it).

	Double Arch closeup To compare scales: Sid is standing at the bottom of the arch. You can see him only on the larger picture, though.

We had relied on a plan to have a late lunch at a casino (they are known to provide relatively cheap "all you can eat" buffets, hoping that customers will spend more money gambling than save by eating there), but to our disappointment, New Year's Eve seemed to have lured hordes of guests, casinos are full, and can cease to be attentive to customers' needs; no food was being offered at the time we came. Eventually we found a newly open Mexican restaurant in St. George. The food was not bad, but it had a "by the book" flavor -- no imagination, no individuality. What more, we induced a suppressed frown on a waitress when asking for an infernal potion - BEER. Well, Mormons. St. George is already in Utah, although just a stone's throw from the sinful Nevada, but the Church's influence can be felt. No alcoholic beverages here!

	Typical landscape in the park

And since it was already about six in the evening, and we still had to drive through most of Utah, we called the hotel to tell them we were coming for sure, just not knowing when (and they were puzzled -- we must be still deformed by the ugly Czech system where they demand to arrive by certain hour lest you lose your reservation). But it was good to know we had a bed waiting for us -- out of St. George, landscapes were nicely passing by on Highway 15, but then our windshield switched to "startrek screensaver mode" of flying snowflakes, and temperature (and our spirits) dropped. Sid threatened with snow closure of Highway 70, to which we had to turn, but was wrong. Still the weather worsened with increasing altitude, and so did the number of overturned and jackknifed bug rigs, accompanied by tow trucks.
In one spot, where our direction was led about 60 feet lower than the oposite direction of the freeway, I noticed a car on its side, lodged near the top of a slope that was the median. It was just a flash, unclear if there was any person there, or if anyone noticed it - it might not be visible from the upper side direction (Sid, who drove and paid attention to the road, did not notice it at all). We broke the law - crossed the median as soon as it was possible - and checked it out. Three people stood on the side of the road, claimed to be allright and to have called for help. They really looked in good shape and glad of it, so we did not hesitate to leave them to their fate. Our next ditched car was not far away -- number nine on the list -- two Mexicans who managed to bring their elderly Pontiac to a halt in deep snow inside a flat V-shape recess that was the median there (I finally realized why they make medians so wide, and why they shape them with a flat ditch in the middle - if it were not for this stripe, they would have ended going in the wrong direction, and eventually worse, out of the freeway, and out of control).
Our Mexicans were hard to deal with, for they knew no English. I halted a car going west and asked them if they could call a tow truck with their cell phone. They would, but had no cellular signal, so they went on, promising to tell someone once to come for the unfortunate travellers.

	Turret Arch The stairs in the front only look as if leading through the arch (forced perspective)

Back at our wagon, we congratulated ourselves to have an all wheel drive, and to be able to master the snowstorm. Near Eagle Canyon, we suddenly drove clear of clouds and snow, and entered an amazing, romantic landscape, illuminated by a full moon. Thanks to snow on the ground, one could see far, and we could not help but to go on a late-evening hike on a mesa overlooking a canyon. By roughly midnight we hit the sheets a our hotel in Moab. Sadly, our room was awfully cold and a heater made a terrible racket. We decided to sleep in our sleeping bags and weather the cold rather than getting warm but noisy.

	Vortex Delicate Arch stands on the far end of the vortex, sideways to our position, hardly recognizable -- maybe by the snow at its foot.

Sunday morning saw us finally reaching our destination -- Arches National Park. Our old pass ran out and we had to get a new one (annual pass to all National Parks costs $65 and covers two people signed on it, plus anyone accompanying a car with them -- considering the fact that individual tickets are ten dollars or more, it pays for itself very quickly), before rushing to the attractions. If you remember, Hippo sprained his ankle at Arches last year, and we had to return one day too early. We had some unfinished business here -- e.g. Double Arch, Turret Arch, and Delicate Arch.

The whole park is located on top of a mesa and we were afraid a bit that we would end inside a cloud, and get to see nuttin'. It wasn't an unwarranted worry -- clouds were skimming the rocks a few feet above our heads and the fog turned arches into gateways to dreamlands. It also thinned out crowds of eager tourists to a pleasant level.

We could admire Double arch, enjoying intimate solitude, at North and South Windows, we met perhaps four other tourists. Looking from Turret Arch, the Windows become Spectacles -- two eyes with a "nose" in between -- in our case a bit foggy, but devoid of crowds.

Delicate Arch is the most famous attraction of the park. I never understood why -- this arch is not the biggest, it not really "feeble" as the name would suggest. Perhaps because it stands clear of other rocks, and you have to hike up to it, which everybody feels obliged to, and to have a picture taken, with you and the arch.

	Hanging gardens; are they not supposed to be one of the world's wonders? Alas, they grew here, in Arches, most likely long before the time of queen Semiramis.

Thanks to our "bad" weather, the parking lot at the foot of the trail was half empty, and we did not need to march up in lockstep with a constant line of visitors. In a about two thirds of our way up Sid suddenly announced that the trail goes the wrong way and we had to approach the arch from the other side. He recalled that an older trail might have used to bring admirers to the Arch from below and then on rails and chains through the opening and out the other side. There is no such trail there anymore, and unless you know where to walk, the hard slickrock won't reveal its path (most of the current trail is marked by cairns).

	Side view of Delicate Arch The dip that starts on its right side is really a five hundred feet abyss. Left side of the arch forms the edge of the vortex. Only path leads through the arch.

I accepted Sid's shortcut as one of those duties of married life -- my husband simply cannot turn down any opportunity to rebel against well trodden paths with his strong confidence that HE could NEVER get lost. After he told me that our path goes over solid rock and hence we cannot disturb the lives of "living dirt" -- a symbiosis of fungi, algae, lichen and anaerobic bacteria, which is an important part of a desert biotop -- I obediently followed him into the unknown.

I admit I had expected simply "yet another" arch. Indeed, an Arch was there, but from our viewpoint (which will always stay hidden to all tourists on the trail), a much greater "hit" opened. Delicate Arch stands on the edge of a huge petrified "vortex". It looks like a large whirlpool of sandstone -- the rock has horizontal structures, curls from the arch counter-clockwise and eventually falls over the edge into a deep ravine.

We took pictures of anything worthy and moved on the edge of the swirl towards the arch. Remnants of old railing can be still found in the arch base from the ravine side. There's no rail, though, and we had to switch to a rock-climbing mode. It was not as tough, only unpleasant, to stand on a slippery slope, progressively curving into a vertical wall some 500 feet high -- my stomach responded. I think we caused galvanized a group of geezers -- this consisted of two chattering ladies, one normal guy, and one hyperactive guy. The hyperactive one could not resist and descended from the regular tourist lookout to the Delicate Arch and searched in vain for a route we must have come through. There was none visible from above -- only a dropoff. Even I would not like to try our way backwards -- so we returned to our wagon, docilely following the official trail.

Lights were going out and we still had two highlights of the night ahead of us, in Moab -- a dinner with beer at Moab Brewery (since this is a real micro-brewery, they may serve beer even in the midst of puritanic Utah), and a hot whirlpool at our hotel. After a whole day hiking in a creepy weather, we certainly deserved it.

Copyright © 2002-2005 by Carol & Sid Paral. All rights reserved.