Today was what I hoped my Arches experience would be! Perfect hiking weather (not too hot and just enough cloud cover) and great scenery!<\/p>\n
I went to bed super early with the plan to breakfast at McDonald’s so I could use their wifi. By the time I’d dressed, packed my lunch and day pack, and made it down the road, it was just past 6:00. I caught up on\u00a0some online stuff over some hot cakes and sausage (knowing I would work that off soon enough!) and a really good cup of coffee.<\/p>\n
This would be my last day in the park since tomorrow’s forecast is cruddy, so I could fit in only one major hike. A popular one is to the famous Delicate Arch, but it just looked like an uphill slog to me. The most difficult and longest hike in the park, the Primitive Trail, sounded like a lot more fun and would let me see several arches that are not otherwise accessible. I’d spoken to someone at the visitor’s centre yesterday about the difficulty level of the hike and told him I found Angels Landing at Zion<\/a> easy. He said that absolutely nothing in Arches compared to that hike and that the Primitive Trail would hardly be a challenge for me as long as the weather was good (rain would make the trail slippery). So that helped cement my decision.<\/p>\n I drove straight to the Devil’s Garden parking lot, arriving around 7:30. It is about a half hour drive from Moab to that parking lot! Since I was early, I was able to park right at the trailhead.<\/p>\n The hike did end up being pretty easy except for one section. You have to follow cairns to make sure you stay on track and I had bits where the cairns were pretty far apart, so I was moving with caution to make sure I didn’t get lost and could get back to the last cairn I’d spotted.<\/p>\n Well, I got to the first fin I had to cross and the cairns were confusing. I crossed a very narrow and steeply sloped ledge on my butt to find myself faced with a very steep climb up. That just didn’t seem right. It look positively impossible and I felt a flutter of something I hadn’t really faced at Zion: fear. If that was the trail, I was done. I started to scoot back across the ledge and realised as I looked at the sheer drop down that I was truly afraid, bordering on terrified, and coming back across felt like it took forever. I was really glad to reach a wider section where I could get back on my feet. I’m glad to know my survival instincts work and that I know when to turn back! But I couldn’t believe that that was truly the trail, based on what I’d been told.<\/p>\n So I took a look around and up and finally spotted a tiny cairn at the top of a steep slope of bare rock! The second cairn I’d spotted that I thought was telling me to go across the ledge was actually telling me that this was a good spot to step up onto the first foothold of the slope. From there, I could just barely see the other spots where I could get decent footing and pull myself up. This wasn’t quite as bad as watching someone climb a vertical rock face\u00a0without any equipment (think Kirk at the start of “The Final Frontier”) since I was on a slope, but there was zero room for error as it was a tumble straight down if I slipped.<\/p>\n