Arches National Park: Delicate Arch

Delicate Arch is supposedly the most famous arch in the world, and it's the iconic arch that is on the Utah license plates.  So Dec. 2, that's where we went.

Here's what the landscape looks like as we drive down the access road:

At the start of the hike, the trail goes past a historical site.  Wolfe Ranch is were some folks from Ohio settled for a few years from the late 1800's, until they returned to Ohio in 1910.  This is the second, more luxurious cabin they built (all one room of it):

Their old corral, with the modern version of a corral, the parking lot, visible at the upper left:

This was their original digs, literally, a dugout.  They lived here for many years until an adult daughter and her family came to live with them in 1906 and convinced her father to build the 1-room cabin:

Just past the cabin, we crossed over this little stream:

Landscape southeast of the trail:

View to the north-ish:

A big part of the trail is this huge slickrock "ramp" that you hike up.  This photo doesn't do it justice as to how massive it feels:

Looking back towards where we started out:

Once past the ramp, the trail starts meandering a bit into eroded stone formations:

In places there are dead trees laid to loosely indicate the direction to go in, and not to wander off the trail past the logs:

Some more slickrock:

On the final stretch we were hiking on a fairly narrow carved-out ledge, hugging the side of the mountain:

This is the view opposite that stone ledge, it was quite breathtaking:

Then suddenly, you round a corner, and there it is!  The sun was behind it so not the greatest for photos, but pretty awesome all the same, this arch on top of a mountain:

Some more formations that surround the hollow in the mountain that hosts the arch:

Ed at the summit:

After hiking back down, this interesting pocked rock caught my eye:

There are some petroglyphs near Wolfe Ranch, we took the little detour to see those on the way back.  These have horses in them so they're dated as being from around 1650-1850.

One more view of that little body of water, it looks so soothing in a desert environment:

So that was Delicate Arch.  It is a relatively busy trail (and early December is the low season), but very worthwhile.