Fallen arches and hiking

Wait! Before you go moving this to "Health & Safety," it's not those kind of fallen arches.

For anybody who has hiked the Devil's Garden trail in Arches NP, did you know that the Wall Arch collapsed a couple of weeks ago? It's news to me.

We'd gone there last October and I got a "before" shot, actually two, of Wall Arch before its demise.

Apparently it collapsed while no one was around, making me wonder if it ever really happened. But you'd think SOMEBODY would have felt the ground shake.

Thank goodness there's 2,000 arches left in ANP and more being formed daily, although I wouldn't hang around to see where. And they're lucky in Utah that they hadn't picked the image of Wall Arch for their license plates, turnpike tokens and the like, as they did with a stone feature in New Hampshire, or now they'd be scrambling when something as iconic (a rock icon, if you will) as "The Old Man on the Mountain," loses face. (That cliff face did have a slight resemblence to Van Morrison -- in his younger days at least. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />)

So thankfully the people in Utah don't have to get caught up in a debate over whether to replace the symbol of their state with a fiberglass reproduction of something as big as this arch.

This event does make me reconsider standing under these ever-eroding things (that's my wife, Debbie, below Morning Glory Bridge, under my direction. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />) One must remember that by their very nature they are destined to fall. Think I'll be giving them a little wider berth when hiking in Utah in the future, and only in this context can I ever describe myself as becoming an "arch-conservative."

When I first heard the news I thought victim may have been Delicate Arch, the subject of so many Arches NP photos, because it looks so.......delicate.

But as you mentioned Kev, for every arch that falls, a new one is forming.

I often think of the quote by guidebook author Gerry Roach that Aaron Ralston, while contemplating his own fate, scratched in a canyon wall not too far from that fallen arch:

"Geologic time includes now"

For those unfamiliar with Aaron, he's the guy who cut off his arm in order to free himself from rockfall in a slot canyon.

LOL I must admit that I have even camped under those things and the thought of collapse did enter my mind. But I figured after those thousands of years they would hang on for a couple more hours just for me. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

“…and only in this context can I ever describe myself as becoming an "arch-conservative."”

All right! Just saying it puts you in step in the right direction. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />


Well written Kevon as usual <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />