I got up when it was still dark for THIS?

Having to set an alarm to wake up early isn’t the best, but it completely rocks compared with the effect of having someone else set an alarm for you without your knowledge. Around 6:30am the clock-radio decided to spring into life, with seemingly no amount of pounding it, pressing every button, and pulling at the power cord making a damn bit of difference. Eventually I managed to kill it, fell back into bed, and decided after a few seconds to get up anyway, to capitalize on an early start with some sunrise photography.

In retrospect it was a dud decision. Driving past a park entrance booth in darkness and heading up switchbacks under towering Kayenta cliff-faces it was pretty apparent there wasn’t going to be much of a sunrise, and when I arrived at Turret Arch and started up the sandstone path my pessimism wasn’t rewarded. Hoping there might be a slim chance of something worth photographing, I set the camera up on a time-lapse (maybe hoping to get some of that Monument Valley magic happening), and left it clicking away every ten seconds while I trudged about looking at South and North Window once again, just in the off chance of finding something better. Nothing presented itself, I sat down in the dirt next to the tripod, and after forty more minutes of nothing happening, a fleeting, watery beam of sunlight finally broke through a wall of dark cloud, weakly lit Turret Arch - for maybe 30 seconds -  then left it in darkness once again. I packed up, less than impressed, dragged everything back down hill and headed back to Moab to wake up Nic and the kids and head out for blueberry pancakes at the Pancake Haus next to the Ramada. It was staffed with a team of interchangeable, affable young guys all apparently from the same, unnamed, eastern European country, where presumably pancakes are the national dish. Wherever it was, it wasn’t Germany. Maybe it should be called the Pancake Hostel.

After successfully negotiating breakfast we headed back to Arches and drove through to the end of the park to the Devils Garden walk. The weather I’d experienced earlier that day hadn’t improved to any great degree but it was perfect for walking a trail, so with Jackson and Elise leading the way, discovering various hide-outs, animal bones and secret passageways during their progress, we made it through to Landscape and Double O Arch.

Landscape Arch is ludicrous in its dimensions – over 300 feet long and in some places barely 6 feet thick, it’s surely in imminent danger of collapse. Since 1991, three separate instances of rock falls have been observed, with one event resulting in around 70 feet of rock dropping away from the thinnest section of the arch. The trail, which once led under the arch, has since been cut short, and rangers now recommend in light of this, that if you’re going to see Landscape Arch, you should see it today rather than put it off. Their advice may sound dramatic, but the 71 foot wide Wall Arch (formerly 12^th largest of all the arches at Arches National Park completely collapsed, without witness, sometime between August 4^th and 5^th 2008. It really does happen, and looking at Landscape Arch, if I were a betting man, I’d be putting money on it being gone within my lifetime. Then again, it could stand for another thousand years. We simply don’t know.

Obviously concerned that the arches were getting too much attention, a chipmunk put on a bit of a show for the kids, darting back and forth across the end of the Landscape Arch pathway, presumably having had some success in extracting food from tourists with this gambit in the past. On this occasion, at least, he performed without the customary tip, and eventually gave up in apparent disgust and slipped away between boulders and fallen logs, lying in wait, no doubt, for the next group of passers-by.

After enduring still more secret hide-outs and mysterious dead ends deemed worthy of investigation, we left Devils Garden and headed to Sand Dune Arch, one I’d never seen before and which was, in comparison with the majority, quite startling. It’s only small, maybe 30 feet across, but it’s in a location unlike any others, reached by a short walk around a sandstone monolith, then through a couple of relatively narrow, sandy-floored fissures. In its isolated position, wind howling about it, sand drifting up against its walls, it’s very impressive and evocative, and feels like it’d be far more at home in Petra, Jordan than Moab, Utah.

I left Nic and the kids completing their certification for Junior Park Ranger induction and did a quick, 2km return trip to the apparently incorrectly named Broken Arch, then, deciding I was pretty well arched out for the day drove on to the Wolfe Ranch, start of the Delicate Arch climb. I’d done it alone back in 2004, so given Elise had decided she’d had quite enough of walking for the day, I left Nic and Jackson to head off in light drizzle, and kept her distracted for the next hour and a half. We drove aimlessly around the park as the rain really began to come in, so I headed back to the hotel to get dry clothes and towels, thoughts of the pair of them careening down a wet slickrock hillside in my mind. By the time I’d returned, they’d already made it back to Wolfe Ranch, had photographed the arch in a likely pretty rare state – wet, and without tourists – and we called it a day in the park.

Back at the Visitors Centre Jackson and Elise were solemnly sworn in and presented with certificates and gold coloured plastic park ranger badges to add to their collection from Joshua Tree and Petrified Forest, and we headed back to the hotel, with me convinced tomorrow was bound to offer a far better sunrise.