Delicate Arch at Arches National Park ‘The iconography of time’ is the title given to this amazing long exposure capture. The photographer said, “Billions of years ago some of those stars sent their light on a journey to delicate arch long before its grains of sand had even settled to the bottom of a vast ocean. This complex intermingling of time and space and light fills me with much awe, wonder and inspiration. I live for these moments.” Photo #1 by Jason Corneveaux
Double Rainbow over Winter Camp Wash, Arches National Park. The photographer wrote, “While the arch was looking quite spectacular against the light of the setting sun, my attention was diverted to the Rock Settee pillar where a double rainbow had started to form from the small drizzle that was still pouring down. I got some really great shots of the Wash area while huddling myself and my camera underneath a tiny umbrella. Sadly, I was unable to change to a wider lens at that point. It was then I realized the need for an umbrella caddy. Any volunteers?” Photo #2 by Sathish J
Rappelling, Owl Rock. Photo #3 by NPS / Neal Herbert
Pothole Reflection: The Organ. This is an outdoor adventure lovers’ paradise with many activities such as backpacking, biking, camping, canyoneering, commercial tours, hiking, rock climbing and plenty to keep a photographer busy. Photo #4 by NPS / Neal Herbert
Double Arch is two arches that share a common end. Photo #5 by Steven Martin
The “Three Gossips” at Arches National Park, Utah. Photo #6 by Sanjay Acharya
Mesa Arch. Photo #7 by Chris Willis
Double Arch by night. Photo #8 by Jeffrey Stylos
Windows of Arches National Park. Photo #9 by Scott Law
Double O Arch. Photo #10 by NPS / Neal Herbert
Panorama of the Garden of Eden. Photo #11 by Christian Mehlführer
NPS states, “Although Arches may appear harsh and unchanging, the desert ecosystem is continually evolving. Weather, climatic shifts and geologic processes continue to shape this environment as they have for millennia.” Photo #12 by Jon Sullivan
Landscape Arch located in Devil’s Garden. Landscape Arch is a very thin and long arch with a span of 290 feet (88 m). Devil’s Garden has many arches and columns scattered along a ridge. Photo #13 by NPS / Neal Herbert
The photographer noted, (Moab, Utah) “Some guy totally ruins an enthusiast photographer’s attempt at capturing the dawn serenity of Arches National Park’s North Window arch. Jumping photos take a few attempts to get a lucky frame like this one, and of course both dudes roadtrippn’ must pose in mid air, so double the attempts….The poor photographer in question can be seen in the upper right section of the arch; for once we were the early risers. Alas, the sun was already too high for him to get anything good so we probably did him a favor by bogarting his scene…” Photo #14 by Jon Martin
Balanced Rock is a large balancing rock that is the size of three school buses. Photo #15 by NPS / Neal Herbert
Sunrise on Thanksgiving Morning in the Garden of Eden in Arches National Park near Moab, Utah. The photographer added, “This is a seldom photographed view of South Window Arch and the eastern-most part of the rock formations that make up the Garden of Eden. The reason this view is rarely photographed is because it covers a 180 degree field of view from southeast to northwest. This is a panoramic image created from 10 vertical HDR frames. Photo #16 by Nathan Van Arsdale
Moon In Delicate Arch. Photo #17 by Scott Law
Mules Ears and Courthouse Towers. Photo #18 by NPS
Milky Way over Balanced Rock. Photo #19 by Jason Corneveaux
Dark Angel is a free-standing 150-foot (46 m) tall sandstone pillar at the end of the Devil’s Garden Trail. Photo #20 by Matthias Kabel
“Last stand,” is what the photographer called this shot. Photo #21 by David (darkmatter)
Lone tree landscape near Moab, Utah. Photo #22 by Jamie Grant
Landscape Arch from the other side. The photographer noted, “This view of Landscape arch in Arches National Park in Utah requires a climb on stark rock marked only by stone cairns. Well worth it, though.” Photo #23 by Tim Hamilton
Big Horn Sheep at the park. Wikipedia states, “There is an abundance of wildlife in Arches. The list includes: spadefoot toad, scrub jay, peregrine falcon, many kinds of sparrows, red Fox, desert bighorn sheep, kangaroo rat, mule Deer, mountain lion, midget faded rattlesnake, yucca moth, many types of cyanobacteria, Western rattlesnake, and the Western collared lizard.” Photo #24 by NPS
Park Avenue. Photo #25 by NPS
Panorama: Tower of Babel. Photo #26 by Shannon Martin
Fiery Furnace — Skull Rock. Photo #27 by Donar Reiskoffer
The Organ. Photo #28 by Sanjay Acharya
Wall Arch before and after collapse in 2008. Photo #29 by NPS & #30 by NPS
The Courthouse Tower is a collection of tall stone columns. Photo #31 by Nagaraju Hanchanahal
Turret Arch. The photographer wrote, “Water and ice, extreme temperatures, and underground salt movement are responsible for the sculptured rock scenery of Arches National Park.” Photo #32 by Elvin
Fiery Furnace Panorama. Photo #33 by Jean-Christophe BENOIST
Devils Garden Trailhead at Arches National Park. According to Wikipedia, Devil’s Garden has “a series of rock fins that have broken out of the earth due to erosion and produce many spectacular views. The Devil’s Garden Trail that travels throughout Devil’s Garden is just over 7 miles (11 km) long and leads to the Tunnel Arch, Pine Tree Arch, Landscape Arch, Partition Arch, Navajo Arch, Black Arch, Dark Angel monolith, Private Arch, and Fin Canyon. Wall Arch, before its collapse in 2008, was also located here. The trailhead is at the end of the main road in Arches National Park. A campground and amphitheater are also available at the site.” Photo #34 by Sanjay Acharya
360° Panoramic view from primitive trail to Devils Garden. Photo #35 by Matthias Kabel
Climbing Owl Rock. Photo #36 by Arches National Park NPS
Eye of the Whale Arch. Photo #37 by Arches National Park NPS / Neal Herbert
Turret Arch Trail with Fresh Snow. Photo #38 by Arches National Park NPS / Neal Herbert
Queen Nefertiti Rock in Arches NP. Photo #39 by Daniel Mayer
Foggy Morning, North Window. Photo #40 by Arches National Park NPS / Neal Herbert
Arches national park. Photo #41 by Kevin Galens
Interesting perspective of park. The photographer wrote, “The scale is really weird in this thanks to using my wide-angle lens with a really small aperture. The dead tree in the foreground is actually pretty small, and the rocks in the background very large and a good quarter mile or so away.” Photo #42 by Steve Harbula
Ute tribal rock art taken at Arches National Park, where there are many petroglyphs. Picture shows stylized horse and rider surrounded by bighorn sheep and dog-like animals. This was carved between A.D 1650 & 1850. Photo #43 by Sanjay Acharya
The Petrified Dunes are rock formations in Arches National Park; the ancient sand dunes hardened into stone and later eroded away. The dunes are located off of the park road between the Courthouse Towers and the Windows Area. Photo #44 by Daniel Mayer
Lone Juniper. Photo #45 by Arches National Park NPS / Neal Herbert
Windows Arch. Photo #46 by Steve Harbula
Moab, Utah: The pride of Arches National Park; Delicate Arch, stretches towards the Milky Way. Photo #47 by Jon Martin
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Photo #32 by Elvin is mislabeled. It is not Turret Arch. Just an FYI.
Agreed. I think it could be Skyline Arch?
We see these wonders assuming they’ll always be there but some are so fragile. Time, ice, water will render them mere ‘rocks’ in the years to come…some appear to be fairly weak…enjoy them while you got ’em.
RB
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The last pictures is really amazing! The red arch with the lights from the starts makes this landscape a total out-worldly image!
[…] possible by the incredible flying machine called the Paramotor.” Location: The Corona Arch, Moab, Utah. Photo #24 and “quoted” caption by © Glenn Tupper/National Geographic Traveler […]
I am curious about the actual ages of the arches in Arches National Park and how that is determined. Would not one way be to determine the current rate of deterioration of each arch and then work backward to when it originated? Using this same method would also provide an estimate of when each arch would be estimated to fail. The reason I am mentioning this is
because the rate these arches are failing as a factor of the total amount of all arches now there seems to indicate that these
arches are failing at a rate that might lead one to conclude that this proves the arches are much younger than is commonly
believed. There has to be a scientific way to form a calculation that would produce an answer to this query. Has such a
test ever been done on the arches at the park?
I have recently read that since 1970 43 arches or land bridges have crashed to the ground in Arches
National Park. Since I believe that there are only approximately 2300 arches in the park 43 sounds
to me to be a higher percentage of failure over that period of time than one should expect of rocks
that have been there for hundreds of thousands of years if not longer. Why the high failure rate?
Could it be that the reason is that the arches’ origins are much more recent than we current believe. Peter Gold, Jeannie Martinez Welles and countless others have written on incredible similarities between the belief systems of the Navajo, Hopi and other tribes of the Pacific Southwest with Vedic Buddhism. Arches play a significant role in all Vedic religions of ancient India including Buddhism. The Vedic name for their arch is the Torana. The Torana is a gateway arch for a temple or a “frame” for a Buddha or some other sacred Vedic symbol which is placed on the most important part of the structure which is the base or foundation on which that shrine is placed.
An example of this today in Utah is Rainbow Bridge. Rainbow Bridge is a very sacred site to the
Navajo, Hopi and other tribes in the area. It used to be in a remote location visited only by the devout or the most highly motivated. Now, however, because of the recent creation of Lake Powell and the subsequent flooding tourists can literally float up to Rainbow Bridge and each year 300,000 or more tourists from around the world arrive to see the spectacular rock formation. Despite the polite requests and then the strong admonitions from the Navajo too many of those arriving Walk Under The Arch and across that sacred ground. This was so repugnant to the local tribes that they unsuccessfully sued the U.S. government in an attempt to stop tourists from coming there altogether.
The reason I mention this sensitive subject is to highlight the fact that the Native American
veneration of this site is identical to a Vedic Buddhist belief shared by devotees of all the major
religions that originated in India. Rainbow Bridge however is just one in North America. How about Delicate Arch, Anasazi Arch, Corona Arch and the hundreds of others? Were they at one time sacred as well?
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If you’ve missed the ad campaign by the State of Utah highlighting their arches and other spectacular
land formations you must have been out of the country. Utah’s Board of Tourism is doing this to promote tourist visits to the state. It’s working as more and more people go out into harsh country
to look at amazing rocks. Most believe these are random acts of erosion. However, wouldn’t they be
even more spectacular if they had been enhanced by ancient stone carvers? I believe there’s good reason to believe these formations are not as random as some would have us believe. The largest 16
land bridge arches located around the entire planet have been photographed and measured by those dedicated to this work. These are people with “no axe to grind” and no theory to promote. They simply love these huge arches (land bridges)and want to acknowledge them. But I wonder do any of these people wonder about the locations of the “Big 16”. Google: “Tour of the Big 16” Fourteen of these 16 are located in either China or in the Four Corners Region specifically. Of the two that are left both are located on well known and acknowledged ancient trade routes. One of the two is
located in Afghanistan (Gandhara) a highly advanced ancient Buddhist civilization located on the
Overland Silk Road connecting China with Europe and the Middle East. The last one (Aloba Arch) is located in Chad, Africa. Google: “Forgotten Treasures in the Dead Heart of Africa”. The surrounding rock formations in Africa have an incredible likeness to the rocks in The Bisti Badlands
and in The Arches National Park. In other words these largest land bridges (arches) are not scattered around the world. They are clustered in specific places that either have a confirmed or
suspected connection with ancient Buddhism. The Torana is a major symbol In All Vedic Religions.
Does anyone other than me see the high coincidence of these Buddhist like symbols clustered in areas
where there are also numerous other Vedic like symbols such as Phallic Symbols, Chattras (mushroom
shaped rocks like Snake Dancers Rock Walpi, Bent Hoodoo by Ned and the Cobra Fisher Towers) and others. Is it a bit unusual that this same Four Corners Region is also well known to be home to the
Buddhist swastika (manji)? Manji in Sanskrit the ancient language of Vedic India literally means
Whirlwind. Then how did it happen that the Navajo today call the swastika the “Whirling Logs” while
the Hopi with the closest cultural ties to the Anasazi simply call it the same name as its Sanskrit
name-“The Whirlwind”? What are the odds of that being a mere coincidence? There’s a lot more to this story than Eurocentric scholars want you to know. This information has been purposely withheld.
Have you heard that Cobra Rock, Moab has fallen? I mentioned Cobra Rock in an earlier posting.
How was the Cobra Head on Cobra Rock destroyed? The current thought is that it was blown off by a severe windstorm blowing through the area. Google: “Cobra Rock Moab Utah” You will also read that Cobra Rock is millions of years old. In millions of years I would assume that several violent wind storms have blown through that area. A million years is a long time! However, at some point in time all balanced rocks will fail and fall. I realize that. However, I continue to believe an alternative theory because the rate of failure of these balanced and arch rock formations seem to be occurring at a much faster clustered rate than an origin of a million years ago would suggest. I believe that when scientists with no western cultural bias to determine the outcome of their research finally reach their conclusion they will acknowledge that these rocks although truly very old were in fact carved and thus greatly modified by rock carvers just 1500 to 2000 years ago. Those rock carving modifications if man made and made at that time would have made those formations much more vulnerable to a shorter term failure rate than one would reasonably expect from a non modified million year old stone. Even if you don’t agree with my entire theory of who it was that did these rock carved religious modifications you too must be puzzled by the failure rate of these formations that seems to defy logic if all these formations that are failing so frequently now truly were solely erosion formed million year old rock.