Black Rapids Glacier

Well now, this is supposed to be a blog about Alaska, but it seems like ages since i've had any posts about what goes on when i'm up here. I've got two Alaskan summers of postings to catch up on. The summer of 2009 was spectacular, but in my typical fashion, i'm just going to mention that it was fantastic, and point out that i did tons of cool, spectacular stuff, but i'm not going to talk about it again for months. No, instead, i'm going to start off 3 YEARS ago. Sorry.

This was  really nice campground. Here we were in a miles wide braided river bed covered in flowers. The tents were in the forest directly behind us, and there were only two other sets of campers.

So, one day i decided to take Fisher on a camping trip to the Alaska Range. I had this idea that i wanted to go see the Black Rapids Glacier. It's a huge, long glacier (27 miles) that terminates near the Richardson Highway. It's also called the Black Rapids Glacier, which is way more macho than something like, say, the Anderson Glacier. It became famous in 1937 when it advanced three miles in three months, threatening to destroy the road. It became famous again just a few years ago when a large 7.9 earthquake hit the Alaska Range. The quake split the massive glacier in half where it crossed the fault line, moving the one half 20 feet. The earthquake caused mountains to crumble, creating numerous landslides that buried miles of the ice. Yep, another area of incredible destruction, so i wanted to go there. You can see some pictures from the earthquake here. On that page, the photos labeled "printer friendly" work a lot better than the others.

I  think this is a really cool looking mountain. It looks like two mountains embedded in a great wall. Mt. Hayes is much more prominent when viewed from the north. For a nifty picture story of just what it takes to walk over to and climb a mountain like Hayes, click here.

It's kind of a long drive from Anchorage (7 hours that particular day), but then, it often seems that everything is a long way in Alaska. During this time in my Ranger i discovered that i HATE taking Fisher on a long road trip. I had a bunch of camping stuff in the back and so i had let him sit in the front, but he gets scared at high speeds and he was driving me nuts with his panting and constant movement. I also discovered during this drive that Guava flavored Rockstar poured down the arm will summon bees from thin air causing an instant swarm around you. Next time they can't figure out where all the bees are just pour that stuff out on the ground.

At Summit Lake i took the dog down to the shore so he could get a drink. He worked out a few metric tons of pent up anxiety, going nuts with the open air and all the available sticks. The bottom picture he has dropped his stick and then remembered that he hates to get his nose underwater. A perplexing problem, getting the stick again without using his mouth.

A few more miles down the road and i was sorely disappointed when i saw the glacier. It had receded far from the road, and what was visible was completely buried in rock debris. I wouldn't have been able to go over to it anyway due to a sizable river that was in the way. So i stayed at a nifty campground on the edge of the river and the next day picked a random glacial valley to hike up from the road. There were many to choose from and i picked one that had a short rocky road you could drive up. From there it looked like in the distance there was an ice arch on the top of the glacier that sat back in the valley. We followed a raging river to the mouth of the glacier and sure enough, above the gaping mouth was an ice arch that resembled a natural bridge.

The Gulkana Glacier, maybe the site of a future expedition?

The glacier ended in a huge gaping hole large enough to easily drive a  couple of firetrucks into. The cavern had a half circle shape to it and was cut into the side of a large flat sloping wall. The ice was melting at an incredible rate, you could almost see it moving back, and rocks fell so continuously down the front face that it made entry into the cavern dangerous. Fisher stood right in front of it not understanding where all the splashes were coming from. I had to yell at him to get away from it. I also had to yell just because it was so loud.

 

After looking it up on maps weeks later, i determined that this is the Castner Glacier, with aptly named Triangle Peak up in the smokey air. According to maps the glacier is covered in debris for at least 6 or 7 miles. The ice bridge is visible in both images.

The rocks in the area were very peculiar. They all had a metallic sheen and some large boulders looked like solid metal, with radiator coolant colored pools of water surrounding them. It looked like something from Myst. There was also ice quicksand. I'd heard of ice quicksand existing in Baffin and Ellesmere island, but i'd never encountered it in Alaska. Close to the cave entrance i fell into it, with my brand new hiking boots on. Seriously, i had literally just bought some new boots that week, and this was the first trip i used them on. I hadn't yet decided if i would return them. Filling the insides with metallic sand was going to make it a bit harder to get my money back. Fortunately they turned out to be some of the best boots i've ever owned.

Here Fisher is realizing that the current is stronger than he reckoned. Kind of a large river to be emerging from underground just a few hundred yards away.

You could drive a firetruck in here with plenty of room overhead to spare.

I  convinced the dog to climb up the rubble with me and try to get to open ice. We walked and walked and every time i came up to the top of a crumbling hill, i'd see another about a tenth of a mile away. We walked by big empty mudbowls where clearly a pond or small lake had suddenly drained through hole in the bottom. Eventually we came to what looked like two plates of obisdian lying on mudbank. On closer inspection they were ice windows looking directly in to the body of the glacier. The windows were perfectly smooth and crystal clear. Because they were in the shade i could see detail in the form of tiny cracks and bubbles for several feet down before things faded into blackness. It delivered the weird sensation of looking into a bottomless pit, and made me feel like i was walking on a thin layer of loose mud and rocks covering a giant empty void.

I don't know why this is the only picture of it that i took, but here you can see one of the ice windows. You can also see how all the young Alder trees are growing on top of the glacier, which is apparently covered by 4 feet of loose soil and rock. The ice windows were revealed when a large section of the top soil slid off the underlying ice, probably due to the hot summer. The rocks and mud were actively sliding away while i was there.

Oh yeah, did i mention that the glacier looked like it had beds of gold trapped in the ice? See, i don't just make stuff up. Pretty cool and very crazy looking. If that's really gold then i'm the biggest idiot in the world for posting this. These are the minerals that were responsible for that metallic sheen on the boulders in the area. The quicksand in by boots was the same stuff and trying to get it out of the fabric it didn't really look like gold.

Looking up at the ice bridge from underneath made it clear that i didn't want to climb on top.

After our exploration of the glacier i continued on down the road. Half the purpose of the trip had been to travel down the Denali Highway, a 90 mile dirt road that connects to the paved Parks Highway and parallels the Alaska Range. I completed the trip but conditions seriously deteriorated that day into thunderstorms and thick smoke from fires. So i'll have to make that trip again some day....

Zion's Main Canyon

After our fun little cabin adventure at the Grand Canyon we made our way over to Zion. I kind of wanted to go see Bryce but it was 18 degrees there at night, so we opted to stay warm. Last year i mentioned that i never did anything in the main canyon of Zion during my week long stay at the park, so this time, since Maree had never been to the park at all, i decided to spend the majority of my time there, where most of the official trails are.

We wanted to go to the Narrows, but the cold front that came through made that undesirable. Our first excursion into the water, to a hidden oasis i knew about, was frigid. So i took Maree up to the famous Angel's Landing, a 2,000 foot monument in the middle of the canyon.

Once again, i was shocked at how many people visit the park now. The trail was totally packed, and up near the top, where you need to hang on to chains for safety on the extemely exposed trail, we found ourselves waiting for minutes at a time as endless caravans of visitors came down from the top.

There are a lot of switchbacks up the Angels Landing trail.

Although the total height didn't seem as impressive to me after the years of other experiences i've had, the trail does still offer a frightening amount of exposure that is amplifed by loose sand on the rounded, sloped rocks. I have to admit i was a bit scared. In fact, i was shocked to be more afraid now than i used to be, which was bizarre (since i just mentioned the total height being less impressive than i remember). Maybe it was the high winds.


Maree is getting scared right when things start to get fun.

Maree, on the other hand, was frightened to death. It was too bad because she became paralyzed just a short distance from the top, and could go no further. Once someone experiences a paralyzing fear like that there isn't much you can do to talk them out of it, so i let her sit on a narrow bench of rock while i made a quick trip up to the top. At least in this instance she thought i came back much sooner than she had expected.


The view on the top looking down at the road and the Virgin River 2,000 ft below.

The next day the winds became so strong that rangers advised people not to go on the Angels Landing trail at all, and with all the sand in the air we decided to go for a drive instead of walking in the high cliffs. But we did do one other hike before leaving directly across the river from Angels Landing. Maree enjoyed Hidden Canyon, even wandering far up canyon, off trail while i went to find the way to nearby Echo Canyon.


This is where Maree could go no farther. You can see how scared she is, poor girl...

We saw California Condor Number 57. I never thought i would see a Condor!


And we saw one of these!

 












This is the piece of land i want.


I also used that day to test out a new lense. I had rented a Canon 17mm TSE lense. It's a tilt shift lense, which means it can correct for parallax like a field camera. I'd been excited about the possibilities of the lense, but the huge price tag made renting one for a week seem like a good idea. I picked it up from Las Vegas on the way out of town, and played with it a bit in our cabin, but hadn't used it since then because it was so heavy and cumbersome. Eventually i decided that the only way i could force myself to really use it was to make sure that it was the only lense i had available, so i left my others in the room that day.

This image shows how you can use the lense to make those popular "miniaturized" pictures of just about anything. It's fun. 


This image shows what you can do when the lense is used correctly. Notice that the long narrow slot canyon on the far right of the photo is nice and verticle all the way up and down the photo. This would be very distorted on a normal wide angle lense. For a 17mm lense that is impressive.

The lense has a HUGE crystal ball attached to the front of it. It looks very cool, to be honest, but there is so much glass that it seems it would be impossible for the thing to take a crisp image without any distortion. The results are exactly the opposite. It has virtually no chromatic aberration, and it is extremely sharp, if you focus it right. It's manual focus only, and i had a lot of difficulty getting the plane of focus to line up with the scenes i wanted. By the very end of the day i was finally starting to get some better results, and those are posted here.

The two images above may look the same at first glance. The top one is taken using the lense with no tilt corrections, and the bottom using the maximum tilt that the lense will allow. It may be easier to notice the cliffs and trees on the left look slightly "straighter", while the mountaintop on the top picture has been very stretched out on the right side due to the wide angle. The difference is so subtle that i don't think it is worth the price tag. The camera wasn't moved during the two shots.




We found this bridge that had been destroyed by a HUGE flash flood at some point.

A Tale of Two Rooms

Maree had never been to Utah so this fall i took her to Zion. We also decided to spend a couple of nights in Vegas. I personally wouldn't mind if Las Vegas was wiped from the face of the earth (although i do like the location of the airport) but Maree wanted to go there so i dutifully showed her around.

We went to the Hoover Dam and took a tour. I didn't know that there is a huge bridge being built over the river as part of a much needed bypass of the dam. Construction had just been completed on the arch, and when finished it's supposed to be the 4th highest span in the world.


Looking South at the smoke of distant fires near Flagstaff.


From Vegas we went to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Maree hadn't seen that either (she really hasn't seen the Colorado Pleateau at all), and although i worked on the South Rim many years ago, i only visited the North Rim for one day in all that time.

I really like the North Rim. It's much more peaceful, far less crowded, and higher than the opposite side. It took a long time to get there and we were not looking forward to a twisty, nightime drive to Kanab. It was already close to sunset, so i asked if a room was available on the rim and, amazingly, they had a vacancy! Usually you have to reserve those rooms up to a year in advance.

We had a very old log cabin with holes in the doors that the moonlight would shine through. I was very thankful that the cabins had modern indoor bathrooms. That made all the difference. In our cabins in Glacier Park, you had to walk 50 yards through watever kind of weather was happening in order to get to the bathroom.

Our little log cabin room.


Maree gazes down into the abyss.

Although it was just one night, i had a good time up there on the North Rim. The lodge has a very cool ambience and is built literally on the rim of the canyon. At night you can stand outside by the heat of a huge fireplace and gaze out over the moonlit canyon. The surrounding lanscape is hilly and heavily forested with numerous large subalpine meadows to drive through. Although there are no Antelope as in Bryce, we saw plenty of deer in the evening. They also have a cool, unique species of squirrel (Kaibab Squirrel).


The lobby of the spa was about the only place i could take pictures and feel safe about it.

Days later we returned to Vegas for two nights. I thought that to wrap up our vacation it would be nice to stay someplace "classy", so we stayed at the Wynn Encore, which had just opened up earlier in the year. Our room was huge, as was the bathroom, and as far as casinos go, i haven't been in one that was nicer. Vegas seems to have changed it's gimmick over the last 10 years. Whereas before the city would build a hotel focused on some kind of gimmicky theme, they now seem to be using all that money to simply make places that look damn nice. The new theme must be "you are a high roller, so throw your money away"



Our room at the Wynn Encore was huge.


The water level now is very low at the Hoover Dam. Our guide said Las Vegas will be short on water in 3 years at current levels.


The original generators from the 1930's are still running strong.




In these pictures you can see the newly completed arch for the bypass bridge.


Deep inside the dam are cool secret base tunnels.


This whole area vibrated from the power of the water flowing through these huge pipes in the bottom of the dam.

Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas! We're having an especially white Christmas this year. After a week long period of ice fog we finally had a good snowstorm for a few days. We were left in a winter wonderland. Here's a few pictures from around town and of Marees underwater themed Christmas Tree.

Blogger has changed the way their editor works. I'm still trying to figure it out, so i'm messing around a bit on this post.

The Needles

Some friends had recommended that if i went anywhere around Moab, i should go to the Needles District. They were right. It looks like i have a new No. 2 favorite location Utah. The Needles District of Canyonlands blew my mind due to it's insane and very active geologic history.



To quickly sum things up (leaving out millions of years of interesting details and early histories), the whole area experienced two uplift periods that occurred, crazily, at 90 degree angles, cracking up all the bedrock into a unnatural geometric grid. But that was only the beginning. While that was happening, the Colorado River was sitting around eroding sediments to the west, until it accidentally exposed a hidden layer of salts underneath all the sandstone.




The north portion of the district offers exploration of a forest of stone towers.

Salt has the peculiar property of behaving like a liquid when it's under great pressure. Not quite like water, but it will flow like molasses or toothpaste over time. When the Colorado exposed the salts, it opened an escape route out from under all the overlying rock. The salt began quickly flowing out into the river and the great masses above began sliding along the salt, also into the river. Today the river is actually losing the battle and is actively being pinched off. It's no coincidence that this location, Cataract Canyon, also happens to be the most infamous rapids on the entire river and nearly ended the Powell expedition almost as soon as it started.





Meanwhile, back over to the east, the whole earth has broken apart as great blocks of rock have moved toward the river or sunk as the salt moved out from under it. A whole system of parallel valleys (called Grabens) has evolved in just 50,000 years, and is actively growing right now. For a more detailed explanation you can look at the national park website


Two hikers walk out to an overlook on the far northern edge of the district.




I don't know why but i felt like i was in some hidden kingdom of Africa while driving through the grassy grabens. I kept expecting to see herds of zebra and elephant.

I went to the Needles the first day not really knowing what to expect and got there too late, so i ended up running and climbing around like a maniac before the sun went down. I went back the next day. From Moab it seems to take close to two hours to get there, and once there you have to decide where to go in the area. I decided to go out into the Grabens via the infamous Elephant Hill road. Elephant Hill is one of the most difficult dirt roads in Utah, and it sure as hell was the most technically difficult road i've driven. I've been on a few dirt roads during my time, but by the end of that day on Elephant Hill i'd experienced a whole new level of "off road" driving. According to TrailDamage.com the trail is rated in a category that is: the highest challenge for a stock Jeep Wrangler without body damage, winching, or possible breakage.You will need 4-Wheel Drive and you should not go alone.

A very steep hill made much easier by concrete patches.


Inside the squeeze. Notice the folded side view mirror.


Another, even steeper hill. Believe it or not, there were a few places even steeper, but i didn't trust the emergency brake enough to get out in those areas.




The beginning of the Silver Stairs. This area was more fun than hard.

With no spotter (i was alone unfortunately) it was very slow going, having to get out of the jeep myself many many times to find out how the heck i was going to get up or down every obstacle along the route. It's the first time where i regularly was staring at nothing but sky on the uphill portions, where i was hanging in the air restrained only by the seat belt on some of the downhill portions, where i had to bend the side mirrors inward to pass through narrow portions, and definitely the first road i've been on with signs telling you the switchbacks are so narrow that after descending one, you have to put it in reverse and back down the next one, putting in back into drive at the next set. Describing the route more accurately requires a new lexicon of terminology. I understood why a regular truck was not recommended.




A pseudo cave on the Joint Trail. You can see a crack in the roof and the sky is visible through it.


Shelter from the sandstorm.


An intersection in the joint complex.


A very windy slot canyon that eventually offered a way on top.

My exploration by road was halted when i realized i might not have enough gas to get back if i continued onward. I stopped at a place called the Joint Trail, which goes through an area called Chester Park. Although i was saddened to have to stop, the trail was perfect for the weather conditions. The high pressure system that brought the snow was being forced away by high winds bringing warmer temperatures. Windblown sands limited visibility at times causing hikers and campers to flee, their faces covered with shirts. I've been in worse sandstorms, although i would have preferred NOT to have sand in my eyes and mouth, and it was strong enough to sting the legs. I had to keep my camera tucked away for much of the day.


Above the joints and grabens was a surreal cityscape of fanciful stone pillars, or "needles".





The joint trail provided perfect shelter from the sandstorm. It climbed into a maze of the pedestals and followed the natural joints between them. When it did emerge above ground i seemed to be above most of the sand, although it was still very windy. I vowed to return.


I made it off the Elephant Hill trail right at sunset.


Part of the Chester Park area.


Newspaper rock. I recognized newspaper rock from a history book way back in high school.


Island in the Sky is visible on the horizon.

The White Rim

From the Island in the Sky you can look down and see both the Colorado River and the Green River in their respective canyons far, far below, in a prehistoric setting. The cliffs of Island in the Sky are 1,000ft high. Below them is an intermediate plateau that stretches out a good distance before shattering into a million fractals at another set of 1,000 foot cliffs. The cliffs have the peculiar feature of being crowned in white rock.


The white rim rock lies on top of softer shales. They erode out from underneath, forming large overhangs that eventually collapse. What's left are columns of the red rock with a protective cap of harder white rock on their tops.

I love the white rock. I knew it would be there because I’ve looked at it extensively in Google Earth and it looked just the same from a few miles away on the Island in the Sky, as it looks from space. Also visible running across that plateau is a long road that appears to encircle the entire Island district. The name of that road is the White Rim Trail, and it’s 105 miles of dirt and bedrock. The rangers say you can’t take a stock car on it. I didn’t quite believe them, but I knew the disappointing, low clearance Jeep Patriot I had rented would not be up to the task, and I really wanted to go….. so I rented a custom modified Jeep Wrangler, lifted 4 inches, for two days. It wasn't cheap either, so I had to make good use of it. That's the only time i've ever rented TWO cars at the same time. That's crazy.


The Jeep i rented to take down the road and...


The road down which i took the Jeep.

Getting down into the white rim trial I took the old Shepard's Trail. It descends spectacularly down 1,500 feet in 1.25 miles. The road had just opened after being closed for 3 days due to the snow. Some snow was still hanging on in the shaded areas and the runoff made the road very slippery in those areas. Since the whole road is on the side of a huge cliff that was a bit scary at one particular hairpin u-turn. Down below, in mid canyon I found the road to be very rough, consisting largely of exposed bedrock. Often the road was literally on the edges of huge rock cliffs, sometimes on overhangs. Those portions were definitely thrilling, but for the most part the white rock turned out to be far less fun to drive on than to walk on. It took me 4.5 hours to go 37 miles (which, compared to that stupid PAVED road to Hana is actually not so bad).


Because passing can be difficult, they generally recommend you go only one way.


The road was made even a bit narrower by a ditch along the cliffs. Hairpin turn up ahead.


One of many huge overhangs you drive on.

I decided my goal was a campground called “The White Crack”. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I had a vague, very old memory of hearing someone talk about it when i worked at the Grand Canyon. All along the road you drive by these towers of rock that are breaking off the side of the canyon. The White Crack turned out to be an area where you could walk out onto some of these free standing pillars. They were in the process of separating from the canyon rim, and to get out on them you had to hop across some narrow, deep cracks. Some of them you could see right through to the ground about 70 feet below. At some points there was open air on both sides of you only a few feet away. The view was spectacular.


In many places you can walk out on to the columns by walking over the "cracks" in between them.

It became apparent after looking around at the White Crack campground that I was on the dividing line separating the two watersheds of the Colorado River and the Green River. Just a few miles to the south the two rivers joined up, doubling the size of the Colorado. That area was hidden from view by a high mesa in front of me.


This was at the end of the White Crack, and the continuing ridge line is the divide between the watersheds of the Colorado and Green rivers. Below is a closer view of the mesa in the distance.



I made one stop on the way back at an area i had spied from up high on the Island in the Sky. There was this insanely narrow and tall spire of rock that i had seen, and i really wanted to see it up close. I caught a glimpse of it on the way over the the white crack campground, but then it was on the opposite side of a canyon from me. On the way back i made a guess about where to go when the road came close to the edge. I got out and walked out along these towers and i could see that narrow spire. I picked a nice spot, although i was still too far away. To get closer i'd have had to leave the road at another point and walk at least two miles to the edge, without knowing for sure if that area would offer an unobstructed view or not.


After climbing out onto the monuments, i could see that lone pinnacle. It's in the distant center of this picture, taken a few minutes before it's base went into the shadows. Grrr... i wanted to get closer but ran out of light.


Here you can see part of the great anticline that makes Canyonlands possible. The Grand Canyon is the result of the same type of feature, and it's what makes the horizon look tilted in this image.

Sunset came and went a little too quickly. I got a few pictures (but not enough) and began to make the long, long drive back along the very edges of all those cliffs, in the dark. It was a very tiresome, sometimes tedious task. It would have been preferable to camp and complete the road the next day. Some areas where the road crossed wide expanses of the white rock it was hard figure out if I was indeed on the road or not. I couldn’t get lost though, because in just a few seconds of heading the wrong direction my lights would disappear over the precipice, sometimes illuminating the canyon wall on the other side in narrow areas. The most scary portions of the road during the day were actually less fearsome at night due to the darkness hiding all of the scary facts. I didn’t make it off the trail until nearly 10:30 pm and then still had 40 miles of paved driving to do.


Early in the day this area reminded of 2001.


The landscape across the Green River looked interesting.


A group of bikers eating lunch on an escarpment overlooking the Colorado River.

Delicate Arch

I’ve mentioned this before, but I have this mental condition where I avoid anything that sounds too popular in my mind. Delicate Arch, in Arches National Park has always been one of those overly popular places. I’ve seen so many pictures of it over the years that I simply never had any interest in seeing it in person. I had some experienced friends tell me recently that it was indeed worth seeing, and that the hike was pretty cool, so since I had a week in Moab, and since it was still very snowy in many nearby places I figured I’d give it a shot. Below is my “review.”


Delicate Arch

The first half of the hike is rather boring, but after a long ascent up a large body of slickrock things start to get more interesting. After not too long you round a cliff and walk unexpectedly out onto the large rock bench with the arch on it. The arch is much larger than I had imagined. It looks to be four or five stories tall, and it’s unarguably a beautiful carving. I was sure by the time I left that I had almost found the control panel that turned it into an inter-dimensional portal.


Delicate Arch

So the thing to do is sit around and wait for the sun to set, and that’s exactly what every one does. As expected, there were a ton of people milling about. Some arrived early and had staked out their respective positions. They had their tripods set up and were snapping a picture every three minutes, capturing the slowly changing light. The majority of people though, were constantly getting in the way of that first set of people by taking turns posing underneath the arch in whatever silly charade they could think of. I mean seriously, some people were actually pretending to be in bed underneath the arch. How do they think of those things? At least they were having fun.


Delicate Arch.

I didn’t see any way to get a shot of the arch without people standing under it or in the way of it, unless I took enough pictures that I caught every part of the background in at least one picture, due to people constantly moving around, stacked the resulting images into layers, and then photoshop the people out. Furthermore, it seemed silly to just stand around and take the same picture I’ve seen a million times over. The arch is pretty, but it’s really just one jewel of an exceptionally interesting landscape of slickrock.

The rock plummets off a massive escarpment into a canyon right behind the arch, and also off the side of the trail that you walk on during your approach. A deep round bowl on the front side of the arch prevents people from getting any different angle than what you normally see in typical photos. I found the bowl itself very interesting. It was probably 50 yards long and 25 wide with no outlet. Eventually my curiosity (and lack of being able to sit still) got the better of me and I wandered away to see if I could get down into that bowl.


Delicate Arch. Here you can see everything in the other pictures. The depth of the bowl, the other arch and little people on the rim that do a good job at demonstrating how large the cliff is in front of the Arch.

I began climbing around all over the place. There were a lot of neat little areas nearby, and I kept running into a few other people who had similar interests. Then the sun set and everyone started heading back to the parking lot en masse. That meant I had to run back. There was no way I could bear being stuck in post concert style traffic in the middle of nowhere.


Delicate Arch.

Speaking of Arches, across the street is a road that winds along the Colorado River. There is a little state park in the area that goes to a place called Corona Arch. It's a kind of a fun hike to a pretty arch that's like a scale model of Rainbow Bridge in Lake Powell.


Corona Arch