Day 1 – 3/14/16
16.1 map / 16.8 GPS miles

What a great start! Mike picked us up at 7:30 this morning and drove us to the start of his trail at the northern boundary of Arches National Park (thank you!!!).  Mike dubbed us ‘The K2 Expedition’ since our real names are Kate and Katie. After the obligatory “border” photos we started walking through Salt Valley on a gravel road.

After two miles on the road we departed to start the Devil’s Garden alternate route, cross countrying to the landmark rock pillar Dark Angel.

 

 

From here we picked up actual trail and, gasp, suddenly were amidst tons of day hiking tourists! It felt overwhelmingly crowded even though we’d just started our hike a couple of hours earlier.
The trail took us past many of the park’s arches. I’ve actually been down this trail at least once before, so the sites were familiar – still neat, but the crowds kept us from lingering.

 

 

We had lunch at the trail’s parking lot and then filled up on water at the campground. Then it was back to a some cross country and dirt road walking away from the crowds. For several miles we followed a natural gas pipeline to rejoin the official route. Starting late morning it got very windy and then we got rained on a bit in the afternoon.

 

 

Back on the main route it was pure cross country through sand, juniper and slick rock, eventually dropping into a wash before finding camp near a spring.

 

 

Oh and we were tipped off to some great “secret” petroglyphs. I won’t say where exactly they were other than that they’re in the park!