Arches NP: Fiery Furnace

A big day with multiple parts to it! We were lucky enough to snag a permit to explore the fiery furnace area of Arches National park (our 23rd US National park together). We weren’t able to get the ranger guided tour but probably enjoyed the self guided one better overall. You have to go to the visitor center to pick up a physical permit which requires you to watch a short video on how to stay safe and keep the environment pristine. The soil crust here is alive and one step on it destroys it, taking 100 years to regenerate. If you stay on rock or the sandy wash areas, all is good. Other than that they encourage you to explore as much as possible as there is no real trail. There’s a 2 mile loop with small, somewhat hidden arrows that help the rangers keep on track and you can download this map on AllTrails (which we did). This helped greatly for us to not get completely lost in the maze of towering rocks while exploring spur trails and dead ends. In the safety video you also are encouraged to speak softly to let everyone enjoy the serenity of the area as the rocks amplify and bounce sounds around. This led to us exploring the beautiful area in near complete silence for 4 hours. There are only a few animals in this harsh environment, including lizards (which we saw) and shrimp!! (Which we didn’t see). The magnitude of how large and intricate these formations are is impossible to capture. A good chunk of the trail is squeezing through tight cracks in the massive boulders, sometimes barely wider than our shoes! Some scrambling was involved, but nothing scary or exposed which was nice. Absolutely amazing.Read more