Info/Tip
Weather – In Summer it can get very hot, during our visit it has reached 109 in the afternoon. There is little to no shades in the park, so plan accordingly. We broke our days into early morning and late afternoon visits to the park to avoid the mid day sun.
Crowd – Arches is one of the most visited national parks in Utah, in 2021 there is no reservation system in place like some other populate national parks, instead the park closes the entrance when the park reaches capacity. In June/July 2021 most days the gate were closed sometime between 8-9am and didn’t reopen till 2-4 hours later. Due to this and the hot weather we went into the park either before 9am or after 5pm and the crowd was not too bad and we were able to find parking at trailheads.
Things to Do
Fiery Furnace
Get tour reservation tickets! This is a super fun maze like trail. In past years the park offers ranger guided tour as well as self guided tour. In 2021 only self guided tour was available. If this is your first time highly recommend to purchase the guide from Fieryfurnacetour. With the guide we felt safe to explore and were able to see all the side canyon and hidden arches. This was our favorite hike in Arches.
For the self guided tour it is required to visit the visitor center either the day of or the day before tour date to listen to safety instructions. A permit will be given to the group that needs to be displayed during your hike.
There is no set trails, there are a few trail marks but some of them are difficult to spot. The guide mentioned above was helpful in guiding the way. Be prepared to climb, scramble, squeeze, crawl your way through fiery furnace. So much fun! We started the hike around 7:30am and spent about 3 to 3.5 hours in Fiery Furnace.
canyons 
Climb 
side canyons 
narrow 
crawl 
over or under? 
Squeeze 
fiery furnace 
Surprise Arch 
rocks 
Skull Arch
Delicate Arch
3 miles round trip. There is no shade on this trail and a section of the hike is going over slickrock. We went around sunset and the color of the arch was beautiful. We waited till dark and hiking back with a flashlight was a different experience, it’s definitely difficult to find the trail in the dark.
Delicate Arch 
Under Delicate Arch 
Hike up in the sun 
Hide down in the dark
Devils Garden
The hike to Landscape Arch from Devils Garden trailhead is 1.9 miles round trip. There are two smaller Arch on the way Tunnel Arch and Pine Tree Arch. Beyond Landscape Arch there are options to continue on to Navajo Arch or Double O Arch, the trail becomes more challenging and requires climbing on slickrock. We only did the hike to Landscape Arch and a little further to view the Wall Arch.
Landscape Arch 
Trail beyond Landscape Arch 
finding little shade 
Pine Tree Arch 
Tunnel Arch
Sand Dune Arch, Broken Arch and Skyline Arch are on the way to Devils Garden and are short hikes from parking lot
under Sand Dune Arch 
Trail to Sand Dune Arch 
Sand Dune Arch
Windows Section
The windows 1 mile round trip loop includes Turret Arch, North Window Arch and South Window Arch. Across the parking lot a short 0.5 miles round trip to Double Arch.
Turret Arch 
North & South Window Arch 
South Window Arch 
Double Arch 
Double Arch 
View from Double Arch
Balanced Rock is on the way to the Windows Section. 0.3 miles round trip loop around the Balanced Rock is easy and flat.
Park Avenue & Courthouse Towers
From Park Avenue parking lot a 2 miles round trip to Courthouse Towers and back.
Stargazing
Arches is a Dark Sky park, park ranger recommended either the windows section or panorama point for stargazing. We stopped at both and were not disappointed, the milky way was amazing. Learning how to take astrophotography using Canon EOS RP with aperture f/4, ISO 6400, 20 – 30 seconds, no post processing.
Back to Colorado & Utah trip Summary
No Responses