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| Delicate Arch of the West, AZ | |
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| | Delicate Arch of the West, AZ | | | |
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Delicate Arch of the West, AZ
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| Hiking | 1.07 Miles |
325 AEG |
| | Hiking | 1.07 Miles | 2 Hrs 33 Mns | | 0.71 mph |
| 325 ft AEG | 1 Hour 2 Mns Break | | | |
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| no linked trail guides |
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| partners | | I’d seen some pics of this arch posted by some hiking acquaintances and it tickled my curiosity. Something about the hunt for completely random locations is intriguing to me. The arch looked similar to the shape of delicate arch, yet was surrounded by desert terrain. Where oh where could it be?! 
I put my detective hat on and searched for clues on the interwebs. Once I narrowed down the general location, I scoured the terrain on google earth to see if I could nail it down. It took me a while to figure it out, but finally nailed down where I thought it was. I sent my pin to someone who’d been just to make sure I wasn’t way off, and turns out I was super close to the correct spot, woohoo!
Now to find friends willing to make the trip out there to hopefully find it. Want to drive over 2 hours to a random area of the desert on a really bad road to bushwhack for unknown mileage through boulders and cacti to potentially find a cool rock formation? Somehow, I got 3 people to join me! 
We knew from my research that the road got really bad, so we weren’t sure how far we’d be able to drive. Patrick is an expert at off roading and he was in the lead, so we actually made it way further than I’d expected. There were some aggressive ruts and I had Tessa on 2 wheels, which was super fun!
Anyway, we had no route so we’re just planning on winging it. We started hiking and pretty quickly were able to spot the arch in the distance. We navigated through a Boulder field with some fun route finding challenges. I’m pretty sure everyone got zapped by some form of cacti and Kara ripped her leggings butt scooting. 
We all made it to the arch! It was such a cool thing to find in the middle of nowhere. There was a box there that had a log book, so we all signed; it does not get a ton of visitors but the small book had about maybe 10 full pages. We took a super long break in the gorgeous weather and soaked in our surroundings.
We found an alternate route back up that was a bit more friendly terrain than the boulders and it created a little loop. The hike ended up being super short mileage wise given that we drove further than anticipated so we added a second stop for the afternoon.
Doing lots of research and then actually finding it is just so satisfying! |
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| Restless between adventures... |
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