HIKING HAPPENINGS - December 2024

It’s possible I saw the LIFE magazine lying on my parents’ living room coffee table back in April of 1953. Not yet a reader, I would have asked my mother to find out about the cover. “Delicate Arch,” she would have told me. “It’s in Utah.” Delicate Arch has become iconic, gracing magazine covers and Utah license plates. The torch relay passed beneath it on its way to Salt Lake City for the 2002 Winter Olympics. Featured on mugs, tote bags, shirts, patches, and hoodies, to many Americans, Delicate Arch is Utah.

On this chilly, cloudy morning, I drive 11.7 miles north into Arches National Park to see this geologic superstar. I take the park’s main road and turn right/east, after the Panorama Point turnoff, to Delicate Arch and Wolfe Ranch. The largest free-standing arch in the park, Delicate’s thick striding legs are the destination for adventure pilgrims from around the world. Formed from an Entrada sandstone fin, it has weathered and eroded within a panhole (a depression or basin). Snow like sifted flour covers the La Sal Mountains to the east.

For thousands of years indigenous peoples harvested plants and followed precious water sources across this landscape. In 1888, Civil War veteran John Wesley Wolfe moved from Ohio to claim 100 acres near Delicate Arch for his homestead, raising crops and 1,000 head of cattle at the confluence of three washes. Wolfe also hoped southeast Utah’s arid climate would improve his health, specifically a troublesome leg wound he’d suffered at the Siege of Vicksburg in 1863.

In 1929, President Herbert Hoover signed an executive order creating Arches National Monument, with Marvin Turnbow as its first custodian. Turnbow joined the 1933-34 Arches National Monument Scientific Expedition where expedition leader Frank Beckwith and his scientists named many of the landforms they studied, including Delicate. Beckwith wrote it was “[t]he most delicately chiseled arch in the entire area.” Turnbow later bought Wolfe Ranch. In 1971, President Richard Nixon signed the law changing Arches into a national park.

In addition to the hike that passes Wolfe’s cabin and continues on to Delicate, you can view it from a distance at the Lower and Upper Viewpoints. Continue past the main trailhead another 1.2 miles, and the road ends at a parking area for both. Lower: a level walk of 100 yards presents a view of the arch about a mile away. Upper: a half mile walk with steps offers a less-obstructed observation point.

The main trail’s gravel paths, planked bridges, paved walkways, steps, swollen humps of slickrock, sandy washes, smooth rocky ramps, and stunning petroglyphs: this hike has it all! Once you get over the extended slickrock climb, the trail puts you among huge sandstone domes. You’ll follow arrowed signs along the way. Closer to Delicate Arch, look up and to the right to see Frame Arch (also called Twisted Doughnut), providing a dramatic setting for your photograph of Delicate.

A four-foot-wide ramp leads me the last 200 yards as I approach the arch viewpoint. This is the most exposed part of the hike. The rampway’s 25 to 30% grade can become slick with rain, snow, ice, or even dry sand, so take great care. And keep an eye on your kids. Encourage them to hug the wall, hold hands, or, depending on their age, weight, and temperament, grasp your pant leg or rucksack strap. You may want to carry them in your arms or in a front- or backpack carrier. This is no place for high jinks.

I finally come around the corner and greet Delicate Arch, joining clumps of lounging visitors, some sitting quietly, some laughing and chattering (quite a few in French), while some are absorbed in photographing the scene. I don’t mind the company; in fact, I welcome the opportunity to chat up some hikers from Idaho, Maryland, Texas, and Virginia. LIFE magazine didn’t survive regular weekly publication beyond 1972, but regal, stoic, sturdy Delicate Arch is—and will be remembered—forever.