It was October and the heat of the summer was finally passing. On October 21st, David and I decided to head to Moab for the day to see how many natural arches we could visit.
The first arch was west of the Moab highway about 13 miles northwest of Moab. Slickenslides Arch is a class “C’ sized arch in full view of passing motorist on the Moab highway. However, since you are looking at the arch from the end, it is almost impossible to tell that it is a natural arch unless you approach it from the side — which is what we did.
Once we were back in the vehicle we continued down the highway to the Island-in-the-sky road which let us enter the north end of Canyonlands Nation Park. From the Vistor’s Center we continued south on the main park road for two miles to the Lathrop Trailhead. The Lathrop trail heads southeast but we traveled almost directly east along the canyon rim until we reached Longbow Arch, a class ‘C’ sized arch hanging over on the rim of the canyon.
It was only a mile hike to the arch but we got soaked by a localize thunderstorm on the way back.
[Longbow Arch is an unfortunate name for this arch since there is another Longbow Arch just west of Moab on Poison Spider Mesa.]
Back at the vehicle, we turned around and headed back towards Moab again. Once the highway joined Seven-mile Canyon, we turned right up the dirt road for 1.5 miles so we could visit Streak Arch, a large class ‘B’ arch hanging on the left (south) cliff.
Unfortunately, that was all the time we had for arch hunting. October daylight is shorter and we had to head for home.