In spite of years of documenting all of the natural arches and bridges in Arches National Park (over 2000 of them), the park recently announced that they had overlooked one. A visitor to the park explained that they regularly visited a natural arch that they had never seen documented. The park personnel soon verified that somehow, this new arch was missing from their lists. The visitor called it “Private Arch” and that is the name the park gave it. When David and I heard about this, we HAD to investigate it.
We drove down to Arches National Park and parked in the Devil’s Garden trailhead parking lot. Our hike took us into the sandstone fins heading northwest past Landscape Arch and a few other arches until we got to Double O Arch.
(Now fallen)
We then left the main trail and headed northeast along Primitive Trail that cut through the sandstone fins. Not far into this cut, we turned southeast into the fins and climbed up to Hidden Arch.
Not far past Hidden Arch was Private Arch.
I can see how the park arch hunters had probably mistaken this arch for nearby arches and ignored it.
We finished the Primitive Trail loop hike and ended up back at the parking lot exhausted and ready to head home. I think even our cameras were tired.
