Saturday morning found my brother and I headed for the San Rafael Swell area in my Ford Explorer and pulling the ATVs trailer. We were heading for the Middle Desert area south of Moore Utah, northeast of Capital Reef National Park. We unloaded the ATVs south of the I70 freeway and headed south on the Last Chance Wash, pausing occasionally for any pictures we cared to stop for.
Including a quick stop at the black dike the road passes near.
When we hit the end of the dirt road in Last Chance Wash, the trail split for roads heading either east or west. Last Chance Wash was too rocky for a vehicle trail to continue down the wash but it is a great place for hiking.
The day was partially cloudy which was a nice break from the cloudless and hot weather that Utah was experiencing for the last month or so. We even saw a little rain in the distance but nothing to threaten our hours of exploring Last Chance Wash.
The first couple of miles of Last Chance Wash was fairly boring since the terrain was mostly loose dirt hills.
As the wash deepened into a serious canyon, we finally hit sandstone levels and began looking for natural arches. Though the sandstone wasn’t the type where natural arches are plentiful, any kind of rock can produce at least small ones. Sure enough, before long we had found several small class ‘D’ arches and one class ‘C’ arch.
And that was about all we expected.
We were almost ready to turn around and head back when we rounded one last bend in the wash to discover a beautiful and large class ‘B’ arch in the east cliffs.
We called it Last Chance Wash Arch (of course) and wondered how many people had ever seen it in this obscure wash/canyon.
By the time we made it back to the main Last Chance Wash road, we ended up driving the ATVs back to the Explorer (many dusty miles away) in the dark.
Another perfect day in the Utah desert!