Fiery Furnace 2.0 Lesser Known Arches

Last March, we explored the Fiery Furnace. At the end of the hike, K was eager to explore it again, right then if we would have let him. That eagerness stayed with him. So, this week, we made it happen again. 

However, being adventurous people, we didn't want to just retrace our steps and see the same arches again. There are hundreds of arches inside the Fiery Furnace; surely we could find half a dozen new ones.

If you recall, last time, we missed one of the more common arches: The Inner Sanctum. From the picture above, you can see the we did indeed find it! Last time, there were already hikers up the slot canyon used to get to the arch. Without realizing the significance, we moved on.

While we tried out best to avoid other groups the last time we hiked, this time, even after our constant sidetrack explorations, we continually ran into the same two, very lost, groups. We helped them find arrows and reassured them that the small cliff ledge they had been looking at was indeed the trail.

Of course, the Fiery Furnace is one place you can freely explore without staying on the trail, as long as you stick to washes and rocks. 

Just probably not this rock.

We found some cool new places and around 10 new arches that we hadn't seen the first time. It certainly helped that we printed out a map of the general location of dozens of arches beforehand. Here is the only website I have found that list the general location of most of the Fiery Furnace arches.  https://www.cccarto.com/wmaps/arches/

Lesser Known Arches in the Fiery Furnace

If you don't have a printed map of where these arches might be, all is not lost. Right in the visitor center at Arches National Park, they have a kiosk that gives you the GPS coordinates of all the known arches in the park, including those in the Fiery Furnace. They also have pictures of the arches to help you identify them and the surrounding area.

When you get to the trailhead, turn right, do not take the trail straight ahead or you'll be doing the route backwards.

Going the right way, the trail immediately descends. Just below the Fiery Furnace viewpoint, on the right side of the trail, you'll find this arch. Look high.

Towards the beginning on the hike, you'll also see this one off to the left. (Not Kissing Turtle)

Once in the wash, you can explore the wash to the left. (I'm sure we missed arches there.) Or you can turn right, which is the designated trail. 

You won't stay on the trail for long before you come to a sign that says "Dead End". Some of my favorite arches are down that way. Go explore. But before you do, take a right, right at the the sign and find some more arches.

This one is tiny. Too tiny to be a "real" arch

Look close, this is a double arch.

Scramble up more rocks and look out at the view.  There's another arch out there.

We returned to the Dead End sign, and ignored it. Passing into the dead end, we made our way to Walk Through arch and Crawl Through arch. Did you know, there's a secret passageway behind Crawl Through arch with a whole other area to explore?

The catch...you have to climb up this.

I spotted K while he went up.

While I had confidence, I could get up, I did not have confidence I could get down. So, I stayed back.  

Bye!

They continued to the hallway of arches. There was at least 2-3 in there.

Arch in a "cave"

Channel your inner ninja.
This is how you get up there.

The cave actually goes all the way through.
So, does that make it a really big arch?

And you end up in a beautiful place...

...with a cool view.

Getting back onto the designated trail, we followed it to the next dead end sign. And promptly walked past into the dead end. That's where the coolest stuff is. About the 3rd off shoot to the right you will see a slot canyon and a wash right next to each other. Take the slot canyon.

If you're bigger than a child, it gets tight. I did crawl some of the way through.

It will look like this a first,
but Inner Sanctum is just around the corner.

K also climbed up this steep part near the arch.
Yes, we're raising a mountain goat.

From here, the twin arches are close. Turn right after you exit the slot canyon.  There are a lot of cool off shoots to explore here but we were running out of time. (And recent rain had flooded one of the paths.)

Back to the main trail we went. Once you go through the part pictured below, you are almost to Kissing Turtle arch. 

Promise this is the right way.

You might also see lots of wild life out there.

Our efforts to find Dream arch and Gateway arch somewhere around The Kissing Turtle arch were less than successful. We didn't find Sidetrack arch either. We did, however, ignore an arrow further down the trail and instead scrambled up the giant bolder pile in front of us. We found this.

Hole in the Fin Arch

Coming back to the trail, we saw another arch we missed last time. This one is down in a little valley. After you come through another slot canyon (the one where everyone gets lost from our last post) you look back and down to see this across the way.

Flat Iron arch

We made a quick stop at Surprise arch.

After climbing down the steps with the railing, we turned right and went up the wash to try to find more arches. It was getting late so we only had time to find Twister arch (It's big!). And we only knew it was an arch because we had seen a picture of it in the visitor's center. To see it, you walk up the wash looking up high on the canyon wall to the left. When we got to some very large boulders in the wash, we climb on top of them and that gave us the best view of  the twister.

We still have plenty more arches that we did not find. Because we have explored more of the first half, maybe next time we will walk the trail backwards and try to find hidden arches on that part of the trail. We know they're out there.