Fiery Furnace
Wednesday 21 September, 2022
Interior of the Fiery Furnace.
One of the most exciting places in Arches National Park is the Fiery Furnace, a collection of geologic fins. In the late Paleozoic, this area was covered by a large inland sea known as the Paradox Sea. At various times during its history, the Paradox Sea, like present-day Mono Lake, had no drainage, and so salt and other minerals were concentrated in the area as the lake evaporated. Then, about 275 million years ago, the ancestral Rocky Mountains began to lift, tipping the area to its side. The salt ran down the slope and accumulated in lumps called anticlines, forming sandstone. Rain then fell on the sandstone, dissolving the salts. The outer layers of the brittle sandstone cracked and fell in on themselves, leaving tall fins with narrow cracks between. [Geology Underfoot in Southern Utah, Orndorff, Wieder, & Futey, 2006]
In more scrambling online with recreation.gov before the trip, we had managed to secure permits for a self-guided tour of the Fiery Furnace. This meant that we were committed to the Fiery Furnace for Wednesday; we could not wait for better weather, a day on which we might see the sunlit glow for which the Fiery Furnace is named. While the thunderstorms that Susie had predicted failed to materialize, the day was damp and drizzly. The experience of moving all of our carefully arranged gear around (and then, of course, having to rearrange it in the morning in order to be able to operate the vehicle) had left me so demoralized that I was unable to get up before 7:00. We found a package of ground turkey ominously swollen, and disappointedly discarded it. We had leftover fajitas for breakfast, and eventually were ready to approach the Fiery Furnace.
While the Fiery Furnace is fairly close to the campground at the north end of the park, the Park Service requires hikers to pick up permits at the Visitor Center, far down at the southern end of the park. Yet another inefficiency that leads to more traffic. The reason is that the Park Service requires visitors to watch an 8-minute safety video, to protect both hikers and the Furnace itself. We sat in the parking lot and watched the video online, hoping to minimize our time indoors. When we went inside to get our permits, there were two rangers, one masked and one unmasked. We hoped for the masked one, and we were lucky. Ranger Rachel told us that she was required to make us watch the video again, but she understood our COVID concerns and told us she could take us into the theater and set it up right then, and we could watch it all by ourselves.
The video was attractively produced and had a lot of pretty scenery, and it was nicer to watch it on something larger than a phone screen. Just as it finished (having expertly timed it, almost to the second), Ranger Rachel came into the theater with our permits. She sat a distance away from us, went over the procedures, and gave us the permit. Then she let us out a back door of the theater so we wouldn't have to go through the crowded exhibition part of the Visitor Center again. We were extremely grateful to Ranger Rachel.
Our permit, photographed by Eric.
It was just about 14:00 before we finally drove back up to the Fiery Furnace and started hiking. Ranger Rachel had told us that our permits would expire at 19:00, as sunset was around 19:30. With so many exciting sites to explore in Arches, we weren't planning on spending quite that much time at this one location, but...
Some of the hiking was through relatively open spaces like this.
There were all sorts of crevasses to explore. Eric took this picture of me taking a picture of one. Look at the slope of the rock under my boots.
The crevasse I was photographing in the previous photo.
As we rounded the corner of each fin, we found overselves in an excitingly different place. Photo by Eric.
The pathways became more narrow as we continued.
We took a side trail to see Surprise Arch, high above between two fins.
Many hikers turn around after Surprise Arch, but we wanted to follow a longer loop trail around through other parts of the Furnace. The hiking, however, became more difficult.
We squeezed through tight corridors like this. Photo by Eric.
And even tighter ones like this, with my compact tripod! Photo also by Eric.
Then we would come out of the tight corridors into rocky wonderlands such as this.
On and off, we were hiking in a drizzle. The Park Service video had warned that water and fallen sand both make slickrock even slicker.
I posed for Eric above a deep fissure.
It was hard hiking, perhaps the hardest we've ever done. We came out of one corridor and had to hike along a slickrock slope with a steep, exposed dropoff into the canyon.
The high walls around us had fascinating patterns.
I admired sculpted patterns in the rock.
I found some beautiful lichen.
We accidentally hiked the loop in the wrong direction, which may have added additional challenges for us. In one place, we had to ascend a slope that was very close to being a technical climb. The sandstone broke under our grip as we tried to climb it. Eric had to push my butt in order for me to get up, and then managed the ascent by putting a rock at the bottom to use as a step.
For all of our difficulty, we saw amazing sites, like Lomatium Arch.
As we exited the inside of the Furnace and came out for the final ascent to the parking lot, the sun finally came out and lit the Furnace up in the fire for which it is named.
The Fiery Furnace was one of the most unusual, intense and rewarding hikes we have ever done. While there were some heart-stopping moments when I thought we'd have to turn back, we managed the entire loop of geologic wonder. We completed the circuitous trail and were back in the parking lot at exactly 18:59! We had not wanted to disappoint Ranger Rachel.
Map of our Fiery Furnace excursion.
While we escaped the Furnace alive and uninjured, Eric's pants and shirt did not survive all of the butt-scrambling of the Furnace. His pocket camera, inadequately protected by this particular cargo pocket, took a particular beating -- it needed careful TLC for all usage over the remainder of the trip. Photo by Eric.
On to Delicate Arch.