2009-11-27 Canyonlands National Park: Mesa Arch and the Syncline Loop

Once again we rolled into camp in the dark and were up and out of camp before the sunrise. This morning’s early destination was the much vaunted Mesa Arch. It really is an amazing sight to see and much like Delicate Arch a very popular location.

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Mesa Arch at sunrise

The hike in to Mesa arch is really short and easy and at least 3 guys raced past Jamie and I on the trail only to bog down a few minutes later so that we could pass them. When we rounded the corner to the Mesa Arch Viewpoint this is what I saw

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The gathered crowd

There were easily 20 people gathered around waiting for the sunrise, and the closest was no more than 6ft away from the arch. It made for some weird conditions and unfortunately I wasn’t able to get any great full-arch shots that didn’t have at least two people in them. When the sun finally rose though it was amazing and once again completely worth the wait (and elbowing!)

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Mesa Arch at sunrise

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Mesa Arch at sunrise

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Desert at Sunrise

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Desert at Sunrise

Once we’d had our fill of tourists, sunrise, and empty bellies we headed back to our camp for a quick breakfast and then off for a hike on the Syncline Loop around Upheaval Dome.

The long version of the trip report will follow but I’ll suffice by saying: don’t waste your time! You’ll get a good enough view from the Overlook trail and unless you’re a geologist or masochist there really isn’t a good reason to do the Syncline Loop trail.

We’re always up for a little punishment and the 8mi, 1300ft elevation gain loop sounded great on paper. The Upheaval Dome sounded really cool as well and so we set off around the loop in a counter-clockwise fashion.

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Start of the Syncline Loop

The first part of the trail was easy enough to follow and took us through some really amazing geological features.

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Amazing rock valley we descended through

Before long though we were in the bottom of the canyon and completely in the shade of the huge sedimentary walls. The views were interesting but the temperatures were easily 10 degrees colder than up on the rim and we blasted through a lot of the terrain that way. There really wasn’t anything very interesting to see down there either, the valley just carried us around the loop and always in the shade of the huge walls.

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View of the Mesas from down in the canyon

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View of the Mesas from down in the canyon

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Spur to the inside of the crater

About 2/3 of the way around the loop we hopped on the spur to take us into the middle of the dome. I suppose the mistake we made here was not going to the lookout first so that we knew what we were hiking 2mi in to see!

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Trail to the inside of the crater

The trail followed an dried up drainage and took a very windy course, as waterways often do. By the time we got to the middle of the crater I had completely crashed from lack of food intake and was in a very foul mood! This could be colouring my perception of the Dome but all in all I wasn’t very impressed and I don’t think it was worth the effort to get there. Realizing my crashed state, before Jamie punched me in jugular for being grumpy, I wolfed down some food and perked back up for the rest of the hike.

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Desert Mesas

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View of the canyon

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View of the canyon

The trip out from the spur wasn’t grand, more of the same with a big climb at the end to get out of the canyon. All in all, I wouldn’t recommend this hike to anyone. It doesn’t capture the flavour of Canyonlands and there are no views to make it worthwhile. By contrast, the Murphy Loop was an excellent trail that had amazing and very worthwhile views!

That night we didn’t bother trying for sunset pictures, we bombed into Moab for a hotel night and a little Moab Brewery Action. The hotel was decent and it was a nice change from camping the whole time. The Moab Brewery on the other hand was a definite let down! The lines were long, the beer was only adequate, the food was mediocre, and the service was horrible! We were seated at a table near the door and the winter chill got us each time some one entered or exited. Jamie had a salad and I opted for the prime rib (hey, it was on special!) and while the food was good it was not nearly as great as we had hoped. I would put in on par with any chain kind of restaurant when we were really hoping for “Vine St” Level quality.

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