Arches National Park

Arches National Park tickets and tours: which one to book

Arches is the park of red sandstone arches beside Moab in eastern Utah, and its entrance has been the most managed in the national park system: from April to October a timed-entry ticket, booked online in advance, is required to enter between 7 am and 4 pm, on top of the vehicle entrance fee, and the Moab tour operators, who hold their own permits, are the way in for people who missed the ticket. The half-day and sunset tours from Moab drive the scenic road in vans to the Windows, Balanced Rock and Delicate Arch viewpoint with a guide, and the morning versions add a short walk;

the 4×4 tours take the sand tracks in the park's north to the Tower Arch and the Klondike Bluffs that the paved road misses, and the hiking tours guide the Delicate Arch trail or the Devils Garden loop, with the night-photography tours for the stars over the arches, since the park is a dark-sky reserve. The scenic flights from Moab's airfield fly over Arches and Canyonlands in half an hour. The multi-day tours that string the Utah parks together from Las Vegas, Denver or Salt Lake give Arches an afternoon. Independent visitors reserve the timed entry as soon as it is released or enter before 7 am or after 4 pm without one, which in summer is the better plan anyway; the guided ranger walks into the Fiery Furnace need their own permit.

Visiting Arches National Park: what you will see

The park was made a national monument in 1929 and a national park in 1971, and covers about 310 square kilometres of high desert on the Colorado Plateau above the Colorado river north of Moab, where more than two thousand natural arches, the highest density in the world, have been eroded from the Entrada sandstone above a salt bed that buckled the rock into fins and let the water and frost cut through them. Delicate Arch, standing alone on the rim of a sandstone bowl with the La Sal mountains behind, is the symbol of Utah and the park's pilgrimage, reached by a trail of five kilometres up the slickrock that is walked at sunset by hundreds; Landscape Arch in the Devils Garden, a ribbon of rock ninety metres across and thinning by rockfalls, is the longest arch in North America, and the Devils Garden trail continues past Double O and Partition arches to the loop through the fins.

The Windows section has the North and South Windows and the Double Arch, two arches sharing a pillar, a short walk from the road, with Turret Arch and the Balanced Rock, a boulder on a pedestal, nearby; the Fiery Furnace is a maze of fins and canyons entered only with a ranger or a permit, and the Park Avenue trail walks a canyon between walls like a city street. The Courthouse Towers and the Petrified Dunes line the road, and the Tower Arch in the north-west needs a 4×4 or a long walk. The desert holds bighorn sheep, mule deer, coyotes, ravens and the collared lizards on the rocks, and the cryptobiotic soil crust that the signs beg visitors not to step on is the desert's living skin. The park receives about 1.5 million visitors a year on one road.

Arches National Park: best time to go, seasons and hours

The park is open around the clock, with the visitor centre from about 8 am to 4 or 5 pm and the timed-entry system from April to October. Spring from March to May and autumn from September to October are the best seasons, with warm days and cool nights; summer from June to August is very hot, above 38 degrees, with afternoon thunderstorms and the trails walked only at dawn and dusk;

winter is cold and clear with snow on the arches and no crowds. Delicate Arch at sunrise has a tenth of the sunset crowd. Allow a full day for the road and two walks, a second for the Devils Garden loop and the Fiery Furnace. Canyonlands is half an hour west, Dead Horse Point on the same road, and Moab is the town at the gate.