DLive Southern Utah Series #7 - Cassidy Arch (Capitol Reef National Park)

Continuing our Southern Utah series, we end up in Capitol Reef National Park, a little drive from the more popular parks but definitely worth going to. I'm not sure why this national park isn't more popular, maybe because there are so many good ones in Utah, this one gets overlooked or driven by without stopping. But there is a lot to see here and many hikes to do that @toddhata and I had a bit of a hard time deciding the one thing that we should do since we only had time for one. We decided to hike to Cassidy Arch because the park ranger told us that it is an arch that you are actually allowed to walk on, which is rare in Utah for preservation and safety purposes. It sounded like an adventure so I insisted on this one. Not sure how much Todd really wanted to do it since we'd been hiking a lot the past few days. And once we got there we found out that we had to climb up almost 1,000 feet before the hike was done. We were both taken aback by that because we were already at a high elevation and didn't count on climbing so far up. But we both sucked it up because we were convinced it would be a great spot and be worth it all.

Let me back up a bit and show you some of what we drove past in Capitol Reef to get to the trailhead. Stunning cliffs and mountains and desert scenery that is hard to see anywhere else.

We drove into the Grand Wash which is one of the canyons in the park and where the trailhead to Cassidy Arch is. Fun fact: Cassidy Arch is named after Butch Cassidy, a famous American bank and train robber from the late 1800s who had a hideout in the Grand Wash.

The hike itself was steep in the first part of it but opened up to incredible viewpoints and intense sections of the path where it was not hard to get lost. We had to keep our eyes out for trail markers because the path had disappeared into smooth rock where the only indication of a trail was small stacks of rocks.

The arch itself seemed like it was cut out of the cliff and looked more like a natural bridge to me. But I didn't really care, I'm like, "I get to walk on it so I'm good". Walk around the clifftop that the arch is on and you get even more amazing views of the National Park.

This is certainly not the easiest hike in Utah but it is a very rewarding one.

Would you stand on the arch?

Music used:
Piano Rock Instrumental by Hyde - Free Instrumentals
https://soundcloud.com/davidhydemusic
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported— CC BY 3.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Lost in Translation by Steam Phunk feat. Lydia Ford
source
https://soundcloud.com/steamphunk
https://www.facebook.com/SteamPhunkOfficial

My video is at DLive