Hiking in Devil's Garden with Angels

Please stay with this story until the end - that’s where paralyzing panic, guardian angels and saviors come into play.

Our day dawned with sunshine and no clouds - a perfect day for hiking.  Except for Stephen, who was up most of the night with - shall we say - intestinal distress.  5 or 6 hours on a hot, hard trail with no services just didn’t seem like what he should be doing, so Ray & Rhonda and I set off to see the arches.  

There are 8 arches, which you can only view by hiking to them.  The route begins with a very easy, paved trail to Landscape Arch, which is famous for having a huge piece of the arch part fall off in 1991 while tourists were hiking around it, relaxing under it, and - luckily - video taping it. It is an amazing piece of tape watching the piece fall off and people scatter.  The entire arch is more than 300 feet across and the piece that fell off was 70 feet long!

Landscape Arch

After Landscape, we had to embark on a more challenging trail to see the others - Devil’s Garden Trail.  The trail is not marked with signs or arrows, just cairns - little piles of rocks which denote the trail.  It was quite challenging indeed, with very little flat walking.  We were hiking uphill, (the hike began with a climb on hands and knees up a rock slope), climbing on rocks, figuring out ways to get downhill, and walking across the top of a “fin” - sort of a long upside-down U shaped rock - which was very high off the ground - for probably 100 yards.  I was so far out of my comfort zone, I couldn’t believe it, but seeing the arches was worth it.  The views were amazing, the trails were very hard but not impossible.  

We reached the halfway point of our 7.3 mile hike after about 2 1/2 hours, and had seen all the arches by that time.  At this point, we had to make the decision of how to make our way back to the parking area and we chose the “primitive loop”. Partly because we didn't want to go down the hard areas we had come up, and because what is the fun in retracing your steps? 

No markings, and VERY challenging rock climbing.  The rocks here are called “Slickrock” because they are just that - very smooth with very few places you can use as footholds.  They’re tricky because they’re most often at a slant and that slant leads to a drop-off.  We hiked along for about two hours and had pretty much decided this “trail” was really more than we had bargained for as it was almost all climbing.  (I had stopped taking photos - just concentrating on one foot in front of the other)

Here are a few of Ray's photos that show the terrain we were navigating.

This is the "fin"

Yeah - we had to go down from here.

Then everything changed.  We came upon an area that required sliding down a steeply sloped drop down 10 or 20 feet to the next level.  We made it down - mostly sliding on our butts - after much trepidation and debate as to how to best get down. 

Then came the next one.  Around a 40 foot drop that had to be negotiated by scaling a wall of slickrock down to the next level with no hand or footholds that we could see.  Our landing spot was a ledge about 5 feet wide with a much bigger drop-off beyond.

As we stood there wondering how in the world we were going to do it and even considering turning back and doing everything we had just done for the last four or five hours in reverse!!  It seemed absolutely impassible.  This is where our guardian angels stepped in.  Out of nowhere come these two young men who literally saved our lives.  One of them was a rock-climbing instructor and he went down first to figure out the best route to take, then he and his friend came back up, anchored themselves below us and guided us down.  They told us where to put our feet and hands, and when we couldn’t reach the “footholds” they made a foothold out of their hands and held us there.  These footholds I'm talking about were mere pockmarks on this wall of slickrock.  Some people just needed some guidance - I needed a miracle.  I am not ashamed to admit - I was absolutely terrified, to the point of panic.  That young man got me off that cliff with calm instruction, encouragement, patience and more kindness than I would have imagined.  My whole body was trembling.  He talked to me constantly, reminded me to breathe, and got me to a place where I could finish it alone.  I was sliding down the final drop, just planning to fall off onto whatever was there, and I heard this new voice saying “Just come down here to me - I got you”.  I just launched myself into his arms to a huge hug and him saying “I got you, I got you, baby, you did it”.  Rhonda came off right after me, but somehow Ray had gotten back several people in the line and we were waiting for him to work his way down.  The climbing instructor was on the ledge with us by that time because he had helped us all down and he couldn’t get back up, even though he tried to get to Ray.  Did I mention he was doing all this in flip-flops?  The people left up there were on their own!  At this point, he disappeared for a few minutes, and came back with another young man who had knowledge and proper footwear to go up there to help the remaining people, along with a guy named Jeff who had been hiking with us, who flattened himself on the wall and began guiding people’s feet as the instructor had been.  As soon as Ray started down with the new helper, it began to rain - great. Then it POURED.  The instructor was standing next to me on the ledge and said "This is an incredibly dangerous situation here."  Ray and the others got down finally and (after our heartfelt thanks) all our helpers took off to complete their hikes and we set off to find the end of our trail. Ray told us the rain made all the difference because the rocks had been so slippery with sand and the rain provided traction.  The rain stopped almost the second they all got off the wall.  Of course, we spent the remaining mile and a half or so discussing what had just happened.  How the hell does a rock climbing instructor appear on the scene at the very moment we needed his help?  Where did he find the reinforcements to help the others once he was down?  And then as I was saying how thankful I was for the guy who had literally caught me as I came off the rock Rhonda says - “What guy?”  “The guy who caught me! Very large black man in a bright red jacket - how could you have missed him? You were right behind me!”  “Never saw any such guy”, she says. At that moment - realized I had never seen him again after he caught me.

So add this all up and guardian angels have got to be the answer.   I am the first one to doubt anything that smacks of hippie-dippie other-wordly nonsense, but not today.  I KNOW what happened.  

A rock climbing instructor? Reinforcements when needed?  Fortuitous rain?  A man catching me and then vanishing?  Amazing day, to be sure.  They were always here for me in life, and they’re obviously still on duty.  I will forever be impacted by this experience.

ps.  The big guy in the red jacket was my dad.  I will never doubt that.