It seemed like a great alternative to dying.  The morning started great.  We drove 50 miles from Indian Creek to climb the Unbalanced Rock in Arches National Park.  After climbing seventy feet up a wide crack without finding  a single spot to place any climbing gear to protect us from a fall, my common sense kicked in, and we descended.  It was a rare event for me.  Safe on the ground, Noel suggested we visit the Fiery Furnace instead of climbing.   We stopped at the visitor center, paid our fee and watched the mandatory film on proper travel techniques in the delicate desert.  The drive through the park was beautiful on the cold, clear, windy morning.

Driving north on the Arches park road, the fins and towers of the Fiery Furnace appear as a crenelated fortress barring the way.  However, looking at the geologic landscape you can see how enormous salt domes, underlying the red sandstone strata were dissolved leaving a series of huge valleys over hundreds of miles along the Colorado Plateau. 

The red fins of the Fiery Furnace and the area northeast of Salt Valley are carved out of Slick Rock sandstone.  The Slick Rock formed during the Jurassic Period, about 150 million years ago.  During the Jurassic, the Colorado Plateau experienced extensive eolian (wind deposited) sand seas, called ergs. The region was located at the same latitude as today’s trade wind belt:  hot winds sweep in a south-westerly direction towards the equator, drying up any moisture along the way.  This is the same latitude as the Sahara and Arabian deserts.  During the Jurassic Period, the climate of the Colorado Plateau would have been like the Sahara.   As the earth's tectonic plates moved during the Jurassic, South America was separating from Texas coast;  Europe and Africa were drifting from North America.  High mountains to the west of the Colorado Plateau were depositing tremendous volumes of sand into the basin that would become Arches and Canyonlands National parks.  Today, the Arabian Desert is 30% covered by sand.  The deserts in the Jurassic period, the time of the dinosaurs, were formed over 40 million years, and the volume of sand was staggering by comparison.  The Slick Rock sandstone cliffs are 200 to 350 feet thick.


As the salt domes underneath the sandstone dissolved, the rock cracked into thousands of joints (cracks), towers, and fins.  The trail led to the bottom of the canyons, where it broke into a true labyrinth of thin joints.  The air was cool, since the sun rarely reaches to the bottom of the cliffs and pinnacles. 


My camera stayed at the ready.  Every few feet looked new, and I wanted to take pictures from every viewpoint.  The stubby junipers, called cedar trees by my grandfather, are the largest plant.  From time to time a bit of color from a late blooming flower would catch my eye.


Time flew by.  I was mesmerized by the landscape and lost track of both time and location.  It didn't matter, because water flows downhill, and we could always follow a waterway to a bigger one until we found the way out.


Chris and Noel seemed to be enjoying the area as much as I was.  We were three climbers, now reduced to tourists, having stepped back 150 million years in geologic time and back to childhood in our enthusiasm and curiosity.


From time to time we would dead end in a wall of rock, or a slot would narrow beyond our ability to continue, so we would turn around and find another route, a true labyrinth.  Looking up we could see a double arch, like a giant pair of eyes looking at us.  I wanted to climb up and out an eyeball, but the rock was steep and overhanging in parts.