Landscape and Corona Arch

We went to Moab to explore the area and do some photography exploration over a week-long period. We arrived late on Sunday and left early on Friday which gave us 4 full days of hiking in this beautiful area. The weather cooperated most mornings and a few evenings for golden hour photography, but we got a variety of lighting from overcast, snowing, foggy, and full sun. In total, we hiked a little over 30 miles and over a mile in elevation on this trip. We came to the same conclusion that our favorite type of hiking is the type where we're alone or hiking with very few people so that we can enjoy nature to the fullest extent, as well as get a perfect photo with no one in it.

Wer're right at half-way through our trip at the start of this day and we're pretty exhausted. But we're here so we knew we had to venture on. Because the forecast for our last day was looking pretty bad, we decided to try and do all the things we had left on our list today. The morning started out early, which resulted in us getting to the Devil's Garden area before anyone else to make sure we were at Landscape Arch before the sun came up. We ended up getting there a little too early and waited around for about an hour at Landscape Arch before the sun finally broke through the clouds and above the large rock features to the East of the arch that was providing shade to it. I'm not sure that this arch even gets to benefit from a golden hour, but as soon as it lit up we got some good lighting that we took some photos and continued on.

We didn't intend to keep hiking past Landscape Arch, but Double O Arch was only one more mile from where we were, or so the sign said. It was closer to 1.5 miles, but we didn't know that when we decided to keep going. We didn't have adequate footwear or water (because we weren't planning on continuing on) which definitely made this hike harder than it should have been. Double O Arch was just as I remembered it 7 years ago in that it wasn't very photogenic. I don't think there's a time where the arch is ever fully lit up, so there were some harsh shadows on it. But the hike to get there was pretty scenic with Fin Canyon just to the East of us. Knowing that I wasn't going to get any good photos of Double O Arch helped me enjoy the hike a little bit more.

We took a pretty large break in the middle of the day. The morning hike was over 5 miles and resulted in us being outside for over three hours, so we knew we had to rest up to do another somewhat lengthy hike in the evening. Our evening plan was to head over to Bowtie Arch and Corona Arch which is supposed to get good evening golden hour lighting. This time, we decided to grab some sandwiches to take with us since all our evening hikes have started around 5 and we haven't gotten back into town until about 8. We got to the trailhead and hiked up to the arch and it did not disappoint. Corona Arch is in a pretty open area and we got there about 45 minutes before sunset which gave us plenty of time to take photos of both sides of the arch and eat our dinner and relax while the sun went down. I ended up running back and forth between the East and West side of the arch, and the map reflects that craziness that is being a photographer.

Of all the places we went on this trip, both Katie and I liked Corona Arch the best because of the spectacular sun setting views and also the lack of people. We definitely went on hikes with fewer people, but the people that we encountered were other photographers (who stayed out of our way) or courteous picnickers (who also stayed out of our way).