Our goals for today were very simple: sleep in, rest up, and try to find the final 3 arches by the east entrance of the park.
We didn't do too well with the sleep in, but we had a leisurely morning. We worked on images and made changes to our backup routines. We're both shooting more images than anticipated, so we had to move images and backups to different external drives and off our laptop drives. It was a boring pain.
After lunch, we returned to the east end of the park and embarked on our quest to find At Least 5 Hole Arch and Pretzel Arch. Then, we would shoot Little Mosquito Arch at sunset. It sounded very simple, but it turned out that the GPS coordinates for At Least 5 Hole Arch were off just enough to be behind the ridge that GoogleEarth showed. We hunted all over the alcove of jumbled formations on the west side of the ridge, but finally had to give up to ensure we would get to Little Mosquito in time for sunset.
Since it was my third time to Little Mosquito
, we had no problem finding it.
By the time we reached it, we were both pretty worn out. Hiking up and down the sand hills looking for At Least 5 Hole Arch had wiped us out.
Luckily, there was a little shady area near Little Mosquito where we could catch our breath, get some water, and take a break.
One of the great things about Little Mosquito is that it lines up with several formations to the east, as well as providing a window to the mountains on the other side of Lake Mead. As sunset approached, the color on the arch intensified and the rock formations in the distance seemed to glow. We had about 45 minutes to shoot around Little Mosquito before a ridge put an abrupt stop to our "sunset" at 4:50. It was then that I spotted At Least 5 Hole Arch on the Little Mosquito side of the ridge and exactly in line with where the sun had been. It was in the shade, but it was obviously the arch we had been looking for. It was just one ridge east of where we expected it to be.
Even though the lighting wasn't very good, we shot around At Least 5 Hole Arch to check out the possible angles and scouted it for our next trip back to Valley of Fire. Now that we know where it is, it should be an excellent late-afternoon destination next time.
We never did find Pretzel Arch. The guide book said it's hard to spot, and we ran out of time. The problem with the GPS is that it can be 15 - 100 feet off. In areas like Valley of Fire, 100 feet can make it on the opposite side of the ridge from where you think it will be.
We feel like we've done well at finding arches. We found all the ones in the guide book except Pretzel and Pagoda Arch, and we've found hundreds of unnamed arches and windows. No matter how many times someone visits Valley of Fire, he or she will always see new stuff. Different time of day, different time of year, bright areas and shadows all provide a different perspective and allow you to see new formations you never noticed before. Valley of Fire is incredible. Even though we've been here 12 days, it's going to be hard to leave tomorrow.
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