The Devil’s Garden Trail is the best hike in Arches National Park.   It starts at the end of the road and heads north through the fins.

Eight arches can be seen along the route.   We chose to the Primitive Loop which swung out to the east side across sand dunes and over slickrock to Fin Creek Canyon.  Some of the traverses require slickrock scrambling and the trail is interesting all the way to Double O Arch.

Some of the arches require a hike out on a side trail and back, but these are all rewarding diversions.   We added some of our own routes and found two more arches not shown on the Park Map.   We also took the trail over to the Dark Angel, a pinnacle of rock on the hillside.   Double O arch seems to be the stopping point for lunch for most hikers and it can be hard to get a photo that is not full of people (this is true of all of the accessible arches).   On the way back, we were surprised that the route crossed ramps, slickrock, and one section even crossed the narrow spine of a fin.   The wind was gusting so we had to sit down at one point before the final crossing.   Along the way is Landscape Arch, the longest span in the world (a separate article on this).   Spires, fins, arches, ramps, alcoves, and canyons are found around every corner of the 11.5km hike.

Every year we try to feature the best hike of the year.   This one, is one of the very best hikes we know.

Note – We used a slideshow plugin for this post which has since been removed so a number of photos were added in a grid format 3 years later.