At the Trail Head. "Which way to go? We turned Left!

This trail was a most interesting one as much of the trail is essentially unpaved. We would find ourselves walking on either fine, loose sand or smooth sandstone surfaces. The first Arch that we saw along the trail after walking for 1.3km, Landscape Arch.

Landscape Arch

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Photo taken from Devil's Garden Trail Guide. Landscape Arch is one of the world's longest free-standing natural arches. It's a narrow ribbon of stone 93.3 m long that appears to defy gravity as it floats above a steep dune.

Double O Arch

"After passing by Landscape Arch, the trail seems to get harder and harder as most of the trail was no longer on level ground. Most of the times, we had to climb and walk onto the smooth rock surfaces. At times, when it was hard to climb up the rock surfaces, we would have to make use of steps that were cut out of the rock surfaces to aid our climb upwards. As the trail was mostly on either loose sand or rock surfaces, it was difficult for the park to erect signboards to demarcate the trails, instead, piles of rocks known as rock cairns were left along the trail to mark the way for hikers to follow."

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This is an example of how the rock cairns looked like. The trick was to sight the next cairn before continuing on the trail to avoid getting lost. ;) "To me, part of the fun of this trail was the sighting of these cairns, which was not always easy to spot, found it to be more like a game, rather akin to playing hide-and-seek with the cairns ;) Of cos, some of my frenz could not resist adding more little rocks to increase the height of these rock piles to make them more visible, after the hard time that we had trying to locate these cairns ;p"

Part of the highlights of the hike to the Double O was the part where the trail left the relatively safer sanctury of walking between the rock fins, to walking on the rock fins itself.

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These are the rock fins that we had to walk on, in order to reach the Double O Arch!

Having some fun on the rock fins!

Me on the rock fins! A word of advice for those with acrophobia...dun look down when u're here!

Somewhere along the Trail to the Double O Arch.

After much hard work walking and climbing for another 2.1 km, we finally reached the Double O Arch. The Double O Arch is so named because it consists of two arches; a larger circular one that is 48.8m wide, hanging above a smaller bore.

This is the view seen from the bigger circular arch of the Double O.

"We stayed on at the Double O Arch for a while to admire the beautiful surroundings cast in the glow of the setting sun, watching the interplay of shadows as the sun slowly sets. After taking a break, we decided to turn back as there's a lot of distance, approximately 3.4 km in all, to cover before the sun sets, which will plunge the entire trail into darkness. Guess it's probably familiarity with the trail (as we're taking the same route back), coupled with a sense of urgency to get back to the trail head before the sun sets, Carol and I led the way instead. As I'm probably the one who slows the entire party down whenever we go for hikes;p, my faster speed hastened our hike back, to the extent that we actually covered the way back in about half the time taken to get to the Double O from the trail head...hmm...:P ( Yes...guess the guys were very astounded at my speed....so much so to the extent that I've been praised to have incredible homing instinct and that my "incredible"speed crossing the rock fins made it look as if I actually "float" on the rocky terrain..haha) The sight of the surrounding rocky barren landscape cast in shadows reminded us of the setting used in the cartoon "Land Before Time". Partly to take our minds of the distance that we have to cover, and partly inspired by our surroundings, we started to sing the theme song from "Land before time" all the way thru and a medley of other songs along the way back untill we reach the trailhead. For someone who loves singing like me, this really added a whole new feel to our entire hike...... Simply Unforgettable :)

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After the hike to the Double O Arch. Tired, but absolutely satisfied with the most rewarding hike!

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