Devil's Garden Trail Guide: Arches National Park's Longest Hike

Devil’s Garden sits at the end of the road. Literally. The main park road runs 18 miles from the visitor center to this trailhead, and there’s nothing after it. That distance keeps the casual visitors down. The people here came for this specific trail.

They came for the right reason. This is the best hike in Arches.

Two Completely Different Hikes

Devil’s Garden offers two options that share only a trailhead. Pick the right one for your group.

The Landscape Arch out-and-back covers 4.2 miles round trip with 190 feet of gain. The trail is largely paved and flat, and it passes Tunnel Arch and Pine Tree Arch on short side spurs before reaching Landscape Arch at 2.1 miles. This is an easy hike that any reasonably fit visitor can do. It ends at one of the longest natural arches in the world.

The full primitive loop is a different undertaking entirely. Seven-point-two miles, 1,100 feet of gain, route finding on sandstone fins, Class 2 scrambling in places, no shade, and no water. It passes eight named arches and requires real navigation attention on the back half. This is a strenuous hike for people who are comfortable on exposed terrain and prepared for a long desert day.

Most first-time visitors to Arches should do the Landscape Arch out-and-back. It’s not the consolation prize. Landscape Arch is extraordinary.

Landscape Arch

At 290 feet span, Landscape Arch is one of the longest natural arches on earth. It’s also among the thinnest. The rock ribbon at its narrowest point is about 6 feet thick, holding up a span that crosses nearly a football field.

It won’t always look this way. In 1991, a 60-foot slab of rock fell from the arch’s underside. In 2008, another piece fell. The arch is actively thinning. What you’re looking at is a formation in the process of collapsing over a geological timeframe, which makes it feel more urgent to see than a more stable arch.

The trail stays back from the arch on the approach. You won’t walk under it directly, which is the right call. Standing beneath 290 feet of increasingly thin stone that periodically drops slabs is not something the park encourages.

The viewing area gives you the full span clearly. Spend time here. The light changes the color of the rock significantly across the day.

The Primitive Section

Past Landscape Arch, the maintained trail ends. A sign marks the transition. Most day hikers turn around here.

What follows is the primitive route, and it requires a change in how you move. The trail doesn’t exist in the usual sense. You’re following cairns across bare sandstone fins, narrow ridges of rock that drop off on both sides. The cairns are stacked by rangers and maintained as best the park can manage, but other hikers knock them over. Some sections you’ll find yourself scanning ahead looking for the next pile of rocks rather than following a clear path.

The terrain demands attention. Some sections are flat sandstone walking that’s straightforward when dry and treacherous when wet. Others require hand placements to move between levels, nothing technical but enough to call it scrambling. There’s exposure in places: you’re on a ridge with a meaningful drop on one or both sides. It’s not dangerous for confident hikers, but it requires focus.

Carry the NPS Arches map downloaded on Gaia GPS or a similar navigation app. The primitive route has a defined track that you can follow on a phone screen. When the cairns are ambiguous, the GPS track resolves it quickly. Don’t rely only on the cairns.

Navajo Arch and Partition Arch sit on a side spur off the primitive section. The detour is about 0.4 miles round trip and worth taking. Partition Arch has a framed window view of the canyon below through its opening. Navajo Arch is a larger alcove-style formation with a shady floor under it.

Double O Arch and the Dark Angel

Double O Arch is the far point of the loop and one of the more unusual formations in the park. A large oval arch sits in the upper portion of the sandstone fin, with a second smaller arch opening directly below it in the same wall of rock. The two openings stacked above each other give it a distinctive profile that photographs well from almost any angle.

From Double O, a short spur trail runs another half-mile to Dark Angel, a free-standing sandstone spire about 150 feet tall. The rock is a deeper, darker brown than the orange sandstone surrounding it, which is where the name comes from. It’s worth the extra mile round trip if your legs have anything left.

Dark Angel is as far into the backcountry as this trail goes. Turn around at the spire and the return leg begins on the primitive section back toward Double O, then the route winds south across the slickrock to rejoin the maintained trail.

Heat and No Shade

There is no shade on this route. None.

In summer, the sandstone absorbs heat all day and the fins become radiators. Surface temperatures on the rock exceed air temperature by 20 to 30 degrees. You’re walking on a surface that’s actively cooking from below while the sun hits you from above.

The best seasons are March through May and September through November. Summer hiking is possible but demands a very early start (on trail by 6 a.m.), at least a liter of water per hour in hot weather, and the sense to turn around if you’re not feeling right. Heat exhaustion on exposed slickrock miles from help is a real emergency.

Carry all your water from the trailhead. There’s no water source on the route. For the full loop, plan on 3 liters minimum in spring or fall, more in any warm weather.

Timed Entry

Arches requires timed entry reservations from April through October. The reservation covers park entrance, not individual trails. You book a 2-hour entry window at recreation.gov for $2 per vehicle, and the windows open on a rolling 3-day advance schedule.

Book it the morning the 3-day window opens. Popular entry times (7 a.m. to 11 a.m.) sell out the same morning they become available. Once you’re in the park, you can stay as long as you want. The reservation only controls when you arrive.

Before April and after October, no reservation is needed. Spring and fall mornings at Devil’s Garden without a timed entry crowd are noticeably quieter, which is another reason those shoulder seasons are the right call for this trail.

Who Should Do the Full Loop

If you’ve hiked desert terrain before, you’re comfortable reading a route from a GPS app, you’ve got at least 3 liters of water, and you’re planning a spring or fall day, do the full loop. It passes more arches in a single hike than most people see in their whole time at Arches National Park.

If you’re newer to desert hiking, or you’re visiting in summer, or you have kids in your group, do the Landscape Arch out-and-back. You’ll still see the most impressive arch in the park and walk 4.2 miles through genuinely dramatic country.

The direct recommendation: first-time Arches visitor doing a single day in the park, go to Delicate Arch in the morning and do Devil’s Garden to Landscape Arch in the afternoon. Two iconic stops, total distance under 10 miles, and you’ll have seen what the park actually offers. Save the full Devil’s Garden primitive loop for a return trip when you have more time and experience with this specific kind of desert terrain.

Frequently Asked Questions