If You Visit Utah’s Arches National Park, You Must Hike in the Fiery Furnace

Arches National Park in southeastern Utah is most famous for its monumental sandstone arches, carved over millions of years from the high desert by rain, wind, and ice. Most of these arches are accessible by short hikes or nature walks from parking lots that often crowd to capacity. But if you love to hike in solitude and have a reasonable amount of dexterity and strength, there is nothing you’ll enjoy at Arches National Park more than a group or solo hike in the Fiery Furnace. My family and I just returned from a spring break trip to Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, and we cannot stop raving about our morning in the Fiery Furnace.

Arches National Park lies 3½ hours south of Salt Lake City near Moab atop a huge subterranean ocean of salt deposited hundreds of millions of years ago when 29 different seas filled and then evaporated from the Colorado Plateau. The layers of salt were then covered by thousands of feet of sediments eroded from mountains that long preceded the Rocky Mountains. As tectonic forces caused the plateau to rise, the weight of the overlying landmasses caused the salt to liquefy, warp, and thrust up into overlying layers of rock, causing them to fracture. Over millions of years, erosion removed the younger layers of rock and shaped many into gigantic sandstone “fins” (vertical walls).

The Park’s namesake arches formed from the erosion of many of those fins, leaving awe-inspiring rock formations that are, geologically speaking, young and evanescent. The vast majority of the park’s visitors cannot be blamed for focusing only on exploring those arches. But a hike through the Fiery Furnace, a labyrinth comprising the Park’s most narrow set of fins, will leave you positively breathless in more ways than one.

Because of the complexity and fragility of the terrain, the National Park Service restricts access to the Fiery Furnace to only ranger-guided tours and difficult-to-get individual hiking permits. The Park sells only 75 individual permits per day, which must be purchased no more than one week in advance and picked up one day before your hike at the park’s Visitors Center, where you’ll be required to watch a film and listen to a brief instructional lecture from a ranger. The permits typically sell out minutes after they go on sale each morning—my wife tried to get them three days in a row and succeeded only on her final try. So getting a permit can be tricky.

But my, was it worth the effort. The ranger who provided our permit aptly described hiking through the Fiery Furnace as the outdoor equivalent of exploring an escape room. There are no trails or conventional trail markers or cairns, you are just set free to climb through the washes and atop boulders, losing yourself among circuitous paths in deep canyons that are often narrower than an airline coach seat. The single recommended path is marked only by thumb-sized arrows that often blend into walls and boulders, with occasional placards identifying scenic dead ends.

Arches National Park warns for good reason that the Fiery Furnace can be challenging and physically demanding, as many portions require you to climb steep rock faces, squeeze or lift yourself through narrow passages, and even jump or climb across crevasses (although none of those gaps lie directly above deep drops). But with that said, you don’t have to be an experienced rock climber to enjoy the Fiery Furnace. My fourteen-year-old had no problem getting through (even if she had to be coaxed through several sketchy passages), nor did I, despite being an embarrassingly out-of-shape 50-year-old with a crippling fear of heights.

So the Fiery Furnace really feels more like a natural obstacle course, even if you’re a flatlander desk jockey like me.

And the scenery is breathtaking. Climbs through dune-embraced washes and atop boulders and collapsed pillars lead to towering canyons, huge monoliths, and even the occasional hidden arch. As you rise in elevation, you climb toward sun-licked walls and turn around to see endless vistas of the salt valley below.

Best of all, the limited access allows you to enjoy these awe-inspiring scenes in quiet solitude, where you can hear the wind and the calls of birds echo off the canyon walls. We chose to arrive at 8 a.m. and were the first ones into the Furnace, and we spent almost our entire two-and-half-hours there alone. For someone who prefers to enjoy nature far from the maddening crowds, I found the experience positively heavenly.

Daily permits cost $10 and can be purchased here, which does not include the daily park admission of $15 per person or $30 per private vehicle. (If you plan to visit one or more national parks multiple times in a year, you may prefer to purchase an Annual Pass, which costs only $80 for U.S. citizens and covers park admission for a single private vehicle (i.e., a family) to any national park for 365 continuous days.) A spot in a ranger-led hike through the Fiery Furnace can be purchased for $16 per person. If you plan to go to Arches National Park, the Fiery Furnace should not be missed.