NOVEMBER 2018
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| BEHIND BROKEN BOW ARCH |
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| BROKEN BOW ARCH |
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| NEAR BROKEN BOW ARCH |
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| POND BELOW BROKEN BOW ARCH |
Broken Bow Arch is a five-mile round-trip hike located about 42 miles down Hole-in-the-Rock Road outside of Escalante. Hole-in-the-Rock Road is well-maintained up until just a couple miles before reaching the turn-off for Broken Bow Arch, where it starts to get rocky. If you are driving a low-clearance vehicle you will need to be really careful. Once at the trailhead, you will descend steeply into the canyon and turn right. You will begin walking along the bottom of a dry, shallow canyon that continues to grow deeper as you hike. A trail will take you to the left to avoid a difficult section before returning you again to the canyon bottom. Broken Bow Arch is very impressive and its size really caught me off guard when it came into sight.
After reaching the arch, I hiked a bit further down the canyon along Forty Mile Creek, but the going was rough. You can follow Forty Mile Creek all the way to the Escalante River if you come prepared to get your whole body wet. I would love to try that sometime, but as I wasn't prepared that day I turned around when the stream got too deep and muddy for me. I hiked this trail in November, and had the entire canyon to myself. It had also been a couple days since the last person had signed the register at the trailhead. With how crowded many of the trails in southern Utah are becoming, its nice to be able to still have a canyon of this quality all to your self for an afternoon.
