A couple of months before our trip, I was reading about Arches National Park and came across pictures of the Fiery Furnace hike. It looked and sounded pretty unique, so I knew we had to go for it!
Fiery Furnace is a section of Arches National Park formed by red, orange, and pink sandstone fins that create a maze of deep slots and arches. Fiery Furnace is only accessible through Ranger-led hikes or by getting a special permit available only to experienced hikers.
Luckily I was able to reserve tickets for a Ranger-led hike (it sells out months in advance) for the morning that we would be leaving Arches. Not the ideal time, but we would make it work.
We arrived for our 9:30am hike and found two other families (both from foreign countries and non-English speaking) ready to hike as well. In all, our group was a nice size – the Ranger plus 12 hikers. The minimum age for the hike is 5 years old, so Dax just made the cut (although he and Trent were the youngest by far).
The 3-hour hike is described as “moderately strenuous and involves steep ledges, squeezing through narrow cracks, a couple of jumps, and hoisting yourself up off the ground. There is no turning back once the hike starts, so make sure you’re physically prepared and properly equipped”.
Check out this part! But don’t worry, it was optional…
As promised, the hike definitely had us squeezing through some narrow cracks!
There was lots of scrambling up and over big rocks…
We learned some super-fun ways to get through tight spaces, go over uneven surfaces, and get through tough areas safely!
Fiery Furnace was a really great family hike. I would not hesitate to take children on the Fiery Furnace hike as long as they are okay with being out there for three hours. I wouldn’t consider the hike itself to be strenuous; three hours for a three mile hike is easy. Our ranger took plenty of breaks to provide information about the area, answer questions, allow us to have a snack, time for discussion and reflection, etc. Personally, I think the most important trait a hiker considering Fiery Furnace should have is basic agility. If you’re not agile, you’ll end up taking a long time to get through the “obstacles”, therefore slowing down the entire group.
I was thinking this hike would be extremely hot, especially since we were there in the middle of the summer, but surprisingly it wasn’t bad at all.
We highly recommend doing the Ranger-led Fiery Furnace hike at Arches!
Once we were done with the hike, we headed northeast towards our next National Park. The drive would total about 6 hours, so we stopped halfway and stayed at our 3rd Harvest Hosts location. And we got to this one while it was still open!
It was a cool distillery called Stoneyard in Dotsero, Colorado. They make spirits from Colorado Beet Sugar. Brian insists on calling it Hooch since we don’t really know what to call it?! LOL
It was fun to try a flight then order a cocktail. We bought a bottle of the Horchata and got a cocktail to go! (Remember we were parking there overnight… best part of the Harvest Hosts experience!)
Cheers!
I don’t think that I would have fit through some of those narrow spots. Think I would have wanted knee pads, but definitely looked like fun ! Did you guys get skinned up ?
There were definitely some tight squeezes but I think you could have made it! Somehow we all made it through unscarred… even Dax, our accident prone one, so that is saying a lot!