Elephant Arch
12/15/2021: The hike itself is quite mundane but the view from elephant Arch is beautiful and definitely worth the ho-hum hike. The first half of the hike is on dirt road through sage brush and sandy hills. Then you take a wash for a bit that goes through some interesting rocks, and then the trail splits off to Elephant Arch. In this case, the arch is the objective and the hike itself offers little you can’t find on other, probably more interesting, hikes in the area.
We did this hike and the Santa Clara Petroglyphs on the same day.
Marg’s Notes: Santa Clara Petroglyphs & Elephant Arch. Off on Hwy 91 gain. Snow on the road over the pass. Headed to the Santa Clara Petroglyphs just outside of St. George. Not a very exciting hike. Switchbacks up a hill of sage & mesquite. But, at the top LOTS of petroglyphs. Cold again. We scrambled among the rocks looking for drawings. On the way back down, we met a couple from Portland. Chuck & Becky. Their daughter lives close to us! The had moved down to Utah! Chatted for ½ an hour! Ver nice. We learned we missed some petroglyphs further on. ☹ After chatting, we headed straight down the hill. Much quicker! 2.9 miles. Next we went on to Elephant Arch. A dirt road to get there… Started the hike ~12:45. Not too hard. A lot of it thru wash, then up the rocks. We climbed to the top & had lunch! Beautiful. View. Met 1 person on the way down. Again, moved faster going out. ~4 miles in 2.5 hours. Back to Mesquite! Did laundry!
Lasagna, salad, bread.
Rod’s Ramblings from the Trail: Starting the hike in about 1:45. There is one other person on the trail and he is hunting jack rabbits. There are several trails in this area to include dinosaur tracks back at the 4-way junction.
Driving in was not trivial by the way. If you do Google maps and drive in the way it says to do it then you're going to get some ruts.
The sign at the beginning says 0.4 mi to Elephant Arch That is just flat out wrong. We believe it means 0.4 miles to the turn-off to the arch. But the complete length to the trail is a solid 2 miles. Reports of the trail being Sandy are not exaggerating.
Elephant Arch Lunch Bench
We almost never agree on a place to sit and have lunch. However, at the top of elephant Arch off to the left looking down on the arch so that you can see its eye popping through is an awesome place to sit. There is a bench-like slab for sitting and it's absolutely perfect. Probably one but best lunch spots we've ever had, so I will have to take a picture and show it to you 😊.
This is another one of those trails that's supposed to be high traffic. However, we did not see anyone on the way to the arch itself. We saw one guy at the trailhead. That again shows you that you should go in the middle of the week and the winter time. I like retirement 😊
I registered exactly 2 miles to the arch, and we didn't diverge from the trail very much if at all.
When you start the last 50 yards of scrambling, be sure to mark your trail as you go up the face to the arch itself and remember it. We went down a different way which is a little bit steeper, but we managed it.