Double Arch (Utah)

Where it sits. Double Arch stands at the far end of the Windows Section of Arches National Park, in Grand County, Utah, about 4 km along a spur road that leaves the main park road roughly 15 km from the entrance station. The car park serves both this arch and the Windows loop opposite; the walk in is a flat 800 m round trip on packed sand and slickrock, the easiest access to a major formation anywhere in the park. The two openings share a single stone abutment at one end and spring apart from it, so the structure reads as one collapsed dome rather than two separate arches.

The numbers. The larger opening spans about 44 m and rises roughly 34 m from the sand beneath it, which makes it the tallest opening in Arches and the third longest. The smaller one, set at right angles, measures around 18 m across. Both are cut into Entrada Sandstone, the same pale orange rock as the rest of the Windows Section, and both formed by a mechanism different from most of the park's arches: instead of water attacking a vertical fin from the side, this pair was hollowed downward from above, as water pooling on the rock surface ate through the roof of a broad alcove. The result is that peculiar overlapping geometry, and the reason the whole formation feels like a ruined cathedral rather than a window in a wall.

On screen. This is the location where Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade begins. In the June 1988 shoot, the Utah 1912 sequence has a troop of Boy Scouts riding through the Windows Section; young Indy, played by River Phoenix, dismounts and drops into a cave where looters are digging out the Cross of Coronado. The cave mouth is the alcove directly beneath Double Arch, and the sandy bowl the horses cross is the ground in front of it. Everything inside the cave was a studio set in England, and the horseback chase that follows leads into the circus-train sequence shot on the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad in Colorado. Standing under the arch, the geometry of that opening shot is immediately recognisable - which is precisely why this short, flat trail sees a steady stream of visitors who could not name a single other formation in the park.

A frequent confusion worth clearing up. In August 2024 a formation also called Double Arch collapsed and made international news. That arch was not this one. It stood at Rock Creek Bay in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area near Lake Powell, roughly 300 km away, and was locally known as the Toilet Bowl or Crescent Pool. The Double Arch in Arches National Park is intact and structurally sound. The confusion has nonetheless sent a fair number of travellers cancelling plans they did not need to cancel.

What you actually see today. The trail runs from the north end of the Windows car park across open sand, then up a short slickrock ramp into the alcove. Inside, the floor is a bowl of deep sand and fallen blocks, and the two spans frame the sky overhead in a way that is difficult to photograph and extraordinary to stand under. Because the alcove faces roughly north-east and is deeply recessed, it holds shade for most of the day, which makes it one of the few places in Arches that is bearable at midday in summer. Climbing on the arch itself is prohibited, as it is on all named arches in the park, and the scrambling up the flanking rock that visitors improvise causes most of the injuries here. On the way in, the North Window, South Window and Turret Arch loop on the other side of the car park adds another 1.6 km.

Getting there and timing. Access is via the single park entrance on U.S. 191 north of Moab, so the timed-entry reservation that applies to Arches in the busy season applies here too. Arrive early or late in the day to avoid both the ticket window and the crowded car park. Spring and autumn are the comfortable seasons; the sand approach is a slog in July heat even with the shade at the end. Light through the openings is best in the morning; late afternoon backlights the spans and produces the silhouette shots. There is no water and no shade on the approach walk itself, short though it is. The sand also makes this one of the few Arches trails a pushchair cannot manage, despite its length and flat profile.