Parking
Start at the Devils Garden Trailhead parking area at the end of the park road. NPS notes that the lot can be very busy in peak season and on holiday weekends. A day-use picnic area is south of the campground entrance, a separate stop.
Overview
About Navajo and Partition Arches Trail
Why go
- Two very different arch stops: a shaded chamber and a mountain-framing window.
Heads up
- The route gets steep and exposed beyond Landscape Arch.
Map & elevation
The route
Loading the Arches map
Full mapElevation5,190–5,446 ft
Plan your hike
Before you go
Parking
Safety
The highest, rockiest slopes around here are a summer buffet for grizzly bears.
Arches Tour Guide
Your drive to Navajo and Partition Arches Trail, narrated.
Parkwolf is a GPS audio tour guide for Arches National Park. As you drive, it chimes in with what’s ahead: hidden gems, upcoming stops, history, geology, and wildlife, right through your car’s speakers.
See the Arches audio tourRecorded for this trailhead
Devils Garden and Landscape Arch0:00 / 0:27
“Devils Garden is coming up, with a walk through tall sandstone fins to Landscape Arch. It's my pick for a shorter outing: one point nine miles round trip, allowing an hour to an hour and a half with stops.”
Plays as you drive up to this trailhead in the Parkwolf Arches Tour Guide.
More stories near here in the app
- Devils Garden Campground and Tapestry Arch
- Skyline Arch
- Ears That Shed Heat
- Sand Dune Arch and Broken Arch
- 35 audio storiesacross Arches’s roads, triggered by GPS as you drive
- Wildlife heatmapsfor Bighorn Sheep, Pronghorn, Raven, and 13 more
- Works offlinemaps, 28 trails, 41 places, and audio download before you lose signal
- CarPlay readysimple controls built for the drive
“I can’t believe how helpful this app is and how interesting the information is for each highlight along the Arches Scenic Drive! This is the first park I’ve used it in.”
Trail guide
Hiking Navajo and Partition Arches Trail
The two-arch walkThis is a 3.
This is a 3.4-mile out-and-back from the Devils Garden Trailhead to Navajo and Partition arches, then back the same way. It shares the easier approach to Landscape Arch before continuing over slickrock to both arch branches. Allow 2–3 hours. Some route listings round the paired hike to 3 miles; counting the walk beyond Landscape Arch and both arch detours puts the full return at about 3.4. If you only want the easier part, Landscape Arch is a sensible turnaround at 1.8 miles round trip.
The harder stretchThe path to Landscape Arch is hard-packed and relatively flat, with moderate hills among tall…
The path to Landscape Arch is hard-packed and relatively flat, with moderate hills among tall sandstone fins. After it, the route climbs bare slabs and the footing gets rougher. Expect exposed scrambling and narrow ledges, with few markers on this section. Follow the marked line across the slickrock; skip this stretch when the rock is wet or snowy.
Two very different archesNavajo is a thick, low arch with a shaded, sandy chamber and junipers; from the trail it can be…
Navajo is a thick, low arch with a shaded, sandy chamber and junipers; from the trail it can be partly hidden until you get close. Partition is a higher, more open window on the next fin. The La Sal Mountains show through its opening. Frame the mountains inside the arch, with some of the sandstone rim in the shot, to keep the view from reading like a plain overlook.
How the fins become archesLandscape Arch makes a striking stop on the shared approach.
Landscape Arch makes a striking stop on the shared approach. Its light opening is 306 feet long and only 6 feet across at its narrowest; large pieces fell away in the 1990s. The surrounding fins began as parallel fractures opened by uplift of buried salt deposits. Rainwater wears away the weaker rock, and openings meet to form arches like Navajo and Partition.
Start and park rulesPark at Devils Garden, at the end of the park road.
Park at Devils Garden, at the end of the park road. The lot can be very busy in peak season and on holiday weekends. There’s a day-use picnic area south of the campground entrance, but it’s a separate stop; no food service is on the route. Dogs aren’t allowed on Arches hiking trails.
Wildlife
Wildlife in Arches
14 sightingsBighorn SheepMost seen around 7 AMSighting map
10 sightingsPronghornMost seen around 7 AMSighting map
608 sightingsRavenMost seen around 9 AMSighting map
187 sightingsMule DeerMost seen around 7 PMSighting map
51 sightingsPrairie DogMost seen around 8 AMSighting map
15 sightingsCoyoteMost seen around 6 AMSighting mapSighting maps show where each species has been reported across Arches. Wildlife moves, so no sighting is guaranteed.
