Brimhall Arch

NABSQNO 12S-504289-4174312 Utah     MAP

Brimhall Arch is a very unusual and spectacular double arch located in Capitol Reef National Park. We estimate the span of the lower opening at 120 feet, and the upper opening at half that length. The Park Service handout and several guidebooks (most notably Utah's National Parks by Ron Adkison) give detailed route descriptions and describe some of the obstacles that need to be overcome to reach this arch. The most notable obstacle is a pothole that is about 10 feet deep and 100 feet long. This is normally full of water and you must swim across it to reach the arch. However, what the handout and the guidebooks do not tell you is that even skilled rock scramblers cannot get out of the other end of the pothole unless it is dry! This only happens infrequently, maybe a couple of weeks out of the year. One year a NABS group planned to haul in lumber to build a 16-foot ladder to climb out the far end of the pothole. This strategy would have worked except that the trip was cancelled due to bad weather. Probably the best tool one could take to assist getting out the other end of the pothole would be a grapple. If you had a rope attached to a grapple, it should not be hard to pull yourself out of the pothole. Photo by Craig Shelley.

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