Fall 2024 Back to the Southwest, 10.19.24 - 11.13.24, Part 13, Valley of Fire State Park/Seven Wonders Loop/Pretzel Arch

We left St. George on the morning of Wednesday, November 6th. It was time to leave Utah and head to our next adventure in Nevada. Bridgit and I had visited Valley of Fire State Park at the end of April 2018. Here is a link to that trip report. Valley of Fire State Park We had been staying in Las Vegas so we rented a car and drove out there well before the sun rose. On that day, we had time for two hikes before the sun got too hot to stay out. We were totally enthralled with the place and vowed to return to explore it more thoroughly.

For this trip, I had reserved site 13 in Atlatl Campground with no hookups for five nights. I was also expecting that this late in the year the temperatures would be much more tolerable which turned out to be the case. Valley of Fire was only an hour and a half from St. George so that morning we topped off the Navibahn with gas, propane and water before heading down I-15 past Mesquite to Hwy 169. This took us south through Moapa Valley and Overton to the eastern entrance of Valley Of Fire.

Valley of Fire is so beautiful! There is so much crazy red and orange rock there. Atlatl Campground is nestled right in a pocket of all this beautiful rock and our site in particular was isolated from other sites with a wall of red rock on one side and in the back. I’d say it is one of the nicer official campgrounds we’ve stayed at.

After setting up camp we drove the Jeep back to the visitor center. I talked with the ranger about some of the more unknown places we wanted to hike but they weren’t too knowledgable about those particular spots so I knew I would have to rely solely on the research I had done prior to the trip. After browsing through the visitor center we took a reconnaissance drive through the park. We drove up Mouse’s Tank Road, turned and went up to Silica Dome/Fire Canyon Overlook and then up to the White Domes Parking and back. I was looking for potential spots for good sunrise and sunset photography. I was also looking for bighorn sheep. Valley of Fire is supposed to be chock full of bighorn. The ranger said we would see them for sure. She claimed that they had even figured out how to turn the knobs on the water spigots in the campsites and that we would see them in our campground.

**Milk Duds or bighorn poop? There was a lot of this everywhere we hiked.**

I had forgotten that Nevada is on Pacific time so sunrise is an hour earlier than during the last several weeks we were in Utah. As a result, I dragged my dear wife out of bed at 4:45AM and we were on the road at 5:30AM for a 6:08AM sunrise. We drove up to the parking lot for Silica Dome/Fire Canyon Overlook and got there about ten to six. No one else was there. As soon as the sun started lighting up Fire Canyon we were on the move. We hiked along the top for a bit and then found a place to drop down to a much lower level where we were more surrounded by the rock of Fire Canyon. There we just wandered around aimlessly for an hour or two. The early light was beautiful, there was not another soul in sight and as the sun rose we shed our down puffys for t-shirts. We were in love and life was good. We found lots of big and little arches and just had a really enjoyable time roaming.

**Looking down on the area we roamed below Silica Dome**

**We wandered all around the big tan rock area**

By eight the sun was already up and the golden light had turned to daylight. Not that the light wasn’t still beautiful, but we had already spent two hours wandering around the Silica Dome area. We drove up to P3 which is the parking area for the Seven Wonders Loop Trail. This loop has equal parts on both the east and west side of the White Domes Road. The east side is where to find the Fire Wave. On our trip back in 2018 we had hiked to the Fire Wave in the pre-dawn hours to see the sun come up at the Fire Wave. It was as spectacular as you could imagine so we didn’t really need to repeat that timing.

Once parked, we crossed over to the west side of the road and found the beginning of the Seven Wonders Loop. I’m not sure why I had the preconceived notion that this side of the trail wasn’t all that scenic. I was dead wrong. We dropped into a narrow wash and worked our way south from the P3 parking lot. The rock was beautiful all the way down this wash but near the bottom we came to a fantastic hillside of rock with all kinds of color in the rock. This area was really impressive.

**Tons of color in the rock around this area**

**Strange patterns all through these rocks**

**Hiking the Seven Wonders Loop (Bridgit photo)**

As we dropped lower in the wash we came to a gigantic hillside of gorgeous orange striped rock with big rock piles on top. I had to scramble up there and check it all out. I discovered that from the very top I could look almost straight down the back side to a stretch of the White Domes Trail. This was the other trail Bridgit and I did back in 2018.

**A climber must climb (Bridgit photo)**

**Looking up towards the White Domes Trail**

Just past the area with the great orange rock we came to the end of the wash. Here it joined a different wash that ran east/west. We followed it through some cool little short slot sections until we finally came to the White Domes Road. Crossing over to the eastern half of the hike, we now entered a stretch call Pink Pastel Canyon. Here again was a really pretty section of canyon with lots of different shades of rock. Much of it gives off a pinkish hue, thus the name.

**Nice little slot section west of the road**

Pink Pastel Canyon isn’t very long. As it opened up we hiked a very short distance before the cutoff to leave the wash. Here is where the route climbs up to the Fire Wave. As beautiful as it was, there is a gigantic difference between being there during the day and being there as the sun rises. If you ever get the chance to go to Valley of Fire, I would highly recommend timing a hike to be at the Fire Wave at sunrise. From P3 if you go down the eastern trail straight to the Fire Wave, I think it’s only a half mile hike.

We took a little break at the Fire Wave before finishing the Seven Wonders Loop back to the Jeep. We had really taken our time. The entire loop which is only a couple of miles was a super relaxing stroll through some really nice scenery.

All the way back to the Navibahn we were on high alert for bighorn. We had been told they are out at all times of the day and you can find them almost anywhere, but especially along the Mouse’s Tank Road. We had our eyes peeled but never saw any sheep.

**Rocks jutting up above Pink Pastel Canyon**

**Pink striped rock near the Fire Wave**

We got back to camp around eleven. Shortly after, Darren Debbie, Jarelle and her boyfriend Matt arrived. They had decided to join us for a couple of days and managed to snag a site close to ours. Once they were set up and everyone had lunch we were ready for some more exploration. I had seen some pretty cool pictures of an arch called Pretzel Arch. It resembled a giant spider and I thought it would be a great arch to shoot in the late afternoon light. Its location on my Gaia app showed it to be in a somewhat remote section of the park north of the east entrance.

We drove out and parked at the Elephant Arch parking lot. After checking out Elephant Arch (which is right by the road) we just headed out across the untracked desert until we came to an old abandoned dirt track. This we followed until we made it to some nice rock formations about a mile out. There were lots of little arches all through this area and quite a few strangely shaped rocks. We wandered around in there for awhile, finding one named arch called Little Mosquito Arch and numerous unnamed and unmarked arches of various sizes and shapes.

To get to Pretzel Arch, We ended up moving around to the front side of the rock ridge and following a myriad of bighorn tracks further west. Finally we got to the arch (at least according to Gaia). We weren’t that impressed. I found out after getting back home that based on photos I had seen before we ever started our trip, what Gaia said was Pretzel Arch was something completely different. Now I have to go back and find the real Pretzel Arch. Darn!