I spotted this natural rock arch a while back, while on the way to CU's Austin fly-in, and made a mental note: "gotta see it up close". It took 4 trips out, about 40 miles from my place, to get the right conditions, and today was just perfect. Though I didn't land on the 8700' peak like I had planned (extensive circling and close eyeballing showed just too many rocks, too bad, it would have been a great site, maybe a hike up there at some point would make it do able) by doing so I did save a 1,000' hike down the ridgeline to the arch and then backup to the plane.

After dissing the top landing, I spent a half hour searching the ridge tops and all had rocks, just enough, and right in the wrong places, and just big enough, to give me pause. Then I noticed the best site yet also happened to be the closet to the arch! Too good to be true, it made me suspicious, another 10 minutes was spent eyeballing, and making it trickier was the damn rocks are camoed, the lichen and moss are just exactly the same color as the brush this time of year.... Parts of the area appeared rock free, and then I'd notice a case of beer sized land shark so I kept looking until sure. The actual landing was anticlimatic, though I kept a close eye out right up until shutdown. I know in these pictures it all looks just dandy, not so, even where I eventually touched down they were lurking on the sides... expert camo on these rocks, sneaky bastards. The shadow knows, the touchdown spot that is. The cool thing about this site is so far no long time locals seem to know about it, and there are actually 2 of them. There were also some big holes in the hillside that may have been caves, but climbing up to them, while easy, one slip coming down would have been nasty. Plus I kept thinking of that guy who had to cut his arm off to get free.....and there was some loose boulders at the possible cave entrance so I didn't try it.[img]Short%20final[IMG]http://i649.photobucket.com/albums/uu213/simkot/ARBONARCH029.jpg[/img]

One last shot I coulnd't seem to get on the initial post. The view on short final.

Awesome! I wouldn't publicly tell anybody where it's at.

There's also a fair amount of formations like that down in the Owyhee Canyons. Pretty cool.

Cool! Third picture down looks like a T-rex munchin on the rock!

I am probably not the only pilot to often wish I had a geologist on board. OK, a young good looking female type geologist (might as well dream big, not over 100 lbs. also ), but flying around Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming mostly like I do I sure see a lot of interesting rock formations,, mountains, ridgelines etc. One of the best things of being a pilot, we get the " big picture".

courierguy wrote:I am probably not the only pilot to often wish I had a geologist on board. OK, a young good looking female type geologist (might as well dream big, not over 100 lbs. also ), but flying around Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming mostly like I do I sure see a lot of interesting rock formations,, mountains, ridgelines etc. One of the best things of being a pilot, we get the " big picture".

Here's an interesting slide show about some of Idaho's geology.


More here http://hugefloods.com/Trike-Flying.html

courierguy wrote:I spotted this natural rock arch a while back, while on the way to CU's Austin fly-in, and made a mental note: "gotta see it up close". It took 4 trips out, about 40 miles from my place, to get the right conditions, and today was just perfect. Though I didn't land on the 8700' peak like I had planned (extensive circling and close eyeballing showed just too many rocks, too bad, it would have been a great site, maybe a hike up there at some point would make it do able) by doing so I did save a 1,000' hike down the ridgeline to the arch and then backup to the plane.

After dissing the top landing, I spent a half hour searching the ridge tops and all had rocks, just enough, and right in the wrong places, and just big enough, to give me pause. Then I noticed the best site yet also happened to be the closet to the arch! Too good to be true, it made me suspicious, another 10 minutes was spent eyeballing, and making it trickier was the damn rocks are camoed, the lichen and moss are just exactly the same color as the brush this time of year.... Parts of the area appeared rock free, and then I'd notice a case of beer sized land shark so I kept looking until sure. The actual landing was anticlimatic, though I kept a close eye out right up until shutdown. I know in these pictures it all looks just dandy, not so, even where I eventually touched down they were lurking on the sides... expert camo on these rocks, sneaky bastards. The shadow knows, the touchdown spot that is. The cool thing about this site is so far no long time locals seem to know about it, and there are actually 2 of them. There were also some big holes in the hillside that may have been caves, but climbing up to them, while easy, one slip coming down would have been nasty. Plus I kept thinking of that guy who had to cut his arm off to get free.....and there was some loose boulders at the possible cave entrance so I didn't try it.[img]Short%20final[IMG]http://i649.photobucket.com/albums/uu213/simkot/ARBONARCH029.jpg[/img]

Cool spot... I like it...