Christmas in Arches 2025

Arches National Park | Wednesday & Thursday, December 24-25, 2025

Christmas is here again, which means that it’s time to return to Arches National Park for our annual Christmas tradition. Although Diane is still not supposed to do much hiking right now, she wanted to join me for some easier hikes in the park since she missed out on the past two years because of work, so we planned to spend the holiday hiking some of the easy and popular trails in the park that we usually pass right by. After getting out of work early on Christmas Eve, I stopped home to pick up Diane and we made our way over to Arches around noon. While we have enjoyed hiking in mild temperatures on Christmas a few times in the past, I don’t think we have ever experienced 60 degree temperatures (pushing close to 70 on Christmas Eve) like we did this year. It sure didn’t feel very much like Christmas this time!

Before making it to Arches we stopped near the main trailhead for the Moab Brand Trails so I could look for a kiosk the BLM put up along the Moab Canyon Pathway earlier this year that features a photo of mine. We quickly found it and then continued on into the park.

The park was a bit busy this afternoon, but we still stopped at a few of the more popular spots along the main road to take a few photos while the sun was out since the forecast was calling for cloudy skies later in the day with an incoming storm overnight.

Park Avenue Viewpoint

Looking the other direction from the Park Avenue Trail.

Three Gossips

The Organ

Balanced Rock

Of course, the thicker clouds arrived just as we began our first hike out to Tapestry Arch from the Devils Garden Campground and we wouldn’t see much of the sun for the rest of the day.

Mountain Light

After returning from Tapestry Arch we hiked up to Skyline Arch from the Devils Garden Amphitheater.

The sun peeked out for a few brief moments as we were driving back through the park.

We were a little too late and missed the light at the Fiery Furnace Viewpoint.

After spending the afternoon in the park we returned to Moab, checked in to our hotel and then had a nice Christmas Eve dinner at Fiesta Mexicana.

Although it had been windy for much of the night, when we got up on Christmas morning it had not started to rain yet, but after checking the forecast we could see that a line of rain showers were currently over Canyonlands National Park and on the way towards us. It finally started to rain shortly before we left the hotel and began our drive back into Arches National Park. Based on the radar images it didn’t look like the rain was goin to last very long, so we figured we would wait in our vehicle at the trailhead until the rain started to taper off and then we would begin our annual hike to Landscape Arch.

Once the rain began to subside we put on our rain jackets and started hiking down the Devils Garden Trail.

The trail was a bit wet this morning, but shortly after leaving the trailhead the rain completely stopped, so our timing was perfect!

Devils Garden Trail

We made it to Landscape Arch and found that it was still standing after yet another year. We had the place to ourselves for a while and enjoyed the silence since the wind had stopped for a little while.

On our way back down the trail the sky cleared very quickly and the sun came out. The wind also picked up again and would stay that way for the rest of the day.

Sunlight & Fast-Moving Clouds

This fin looked quite a bit different on our return to the trailhead than it had when we started our hike earlier in the morning.

Next we drove over to the Delicate Arch Trailhead so we could revisit the Wolfe Ranch and nearby petroglyphs.

Cobblestone Bridge

We also went for a walk along the short loop around Balanced Rock since we haven’t hiked that one in a long time.

Elephant Butte

The Great Wall

Our last hike of the day was away from the growing crowds to visit an interesting cove that hides this large tower.

Hidden Cove Point

Hidden Cove

Here’s one final view across the Petrified Dunes as we left the park and followed the Colorado River back home.

 

Although we didn’t spend much time searching for rock art on this trip, we did find one new faint panel of petroglyphs and revisited two other small sites in the park.

This sheep was part of the only new site we saw on this trip. While the panel only contained a few faint sheep and snakes, we both really liked the full curl of the horns on this bighorn sheep.

Since it was cloudy and overcast out I thought it might be nice to revisit this petroglyph panel that we found back in 2020, hoping that it would be easier to see and photograph. It really wasn’t…

This sheep with circles in it’s body is my favorite part of the panel.

There are a lot of interesting figures in this panel.

We also revisited the Ute petroglyphs near the historic Wolfe Ranch.

>> Christmas in Arches 2025 Photo Gallery