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Arches National Park, about five miles (8km) north of Moab, Utah, is a place of mind-boggling
topography: buttes, mesas, canyons, washes, fins, and---what else?---arches. For a lover of
topographic exploration, it is a fantastic place. Ironically, most visitors spend all their
time on the main park roads and on the few designated trails, missing out on the other world
of scenic wonder beyond these limited areas. This is due to in part to the erroneous notion
that hiking off-trail is forbidden. Numerous signs in the popular areas of the park say
"Stay on established trails" or "Don't bust the crust" or "It's alive!"

But the official park brochure, in discussing (overnight) backcountry camping, acknowledges the
permissability of hiking off-trail. But how many people carefully read the brochure and how
many want to bother with getting their shoes dirty? No doubt the Park Service is happy with
the aforementioned erroneous notion, for it helps keep damage to the environment to a minimum.

This is good because most of the soil in the park---as is true for much of the Colorado
Plateau---is characterized by cryptobiotic crust, a living organism that helps stabilize
the sand and retain moisture, setting the stage for plant growth and the resultant
animal life. Hikers who leave the trails have the challenge of avoiding this crust;
this causes hiking routes to be anything but straight lines. Walking off-trail becomes
an exercise in stepping on bedrock, rocks, and fallen branches, and following washes
(which do not allow the formation of the crust) and game trails (created
by deer and other critters who ignore the problem of delicate crusts).

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