The Great Arch is a blind arch at the head of Pine Creek Canyon, an alcove in the cliff with no opening through it. Its upper face shows from the last legs of the switchbacks below the tunnel. The overlook pullouts stand about 2.5 miles from Canyon Junction and 7.5 road miles from the East Entrance. Vehicles over 19 feet may use these paved pullouts only if they fit entirely inside, and parking on vegetation or walking paths can bring a citation or a tow. The highway climbs 800 feet in 3.5 miles here. Mexican spotted owls have been federally threatened since 1993, and road crews have timed work around their March 1 to August 31 breeding season. Zion's peregrines held on through the DDT crash.
Pullouts sit on both sides of the road along here. Use the one on your side if you can, and if you have to cross, cross on foot and take care. Once you're stopped, look away from the valley, to the head of the canyon. That curved recess high in the cliff is the Great Arch, a blind arch with no hole through it. The stone arch of the Pine Creek bridge, at the foot of these switchbacks, was designed to echo it. Two of the switchbacks have names in the engineers' reports, Carl's Bend and Sandwich Rock, and they cross the largest landslide on this grade. In twenty twenty-six a large rockfall damaged the road on this grade, and the park patched it with temporary gravel, so take any gravel slowly. Any single vehicle over thirty-five feet nine inches would swing across the double yellow line eighteen times between Canyon Junction and the East Entrance. Peregrine falcons nest on the cliffs by the tunnel's west entrance, and Mexican spotted owls, forest owls living in a desert, hide in the slot canyons. When you pull out, carry on the way you were heading.
Photo: Brian C. Grogan, Photographer, 1993, Historic American Engineering Record, HAER UT-39-B-11, Library of Congress · Public domain (U.S. government work; LoC: no known restrictions on images made by the U.S. Government)