Fiery Furnace Trailhead & Viewpoint

Three transactions, none of which is parking

This is the Arches page where people get the layers wrong, so here they are separately.

1. Entrance fee — $30 per private vehicle, 7 days, or an America the Beautiful pass. Gets your car through the gate. In 2026 there is no timed-entry reservation on top of it.

2. Fiery Furnace authorization — either a $10 per person self-guided permit or a $16 per person ranger-guided hike. This is permission to enter a specific piece of terrain on a specific day. It is not entry to the park and you still pay the $30.

3. Parking — free, unreserved, first-come, and the only one of the three you cannot book. A confirmed 9am ranger tour does not hold a space for you at the trailhead, and it does not hold one at the visitor center where you have to collect the physical permit either.

NPS has never published a capacity for the Fiery Furnace lot. It lists auto parking and a vault toilet and stops there. We're not going to make a number up: the three lots with published counts are Devils Garden (160), Wolfe Ranch (157) and The Windows (92), and this isn't one of them.

How the permit actually works in 2026

Self-Guided Exploration Permit — $10 per person. Reserved online at Recreation.gov or by phone at 1-877-444-6777. “No permits can be reserved in-person.” The booking window is narrow and specific: at least two days before your trip date, at most seven days in advance. Group size is capped at six people. Children under five are not allowed; pets are prohibited. Permits are valid for a specified date, day-use only, sunrise to sunset. NPS warns they “frequently sell out quickly during the busy season.”

Ranger-guided hike — $16 per person. About 2.5 hours, moderately strenuous, booked up to seven days in advance on Recreation.gov (Recreation.gov releases tickets at 8am Mountain). Same age rules: no one under 5, and an adult must accompany every child 12 and under. Per the park's ranger-programs page, 2026 tours have been offered April 12 through early fall — there are no walk-up or first-come tickets.

The pickup is the part that ruins itineraries. Every reserved permit must be collected in person at the Arches Visitor Center, on the day before or the day of your hike, at one of nine fixed times: 8, 8:30, 9, 9:30, 10am and 2, 2:30, 3, 3:30pm. “All persons going on the permit must be present” for the required orientation film and talk — arrive 5–10 minutes early for paperwork. The visitor center is at the entrance, 13-plus miles from the trailhead. Budget the round trip, and budget parking at the visitor center too.

Plan B

The Fiery Furnace Viewpoint requires nothing. Same lot, same vault toilet, no permit, no fee beyond park entry. It's a short walk to an overlook above the labyrinth, and NPS's own recommendation is to stand there near sunset, “when low-angle light makes the rock faces glow like a wood-fired furnace.” If your permit didn't come through — and in April, May, September and October, it very often doesn't — this is the visit. It is genuinely the better use of an hour than most things in the park.

If you want the maze experience and can't get a permit, the closest substitute is the Devils Garden Primitive Trail: narrow ledges, scrambling, route-finding, and no permit at all. It's 7.9 miles for the full loop and NPS is explicit about the exposure.

If you do have a permit, the Plan B that matters is temporal. Collect it the day before, at a 2pm or 3pm slot, so your hike morning isn't spent driving 13 miles backwards to a visitor center and then 13 miles forwards to a lot that filled at 7:30. That single change is the difference between a calm morning and a scramble.

And a genuine safety note rather than a logistical one: NPS says GPS units “do not work well due to the towering sandstone walls,” there are many dead ends, and “all participants must complete the hike once they enter.” First-timers are advised to go with a ranger or with someone who has been before. Take that at face value.