Beginning in 2017, you'll have to join a ranger or a friend experienced with hiking the Fiery Furnace to see Skull Arch/NPS, Neal Herbert

A move Superintendent Kate Cannon believes will lead to better management of visitation to the Fiery Furnace in Arches National Park has drawn the ire of guiding businesses and a member of Congress, who see the changes as unnecessary and economically crippling to the guides and damaging to the unique geologic niche of the park.

A red rock maze of fins, arches, and canyons in the heart of the park, the Fiery Furnace long has been a highlight for many visitors to Arches in southeastern Utah. Up until 2008 or 2009, according to the superintendent, 125 people were able to enter the Fiery Furnace each day: 50 went with ranger-guided tours, and the remaining 75 were individual parties that succeeded in landing a permit (currently $6 per person 13 and older, $3 for those aged 5-12). But then, 25 permits were taken away from the general public and distributed to commercial guiding services, explained Superintendent Cannon.

Since that option was added, the number of guiding businesses holding Commercial Use Authorizations (CUAs) for leading hikes in the park rose dramatically, to nearly 90 today, she said.

"When you get that many people with the potential (to seek permits), there gets to be competition between the different companies. And it gets pretty hard to manage. There’s not really a good way to manage it," she said. "We’ve just manufactured an untenable management scheme. I don’t think when the decision was made to start with CUAs we ever thought that it would get so large that there’s no reasonable way to fairly distribute those few spaces.”

Rising, too, was the cost of a trip through the Fiery Furnace for those who were inexperienced with the labyrinthian passages and felt they needed a professional guide.

“After a while, you start a black market in permits. And you really do," Superintendent Cannon said, "because I think they can charge whatever they want. I think it's about $100 per person." 

For a while, the CUA permits were issued on a first-come, first-served basis, a practice that led to the guides lining up early in the morning at the park's permit office. At one point, guides figured they could leave a clipboard in line to hold their spot, said Superintendent Cannon. Park officials replaced that arrangement with a kind of lottery in which they would draw numbers out of a hat to determine which CUA holders received permits, she said. That drew protests from some companies, which complained that there no longer was any value to being first in line for permits, said the superintendent.

Finally, on September 12, the superintendent announced to all CUA holders that the Fiery Furnace would be off-limits to commercial guides beginning in 2017; their ticket allotment would be made available for the general public. The commercial guides would, however, still have access to 24 other trail systems in the park to lead tours, she said.

But that decision isn't sitting well with guiding companies.

"They’re going to ruin it, basically. They’re not just wrecking my business, they’re going to ruin the Fiery Furnace," charged Mike Coronella, owner of Deep Desert Expeditions. "They’re going to trample it and the experience will be gone.”

Coronella, whose company charges $90 per person for tours of the Fiery Furnace, maintains that park staff arbitrarily reached the decision to block professional guides from the area.

“That was their solution to finding a better way of distributing the permits. Certainly a solution that nobody was looking for," said the guide, who added that he was unable to reach park officials to discuss their decision. “It’s been really disappointing. ... I’m at the point now where I don’t think talking to the Southeast Utah Group (which is comprised of Arches and Canyonlands national parks and Hovenweep and Natural Bridges national monuments) has any value.

"To me it just speaks of terrible management. I don’t know if this is going to change until management changes.”

Also weighing in on the matter was U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, who wrote Superintendent Cannon to say the move "needs to be reversed immediately."

"These commercial guides are true stewards of the land, as their entire businesses (sic) model depends on the preservation and protection of these public lands," he wrote. "Further, the guides provide recreation opportunities to those who otherwise may not have the means or knowhow (sic) to experience the natural beauty of the Furnace. We should be expanding these programs, not restricting them."

The Fiery Furnace is an easy place to get lost if you haven't traveled through it. It's a beautifully sculpted area of the park that's heavily concentrated with red rock wonders that reflect the erosional processes that carved the national park's landscape out of the Colorado Plateau.

"There are no trails, signs, or cairns in the Fiery Furnace," the park's website states. "GPS units do not work well due to the towering sandstone walls. Navigating its complex passages requires physical agility and careful observation."

But along with banning commercial guides from the Fiery Furnace next year, park officials will install some sort of marked trail system, said Superintendent Cannon.

"We do plan to delineate the trail, which is a way to keep people on the trail so that they aren’t wandering off, making social trails and getting lost," she said. "All of those tie in together. We also intend to add NPS foot patrols in there more often and carefully maintain the delineation of the trail.”

Superintendent Cannon said the plan also calls for reducing the number of spots on the ranger-led tours from 25 to 15 to reduce the impact those groups have on the experience and resource. Private groups also will be downsized, she said, from 15 to 10 individuals. Overall, however, the 125-visitors-per-day limit will remain; 75 permits for the general public, and 50 via ranger-guided hikes.