By Jeff Johnson, story and photos
Last March, Dora led a GLS backpack on the eastern half of the California Hiking and Riding Trail in Joshua Tree National Park. This year, on March 21 and 22, Dora set out with a smaller GLS group to hike the western half of the trail in the park.
Saturday morning, after shuttling cars to the exit point at the Juniper Flats trailhead near Ryan Mountain, we set off from Black Rock trailhead in perfect, sunny weather.
The first excitement of the hike and our first wildlife sighting was a minute or two up the trail—a large rattlesnake asserting its presence. This started a desert wildlife theme that continued for through the hike.
The first section of the trail from Black Rock climbs steadily about 1200’ up a long sandy wash, passing Joshua Trees, scrub oaks, and junipers on the adjacent hillsides. Once at the saddle at the top, the trail crosses into Covington Flat. From this area, we could see in the distance both San Gorgonio and San Jacinto, both still with some snow. A couple more miles and we reached the Covington Flat back country trailhead where we rested in the shade of an enormous Joshua Tree. This area has many large Joshua Trees. A couple of dead ones appear to have been the largest of all.
From there we continued to our cache where we had earlier left several gallons of water in anticipation of a very hot weekend in the desert. One bottle had sprung a leak but, since it was much cooler than we had expected, we still had more than we needed to see us through the weekend.
Our back country camp site for Saturday night was a little farther along, asecluded and level spot on the edge of a valley where some Joshua Tree logs made a place we could all sit together. We set up camp and soon Dora was assembling her famous garbage bag salad, literally in a (clean) garbage bag, while wearing the appropriate food service gloves. Leafy greens, sweet peppers, sun dried tomatoes, ripe avocadoes, cheese and other ingredients all made it there in good shape in various backpacks and went into the salad bag. As the sun set behind the hills, we ate our way through the entire thing and then, to celebrate Dora’s birthday, tiny chocolate cakes for dessert.
Though no cactus were yet in bloom, it was a good weekend for wildflowers. Near the campground, there were evening primroses, Canterbury bells, chia, phacelia, and some other flowers we couldn’t name.
Sunday morning we woke to a pink sunrise in the clouds over the hills to the east. The clouds grew all day to a steady overcast layer, but never more than a couple lazy raindrops. Good hiking weather.
We had topped off every water container we had and dumped out the extra,we set off. Again the day started with a long uphill stretch, passing lots of Canterbury bells in bloom and some lupine. Our next wildlife sighting was a caterpillar tent in a bush by the trail, teeming with caterpillars. A little later, we started to see holes in the ground by the trail, large holes that we thought must have been dug by desert tortoises, though we never actually saw a tortoise. We also saw a number of packrat nests under bushes.
At the first pass of the day, the landscape changed. Immediately ahead, the trail dropped into a canyon. Way off in the distance, under the thickening clouds, we could see the Salton Sea and peaks in the Santa Rosas. The trail followed a ridge down, then climbed the other side in switchbacks toward another pass, south of Quail Peak, which the highest point in the park. In that stretch of trail, we saw our first orange globemallow in bloom. On the wildlife department, we saw a desert wren nest in a cactus, though no wrens.
As we crossed the pass by Quail Mountain into the Juniper Flats drainage, we passed a young woman hiking in the other direction in shorts, no hat, no map, and not much water. She said she was planning to spend a few days alone in that area of the park. Dora asked her a few questions about her readiness for days in the desert alone, but she continued on undiscouraged. Maybe she knew what she was doing better than we could tell. I sure hope so.
Once over the pass by Quail Mountain, we could see Ryan Mountain in the distance, so the end was almost in sight. The trail that descends through Juniper Flats is level and gently downhill for the few miles to the parking lot. Once there, we drove to the Black Rock trailhead to collect the other cars, then headed for La Casita Nueva in Yucca Valley where, on a previous scouting trip, we had found that the mole was worth a return visit.
This ended up being another really good weekend hike with very pleasant company on the trail. The section of the CHRT that we hiked in these two days was just under 20 miles. The landscape was interestingly different from the half of the CHRT that we hiked last year, with some steeper slopes, and few of the rounded granite boulders that are the distinctive rocks of Joshua Tree.
Dora is already planning a return visit next year, this time near Eureka Peak.
