Led by Kirk Olsen and Jeff Johnson
By Jeff Johnson, story and photos
Each year when we come to Mission Creek Preserve for a Spring carcamp, we find a slightly different place. This year, the big surprise was in the floodplain around the creek. Where we used to see abundant willows and other riparian plants, this year we saw bald stretches of gravel and boulders with piles of debris and logs the size of trees. That is what Hurricane Hilary did here last August. Heavy rain high in the San Bernardinos above the Mission Creek Preserve sent torrents through this drainage down into the desert, uprooting whatever was growing by the creek. Both Mission Creek Preserve and the adjacent Whitewater River Preserve were closed to visitors after the storm because of damage it caused. Both preserves have since reopened. Fortunately for us, the Stonehouse campground at Mission Creek, where we stayed, is above the level that was flooded.
Our Saturday plan this year had been a new hike, from the Mission Creek drainage into the Whitewater River drainage. But the trails that cross Mission Creek and Whitewater River were also washed away, and some have not yet been rebuilt. So we abandoned that plan for this year and instead repeated our Saturday hike from last year. This was a walk northwest from the campground to the Pacific Crest Trail, then branching off into a different drainage to the west to reach a dramatic overlook over the chaotic hills around the Whitewater River.
We thought we had nicely managed to miss significant weather out there this year, until it rained on us during our hike. But that was easier to deal with than the wind last year that nearly blew our tents out of the campground.
Looking for desert wildflowers, we were a couple weeks early for the peak display this year. We did see most of the expected wildflowers in bloom, including the mysteriously unidentifiable “fabric softener” bush—that’s what it smells like. We did find my favorite local plant in bloom, scraggly Bigelow’s desert rock rose.
Sunday morning, after leisurely breakfast, we climbed the small hill just north of the campground, where the camp’s water storage tanks are hidden. You get a nice view of the surroundings and down the valley toward Palm Springs. Another year it would be a great place to watch the sunset after dinner. As a bonus, we found that the hill was high enough that, yes, we did have cellphone reception.
