Wednesday April 23, 20.6mi/33.2km

Joshua Tree NP East Bdy (186.4/1200ft) to Inner Valley of Coxcomb Mtns (207.0/2950ft) (CA)

I got an early start because I knew I had a long hot walk across the Chuckwalla Valley. I left camp a little after 6am, and 15 minutes later I was at my water cache.

As I was filling in the hole, a bunch of work trucks drove by. I think they were employees of the water department but they were eyeing me suspiciously. For the next hour I hiked along an old abandoned 4wd road.

Off to my left, I could see a huge pumping operation.

The guidebook says this is where LA pumps water up and over the mountains, what a waste of energy. The old 4wd road veered right and I left behind the hum of that operation.

Ahead of me I could see a huge solar array, easily hundreds of acres in size. It seems this whole valley is being desecrated for various industrial purposes. After hiking by the solar array and some power lines, I finally left the signs of civilization and continued North through the open desert.

It was very flat with just creosote bushes, except for this one weird ridge of red dirt.

I’m assuming those are piles of old mine tailings. The valley was also home to a healthy population of kangaroo rats, as evidenced by the honeycomb of tunnels under the ground, which would occasionally collapse when you stepped on one.

The view ahead to the Coxcomb mountains, where I would be hiking later in the day.

I crossed the national park boundary, and decided to have lunch under a shady Palo Verde tree. After lunch I hiked by this old abandoned pumping station, I think it was used for the defunct mine in the area.

I had about 2 hours of gradual uphill hiking to get into the Coxcomb mountains and it was easy walking. But I wasn’t paying much attention and accidentally impaled myself on a cactus spine. Oops.

The side of my right shoe had picked up a spine on the ground, and then on my next stride the spine had brushed my left shin and stuck. Ouch. After doing some minor first aid for a puncture wound, I eventually finished the gradual climb and then enjoyed a shady break before entering the mountains.

I followed the wash up into the coxcomb mountains, a typical strategy for getting into the interior of mountains. In this case though, this wash was blocked by massive car-sized boulders.

So I skirted them by climbing up the left bank and went around.

It was slow going, but pretty fun as it wasn’t that steep. And there were lots of cool little barrel cacti to look at.

Every once in awhile I would turn around to view my upward progress, and I had a pretty nice panorama of the valley I had just hiked across.

More climbing.

More views.

As expected, some of the rocks are loose and shift when you step on them. One of them caught me off guard and I slipped, catching some rough granite on my trip to the ground. Oops again. I had too much blood anyway.

The whole climb was 800 vertical feet in 0.8 miles, and I kept switching from the left bank to the right bank, since the progress was easier on the banks. The middle of the wash is where all the fast moving water flowed and leaves behind only the largest boulders, which are more difficult to navigate through. Once I got to the top I was surprised to see this amazing little hidden valley.

It was flat and ringed by mountains!

And had all these cool little rock formations!

Even some hoo-doo looking things.

It wasn’t quite 6pm, but this was such a beautiful spot I decided to camp here.

This is definitely my favorite campsite of the Desert Trail so far, and it will be hard to beat for the remainder of the trail!