Boy Scout Trail, Joshua Tree National Park

Date: Mar 31, 2008.
People: Ravi, Eugene.
Basics: 16 mile roundtrip, ~1100 elevation gain.
Pictures: picasaweb.google.com/qwanta/JoshuaTree2008

Started off the 2008 hiking season with a visit to Joshua Tree National Park. Joshua Tree is a 2.5 hour drive from San Diego. One of the main goals of visiting Joshua Tree was to see the desert wildflowers and we were not disappointed in this respect. The Boy Scout Trail had a wide variety of flowers including a huge pasture of yellow flowers at the very beginning of the trail. The trail is located between the two entrances on the north side of the park, on Indian Cove Road off 29 Palms Highway. The trail itself was somewhat boring except for the flowers and a cute little desert tortoise that we ran into. We probably hiked only 4 miles in and turned back as we wanted to see the rest of the park. Most of the trail was flat and sandy, except for the end where there was a few hundred feet of elevation gain.

The rest of the park was nice, but not as spectacular as other national parks. We drove around for a few hours. The landscape of Joshua Trees and huge boulders is probably unique to this park. We stopped at:

Jumbo Rocks, Skull Rock etc. : The park has a bunch of huge rocks, but these are nowhere as spectacular as the ones in Utah. We failed to locate the infamous rock that looks like a certain female body part.

Keys View: The highest point in the park accessible by car at a little over 5000 feet. Reasonably nice view of San Jacinto and San Gorgonio. Was extremely windy.

Barker Dam: The park guide promised an oasis lots of birds, but this was a small man-made pond that looked like it was full of Coca-cola. There were a few vandalized petroglyphs on the trail.

Cholla Garden: This was a huge garden of Jumping Cholla cacti, which supposedly have a tendency to attach themselves to passerby, though I did not find any evidence of this. This was a very pretty garden and a must-see for visitors to the park.

Overall, I'd recommend Joshua Tree during wildflower season as a "must see once" destination for SoCal folks. Wouldn't necessarily recommend it for hikes or great views.