Palm Springs Jan 29

My Christmas gift to my mom was to plan a day out together to the greater Palm Springs area. A good mid-week break in our schedules aligned and I booked us tram tickets. We started by driving out to Cabazon for a chance to stroll through the fancy fruit wares at Hadley's Fruit Orchard. A mention of my mom never having tried prickly pear jam before stuck with me. I was initially thinking of a picnic lunch at Whitewater but it was sufficiently windy outside that we decided to eat at Hadley's, enjoying tasty sandwiches and generous servings of banana date shakes. After lunch we drove up Whitewater Canyon to the Whitewater Preserve, the first time I had actually strolled the grounds proper. It was a neat spot, a world apart with its layered sedimentary cliffs towering overhead the blue-green fish ponds (frontispiece). 

After a short walk up the valley to the river, we drove onward into the desert, our next stop the Thousand Palms Oasis. Here we walked the short boardwalk trail through the heart of the palms next to the spring-fed pond, which had changed since my last visit, presumably from a strong windstorm. With a little time to spare we hiked up to the top of the lookout hill for views over the San Andreas and oases.

Next on the list was the Palm Springs Tramway, which we arrived at a little earlier than planned. Happily the parking lot was as empty as I had seen it, allowing us to park right next to the top and to take the next half-empty tramcar up the mountain. The scenery on the ride never gets old between the towering cliffs of jagged granite with cross-crossing dikes and sills, the shift from desert vegetation to pines, and the low desert views stretching out below. Once up, we opted to put on our coats and go down the concrete switchbacks for the short Long Valley loop hike. There was no snow around at this point in the season but some nice ice coating the margins of the small creek. We both enjoyed breathing in the crisp mountain air and the quiet of the pines.

Back at the mountain station we caught the sunset from the lookout perch just above, with particularly nice views looking southeast towards the Salton Sea. I was debating dinner in the station but after our earlier discussion I wanted to find a place in downtown Palm Springs with prickly pear margaritas.

We ended up having to wait about 30 minutes to get a table at the place I selected but this worked out fine as it gave us time to walk through the night market taking over downtown. Eventually we got seated and enjoyed a fancy sampler flight of prickly pear, pineapple, watermelon, and spicy margaritas with tempura avocado tacos. I'm not one for taking pictures of food but the margarita flight was hard not to snap a picture of. All in all I thought it was a great day with pleasant weather and a good variety of new places and tastes to enjoy together. Thanks to mom for a fun day out.

Carrizo Badlands Jan 18

Back out to the badlands to painstakingly log some mud cave survey. Being my first trip back out since April 2025, I was curious to see if any of the rain events led to some notable changes. This time around a 5am departure got me to the Domelands turnoff a little before 8a to meet Carol and Fredrik. We went through the usual routine of carpooling to the trailhead, packing, and hiking our commute route to the badlands west of Andrade Canyon. This time we would head far west to Realm of the Rattler, so named for a snake I was not delighted to see ahead of me in a fairly constricted crawl passage. From Andrade we went up, across, then down and up, down and up, down and then a final up and over into the Rattler catchment. I unfortunately forgot how unpleasant the cave immediately downstream was and so we brute force went through it with our packs instead of more intelligently bypassing it. It was a slowish 2 hours of travel by the time we arrived. 

After a snack at the resurgence entrance we split at 11am, with Carol and Fredrik heading in the resurgence, and I working my way over the cave to survey the submergence entrance solo. As I approached the entrance I got a surprise with a small Desert Kit Fox darting out the entrance, it as surprised to see me as I was it. As I readied my gear for the solo survey I painfully learned that my tablet and survey device were both at 20% battery despite me charging them right before. Later at home I realized the GFCI was tripped on the socket I was charging them which explained the mystery. Despite the threat of the battery dying on one of my devices, I was fortunate that I ended up having just enough to get through the day's survey.

Desert Kit Fox after darting from the shade of a mud cave entrance

The survey was fairly brutal, certainly the least enjoyable I have done in the badlands. My knees were bleeding and my arms thoroughly scratched by the end of it. Some knee crawling led to about 100 feet of pleasant standing passage which then broke down into some knee crawl meandering bends and then an uber terrible helmet-off abrasion squeeze. I struggled inch by inch to a particularly tight constriction that I would have to widen to get through. Awkwardly in the squeeze I managed to set a survey station with some green flagging and with one eye I shot a further station to a fairly distinct flat topped rock. A strong draft told me the cave continued downstream to another entrance. My sincere hope was that this was the worst and only squeeze and I could merely go to the next entrance down, and head up the stream passage to continue my survey. I also tagged the couple upper level passages to thoroughly tie-off all the passage in this submergence entrance. 

Back at the entrance I drank some water and climbed back up the mud slope to stage my gear at the sinkhole entrance 60 ft downstream. This was steeper and harder to get into than I remembered and I had to take care to kick in some footsteps and choose my handholds wisely, inevitably letting loose a cloud of dust. Eventually I made it down the two tiered slope to the stream passage at the bottom. I left everything behind except the instrument, tablet, flagging, and spare light, and belly crawled into a smaller passage than I hoped. On and on I went around several tight twisting bends, near constantly cursing and every time thinking the next bend must be the squeeze. Interestingly I found a few patches of very wet mud cracked mud for the first time in the badlands. I must have gone down at least 100 ft of passage until I got to a mud collapse area I could imagine was the other side of my squeeze. With much cursing and unpleasantness I poked my head into the helmet-off squeeze. I could not see the flagging. Curses! I wiggled inch by painful inch forward, my head cocked at uncomfortable angles as I tried to cast my light forward. Finally the glint of the green survey station!!! 

With a huge relief at this connection landmark, I could then work out which rock was my end of survey, then backsight to it. I had just enough time to place a few more stations and end my survey at a comfortable spot with a clear station to revisit. I was thrilled to be able to make the connection; I don't think many would have the patience or determination to deal with the horrible thing. I carefully climbed back out and rejoined Carol and Fredrik a few minutes after our scheduled 2:45p. I managed 35 stations for 100m of survey while they did 16 stations with Carol learning how to digital survey. We compared notes as we snacked and drank and then decided on our exit from the badlands. It was my first time sketching with a dedicated stylus on a Samsung tablet and I really enjoyed the precision upgrade over my finger. I marveled at how sinuous the cave was; the end of my 100m survey was only about 25m from where I started!

I suspected it would be quicker to recross the many ups and downs through the badlands back to Andrade Canyon but there was some enthusiasm from the other two to climb straight up out of the badlands up the steep bedrock slope to the ridge, which I had done once before. Slowly we climbed 800ft vertical up the slope, gaining a spectacular panoramic view over the badlands from the top.

Once on the ridgetop of the Coyote Mountains we still had some up and down as we followed an old jeep trail back towards the wash network at the head of Andrade Canyon. We got a nice pink sunset and then made the final jaunt in the very last light.

The 80 minute drive was brutal on my neglected stomach but Carol and Fredrik joined me for some tasty Mexican at Casa de Pico, which I had been craving, then we parted with full stomachs. Once again it was an annoyingly large amount of effort and long day for 100m of cave survey which more more to survey to finish the cave.  I can only hope the "missing link" portion we haven't seen is somehow magically large pleasant passage.

Indian Canyons Jan 11

Looking for a day trip escape, Heather mapped out a 6.5 mile loop hike on some seldom visited trails in Indian Canyons near Palm Springs. We arrived around 8:30am to a pleasantly empty Palm Canyon parking lot and packed lightly for the hike. Down the hill into the shade of the palm grove I was caught off guard by the slight chill that would soon wear off. The creek was a mere baseflow trickle, much less than I was expecting. We hiked up the main trail of Palm Canyon, having it all to ourselves. We both were surprised at the verdant greenery from the recent holiday rains. 

We passed the main trail junction above the palms and continued up the wash of the East Fork. Despite no visible surface water, two interesting hillside travertine deposits and palms extending intermittently for a thousand feet signaled some springs. The wash was actually more engaging than I could have guessed with many meanders, shifting sights, interesting outcrops, and several dryfalls requiring climbing or bypassing.

After almost 2 miles along the wash we branched onto the loop connector that took us across the rolling hills on the eastern shoulder of Palm Canyon. At intervals there were nice patches of barrel cacti but this was overall the most desolate part of the hike. The different rock types and slanting turtleback of the San Jacintos made for dramatic landscapes from this vantage. This loop trail was advertised as being great for cholla patches but we really only saw one minor patch. At another junction we turned onto the Vandeventer Trail which took us back to Palm Canyon. The quiet shady grove we had before was now sunny and noisy with tourists. We made it back to the car, covering 6.6 miles in 2.5 hours.

Heather was ready for lunch (and I was hungry) but I still wanted a quick detour to see a little more water at Andreas Canyon. Despite the busy parking lot, we found a spot easily enough and had a quick stroll upcanyon to some of the deeper pools and taller cascades.

We ended our day out with a tasty meal and refreshing drinks at Native Foods in Palm Desert, then drove on home. The hike was better than I would have guessed and well worth the effort.