Day 3 of 2021 Joshua Tree National Park Trip

by admin

Third day of my April 2021 southern California trip. I would spend a second full day in Joshua Tree National Park, visiting parts of the park that I left out during my first day of visit: Fortynine Palms Oasis, Split Rock, Barker Dam and Keys View.

Fortynine Palms Oasis

Monday, April 12. While most attractions of Joshua Tree National Park could be visited in one full day, I had enough time for my visit to southern California this spring that I devoted two days to it. Today, I would be visiting the parts of the park that I skipped last Saturday, starting with Fortynine Palms Oasis.

Fortynine Palms Oasis

Located off the main park road, Fortynine Palms Oasis seemed like an exclave of Joshua Tree National Park. Yet its high rating among the park’s trails spoke to its appeal and popularity. While it’s similar to Lost Palms Oasis that I hiked two days ago, where a long hike from trailhead led to an oasis in the desert with soaring palm trees, the trail is shorter at Fortynine Palm Oasis, and one could reach closer to the more spectacular cluster of palm trees here, so I definitely would recommend Fortynine Palm Oasis over Lost Palms Oasis.

Butterfly on Flower

As for the trail, it’s a 5km out-and-back to Fortynine Palm Oasis with 194m of total elevation gain. Starting from trailhead, it’s a gentle slope up a small hill, before descending down to the oasis at about trailhead elevation level.
Here’s GPS tracking:

Hill

Looking back at the trailhead parking lot. It’s a weekday so the parking lot was pretty empty.

Trail

The trail itself was pretty obviously and easy to follow among the desert landscape. Due to the towns to the north, I had constant cellular coverage for the first half of the hike. That’s an amenity I wasn’t used to in National Parks.

Fortynine Palms Oasis

Not long after starting descent from top of the hill, the distant palm oasis came into sight. And it’s such an awesome sight.

Lizard

I ran into all kinds of lizards on the trail today. There were so many of them here in the desert.

Less than an hour after I started, I reached the end of trail, Fortynine Palms Oasis.

Pond

Rather to my delight this time, I found a few ponds at the bottom of the oasis with visible water. This is how I would envision an oasis.

The sight of Fortynine Palm Oasis was stunning in that, it’s not located in some deep canyon that’s shaded from the sun, yet water abounded in the area to support life in its most spectacular form.

Palm Trees

Not just palm trees, I also heard the sound of birds and frogs (I think) at Fortynine Palms Oasis, complementing the eco-system. Despite invisible, their sounds were pretty uplifting in this arid desert.
On the downside, there were a few annoying bugs near the oasis. They weren’t as bad as two days ago at Lost Palms Oasis, but a nuisance nonetheless.

Flowers
Close to oasis where there’s water. The only flowers I saw along the trail.

Fortynine Palms Oasis
I was only carrying a 35-150mm lens, which wasn’t wide enough for the breadth of the oasis, so I stitched a few photos together.

Palm Trees

Unfortunately, the edge of the oasis was as far as the park allowed visitors to go, as the actual oasis was “fragile eco area” that’s easily disturbed by human activities. So I sat for about 15 minutes on its perimeter admiring this wondrous display of life, before heading back.

Palm Trees in Valley

At first I tried to count the number of palm trees to see whether this oasis lived up to its name of “Fortynine Palms”. With this batch of hard-to-identify palm trees down in the valley, I quickly gave up that thought.

Fields to the North
From the highest point of the hike with clear views of the north.

Rocks

Including rests, Fortynine Palms Oasis Trail only took me a bit over 2 hours, and I would no doubt rate it above Lost Palms Oasis.

After that, I drove to the nearby Oasis Visitor Center of Joshua Tree National Park, took some rest and replenished my water supply, before venturing into the park. That’s also where I had my lunch.

Sculpture at Visitor Center

Two pieces that would rotate in the wind. According to description, the pieces are carefully balanced, just like things in nature. And the pieces would rotate slowly in either rapid or calm winds, like nature.

Palm Trees

These palm trees were located in Oasis of Mara right next to the visitor center. It’s a bit bizarre that this oasis didn’t have valleys to shade it from the sun. According to park website, Serrano who first settled here planted 29 palm trees, probably that’s how the nearby town Twentynine Palms got its name.

Split Rock

My first stop along the main park road today was “Split Rock”, the access to which actually involved a short gravel road. The official map indicated this to be a 3.1km loop trail with minimal elevation change.

Rocks
This area had rocks of all shapes and sizes.

Unfortunately, I didn’t preload the trail map on my phone, so I didn’t know which piece of rock was the actual “Split Rock”. It’s even weirder that I couldn’t figure this out after I got home.

Cave

This cave was close to the trailhead parking lot, where “Split Rock” was marked on OpenStreetMap, which made some sense as it’s the only place along the trail with an official post. It’s just that the cave was such a huge opening in the rocks, that I could hardly associate that with “split”.

Narrow Gap between Rocks
I’m not sure, but these rocks would certainly live up to the name of “Split Rock” to me. They were farther from the trail though.

Lizard
This one hid so well against the background, that I could hardly tell it apart.

Trail
For the beginning part, the trail was easy to follow.

I left parking lot heading North, taking the trail in the counter-clockwise direction. After about 1.3km, the trail entered a valley of boulders and became less obvious to follow. That’s when I noticed an opening between two nearby cliffs resembling a “split”. Since this one was closer, I scrambled up the rocks and took a closer look.

Opening between Cliffs
Taken from along the trail (left) and from trailhead (right).

Opening between Cliffs

Taken along the trail. It took some non-technical scrambling to reach the gap between the cliffs though.

Gap between Cliffs

Rock atop Opening
A precariously exciting position that straddled two cliffs.

Rope Anchor Points
Which indicates this must be a popular climbing spot.

I spent about 10 minutes here admiring this rock formation. For a moment, I convinced myself this was the official “split rock”.

Unfortunately, this small excursion meant I completely lost the official “Split Rock Trail”. With the best of my route-finding, I identified a path leading back to the parking lot, which I took. It turned out to be a shortcut back to the trailhead, so my version of “Split Rock Loop Trail” today only measured 2km long.

Rock with Opening
A few interesting rocks taken along the trail.

Barker Dam

After that my next stop of the day was Barker Dam. I attempted to visit it on Saturday, when its parking lot was completely full. This time, it’s still half-filled, speaking to its popularity.

In early 20th century when there’s more rainfall in the region, cattle ranchers built a dam nearby to secure water sources to their business. Today, the remnants of that dam was accessible through a 2km loop trail.

Blooming Cactus

Barker Dam Riverbed
Now completely dry and hard to tell from surrounding desert landscape apart from a few water marks.

Rocks in Barker Dam
Watermarks indicating how high the water used to be.

Inscription
Commemorating Keys family’s improvement of the dam in 1949-50.

Barker Dam

Barker and Shay Cattle Company built the lower stones in 1902. The Keys family added upper concrete in 1949-1950.

Water Storage Tank

Field of Joshua Tree
After reaching Barker Dam, I opted for the slightly longer loop trail back to the parking lot, which passed through this extensive field of Joshua Trees.

Petroglyphs
Along the loop trail.

It’s only 5:20pm by the time I got back to the trailhead. I had planned to watch sunset at Keys View, but with it being about 2 hours away, I decided to explore another short trail nearby, and that’s Ryan Ranch.

Ryan Ranch

The Ryan family first built a homestead in this region in 1896 to secure a natural spring, which provided support to nearby mining operation. The homestead became unoccupied and fell into disrepair after the establishment of Joshua Tree National Monument.
Nowadays, the ruins of the homestead was accessible via a 1.7km out-and-back trail.

Trail

Ryan Mountain from Ryan Ranch Trail

Field of Joshua Trees

Ryan Ranch

The remains of Ryan Ranch felt a bit out of place among the extensive fields of Joshua Tree. Life here in the desert was a constant battle against nature, but it seemed that nature had the final victory here at Ryan Ranch.

Keys View

Finally, as it neared sunset I reached Keys View. Located on the southern perimeter of the park’s wilderness boundary, it offered spectacular views of Coachella Valley to the south, together with San Bernardino and San Jacinto mountains as backdrop.

I reached Keys View an hour before sunset, with plenty of parking spaces around. Parking lot was completely full at sunset.

Mountains to the West

Coachella Valley

The narrow strip of blackish mountains in the center of this photo was (supposed to be) San Andreas Fault. I knew beforehand that one could see it from Keys View, yet the actual “thing” turned out to be much less spectacular against the backdrop of mountains.

Unfortunately, it was a pretty hazy day, with air pollution from Los Angeles obscuring most of the views towards the west. So the views were hardly great.

Landscape from Keys View

In addition to that, situated on top of a slope, wind was strong at Keys View, so I didn’t stay there for long before retreating back to my car, waiting for sunset.
That’s when I found out there’s T-Mobile signal at Keys View overlooking Coachella Valley, but not at its parking lot located just 20m away, behind a small hill.

Mountains to the East
These two photos were separated by 30 minutes and colors were completely different.

I stayed in my car until close to sunset, and joined the throng at Keys View admiring the vivid colors of western sky.

San Gorgonio Pass
A hazy day as smog from Los Angeles veiled civilization behind mountains.

Sunset

Sunset Glow

Mountains to the West

Coachella Valley

Cholla Cactus Garden

After watching sunset at Keys View, weather forecast indicated a cloudless night ahead, so I thought it would be a great idea to watch the stars. Light pollution dropped as one headed farther east into the park, so I thought “Cholla Cactus Garden” would be a great place to do just that. In addition, the sight of Cholla Cactus clustered below a starry sky should be spectacular.

Unfortunately, lights from the distant metropolis of Los Angeles was still bright to light up the western horizons, creating unwanted distraction in my photos. To make things worse, instead of using (really) long exposures for the field of Cholla Cactus, I opted to light them up with my cell phone flashlight, which, unfortunately, was uneven and created problems for me to adjust white balances.