Joshua Tree in the Snow

It was winter break and we were going to take advantage of having a week off to make a short trip out to California. It started with a night in Vegas to see the Blue Man Group. The weather was absolutely awful with just buckets of rain pouring down. In Vegas, it does not matter too much because we were mostly inside except for the part where we have to move back and forth from our car. Where it did impact us was the next day when we tried to drive to Joshua Tree. We should have only had a 3 to 4 hour drive.

Leaving at 9:00 AM this would have left us plenty of time to do some hikes in Joshua Tree. Unfortunately for us, though, the interstate had been closed the night before in Primm which led to a massive pileup of automobiles in Primm, Nevada.

A drive that normally would have taken us half an hour, took us over an hour and a half just to get to Primm. Then, when we finally made our turn, the road into the Mojave Desert Preserve was closed. This made us completely switch our driving direction and instead cut over to Needles, CA, then down to I-10 to come into Joshua Tree from the south. It sounds simple enough, but it was literally all day. We finally got to our campsite in Joshua Tree at approximately 4:00 pm. Given that we were still pretty close to the shortest day of the year, this meant that we were going to have to leave almost immediately to get out on a hike. Luckily, there was a short loop hike right near our campsite called the Mastodon Mine trail.

The lighting turned out to be fabulous and we took many photos as we watched the sun go below the clouds. The trail itself was good and we got to see all the interesting rock formations of Joshua Tree. There were still other people out and about which was sort of surprising given how late that it was. We could tell that this park was going to be pretty busy by that. We were able to make it back to our campsite before it got too dark, but everything else we did that night was in the dark. Setting up the tent, cooking dinner, eating dinner, hanging out, were all done in the dark. It was needless to say an early night to bed because it was also fairly cold.

The wind was blowing too and honestly I was exhausted from the driving that day. The kids and Jacqueline slept in the car that we had decked out with a nice comfy mattress whereas I got to enjoy the four person tent with lots of extra space. I slept great and the next morning after finally getting the rest of the crew moving was also delayed by the fact that we had to relocate our campsite given that I was not able to book the same campsite two days in a row. After we got everything resettled, our plan was to go enjoy the part of the park that we had missed with our long drive the previous day.

The park had other plans for us, though, because as we approached the higher elevations of Joshua Tree, we realized that they had received a massive amount of snow the same day that the Interstate was shut down near Primm. There were still 8-12 inches of snow in many places. This was going to impact us because we did not have the clothing options to go tramping around in the snow for the day. It also impacted us because there was absolutely nowhere to park. We finally found a parking spot near a road and we decided that our best bet was to just walk this road for a while.

 It was good, but also really muddy and there were still foolish people that seemed to want to drive their cars down this obviously not in good shape road. This was a climbing area in the park and we even saw one group of climbers braving the elements. We walked until we saw that this road was probably just to access some park housing which was at the end of it and then walked back to our car. It was pretty fantastic seeing the Joshua Trees buried in snow, but as far as getting our for a hike, this was not ideal. We decided to make our way back to our campsite, stopping briefly to complete a short loop at the Cholla Gardens.
We were once again approaching dusk when we decided to go back toward the trail that we had done the previous night, but instead head out on a different trail. This one went toward the Lost Palms Oasis. We did not make it to the end of the trail, but we were happy that we got to stretch our legs and probably made about 2 hours of hiking. We asked some people who had done the whole hike and it sounds like there were a bunch of palm trees at the end. The wild palms were so much neater than the groomed city palms.

These were just so massive and wild looking. We had to turn around because of daylight, but we did enjoy another evening in camp. This one was cold enough that frost formed on the outside of the tent and on the inside windows of the car. We got going early in the morning for a drive out to Santa Barbara to meet up with our friends. Joshua Tree was a good place, though, I think visiting it again without the piles of snow may give us a different perspective in the future.