Desert Wonderland

Martin Luther King holiday 2006

By Carolyn Gray Anderson

Hiking to the Wonderland of Rocks

There’s no substitute for the winter desert car camping trip. No bear canisters, no mosquitoes, no arduous filtering of stream water. Wide open skies, golden light, glimpses of the secret life behind sagebrush and beneath sand. Calm and majestic landscapes that draw you back ineluctably. And once you’ve observed the tradition under the capable leadership of Dean Wallraff and Beth Powis, I guarantee you’ll be hooked.

This annual MLK weekend desert carcamp sponsored by the Wilderness Adventures Section alternates years between Anza-Borrego State Park and Joshua Tree National Park—and in 2006, we visited the latter.

But for what amounted to fairly prohibitive wind by Sunday night, we once again enjoyed comparatively perfect weather, far away from the rains that shrouded the greater L.A. Basin.

Sorely missed from this year’s core membership were Pam Allen and co-leader Terry Ginsburg. We wished them there in spirit and hope to see them again on future desert trips. We benefited from Ted Lubeshkoff stepping in to complete the triumvirate of leaders, and welcomed several first-timers.

Now, there are, of course, down sides to the holiday weekend car camp. Traffic on I-10. The inevitable risk of camping next to enormous troops of rambunctious Boy Scouts. Slack-jawed families blandly descending from RVs to toss french fries to salivating coyotes. Clutches of pre-adolescent girls huddled on the rocks above your camp, gossiping late into the night.

The up sides decidedly outweigh the down sides, needless to say. For me, the greatest joy comes in the form of leisurely rock scrambles in protected canyons. You imagine yourself half monkey, half mountain goat as you pick your way over the mounds of golden rock or slip through a narrow crevasse, using your brain as much as your muscles. Your goal: always the soft sandy wash below; your task: to get there without wasting time stranded atop a boulder with no footholds on the other side, necessitating your backtracking, or getting tangled up in some thorny desert vegetation.

Civilization calls

Rambles through the Wonderland of Rocks and sweeping vistas from the tops of Queen Mountain and Inspiration Point aside, among the highlights of the winter desert car camp are, naturally, those moments when you can look forward to leaving the park for the evening, rejoining the ordinary citizenry as though you’re not out there sleeping in the dust at all.

Hiking is over for the day. It’s 4:30 and the wind is picking up. You huddle in camp, contemplating what it’s going to take to get a stove lit, all the while eyeing your companions for signs that someone happened to pick up a local paper so you can discreetly check show times for that cinema in Yucca Valley. In-camp happy hour be damned; all you know, as you brave the frigid gale, is that the light is fading and it’s not getting any warmer.

If you’re headed to Twenty-Nine Palms for dinner (having gleefully forfeited that pre-cooked Tasty Bite you can just as easily prepare another time), you make a bee-line for the warm hospitality and outstanding service at Edchada’s, with its generous portions of heavy, piping hot Mexican fare. If you eat meat and you’re not afraid of fried food, order the flautas, you won’t be disappointed. If you’re vegetarian, I hope you like cheese. You won’t find any vegan alternatives here, no rarefied salads of jicama and nopales.

Dinner at Crossroads Café

In the town of Joshua Tree, all trails lead to the Crossroads Cafe, a magnet for locals and L.A. climbers. In this atmosphere that’s equal parts chai and testosterone, people gather nightly for the food, the company, and, as rugged as they all appear, probably to escape the park winds that repeatedly whip the fly off your tent from five in the afternoon until dawn. No matter that waiting for a table might take a while. Scan the room and be dazzled by one strapping climber after another (OK--or poser-climber, who cares?). Where do they all come from, in their adorable stocking caps, three-day growths of beard, and lug soles? Their pilled mufflers and dusty Gore-tex and woolen socks, their disarming grins?

Much later, when the desert season is over and you’re rifling in cupboards and garage for your backpacking gear, you’ll come upon that old Filson coat you only wear on the winter desert car camp, shoved at some point to the far side of the closet until next year. From its thinning wool will waft that indelible smell of woodsmoke, achieving the Proustian effect of transporting you back to the campfire, the Wonderland, the endless sky, the stocking caps, Boy Scouts, jackrabbits, and the desert tradition of your trusted Core Group.