Wonderland of Rocks Traverse

April 24, 2018 tarannosaurus

Epic Travel → North America → The West Coast → Southern California → South Central Desert → Joshua Tree → Wonderland of Rocks Traverse

Location: Indian Cove area, Joshua Tree

Time Required: 5-8 hours

Distance: ~7.5 mile loop starting and ending at Indian Cove campground, 5.7 miles from the Wonderland backcountry board/Boy Scout Trail (shuttle required)

Elevation Gain/Loss: 1400 feet

Red Tape/Notes: Entrance fee is $25 per vehicle and the park is open 24 hours. For more information on the park, including available hikes, visit the Joshua Tree NPS website. You can find a high level description of the route, and more importantly, gpx files for the routes, on ropewiki. For beta on available climbing sites and routes in the area, the Mountain Project website has an extensive list.

What’s Nearby?: Willow Hole, Rattlesnake Canyon

This is a fabulous technical (or semi-technical, depending on your definition) hike, which involves scrambling under, over, and across a fun maze of boulders. Part of the fun is finding a way through, since it’s definitely not always obvious – it’s like a 3D puzzle. Climbing/bouldering skills are very helpful, and will make this route immensely easier and more enjoyable. I suppose there’s also some exposure, although I don’t know that we would have really noticed it except that we had a non-climber/non-canyoneer with us and she was decidedly uncomfortable on various sections. She made it through like a champ, though! Still, being confident/comfortable with some amount of exposure would probably increase your enjoyment also.

Most posts you see on the Wonderland of Rocks Traverse cover what we would consider to be only half the route. This shorter, more common route requires a shuttle and starts with the Willow Hole hike: at the Boy Scout Trail trailhead, just west of Hidden Valley on Park Blvd, you travel north/northeast to Willow Hole. Instead of stopping here and turning around, though, you’ll continue on northeast to the parking/picnic area at Indian Cove. This route saves you a couple of miles, but also includes a couple of miles of less adventurous travel on the wide, flat (aka rather boring) Boy Scout Trail, which you’ll probably be sharing with heaps of other people. You’ll likely ditch all of them at Willow Hole, when you’ll continue on to the good stuff, traveling down the mountain through the sea of massive boulders. Somewhere along the way, a trickling stream emerges and periodically creates pools of water. You’ll have a nice break from the intense boulder scrambling about halfway down, where the boulders give way to a grassy valley, where you’ll find the Oh-bay-yo-yo shelter – I don’t know what the real history of the shelter is (possibly it was built by teenagers in the 1930’s as a sort of “fort”), but it’s basically a hybrid cave/shelter (a more primitive version of what you’ll find at the Eagle Cliff Miner’s Cabin) taking advantage of a natural pseudo-cave created by large boulders. The stream continues through the valley, and is present off and on for the remainder of the hike, sometimes creating large enough pools that you need to go significantly out of your way to get around them (or get wet, your choice). You won’t notice the water when you’re on the boulders though, and there are lots of them beyond the valley. The going gets easier once you drop into Rattlesnake Canyon and remains fairly easy until you reach the parking area.

For even more fun, the full route avoids most of the Boy Scout Trail (and therefore most of the boring trail and most of the people). The full route starts at the northwest end of the Indian Cove area, first traveling a well-defined trail, and then transitioning into scrambling up the mountain of boulders. You’ll alternately follow a wash that disappears into a wall of boulders, then make your way up somehow until you find the wash again, traveling steadily southwest up the mountain. Although opportunities for fun boulder problems abound, there’s always a relatively easy option to get up if you look for it. The sections of traveling in the wash will become longer, and after a turn to the southeast, you’ll be traveling through open, flat terrain on a blissfully easy section. Your route will merge with the Willow Hole trail, and you’ll probably see people for the first time since you started. Luckily, it’s less than a mile to Willow Hole, when you’ll lose them again, and continue on with your adventure as described above. Once you reach the parking area at Indian Cove, below Rattlesnake Canyon, it’s an easy hike on the nearly flat road or use trails through Indian Cove. Alternatively, you could leave a vehicle here and have a very short and easy shuttle.

This area is covered in literally hundreds of climbs, although if you’re doing the full traverse, you probably won’t have much time for climbing. But you could certainly use the hike as an opportunity to investigate potential climbing areas and then use the easiest/quickest approach for a future trip.