Complete-Hiking Joshua Tree National Park

I recently finished hiking or running every maintained mile of trail in Joshua Tree National Park. 

I started this project in spring 2021 when we bought a house two miles from Black Rock campground. I'd thought of trying to do something along these lines back in my thru-hiking days. Simple Google searches indicate Yosemite has "more than 750 miles of trail," Yellowstone "more than 900." Someday I thought I'd spend a summer entirely in one of those parks, Memorial Day to Labor Day, hiking every mile of trail. Bear canisters and permits seem like an issue, but a surmountable obstacle. Memorial Day is early, but not too much worse than my 2004 PCT thru-hike when I left Kennedy Meadows Memorial Day weekend. Perhaps it would be much worse in Yellowstone, but it would be nice to get some time in the parks in early June before mosquito season really ramps up in July. 

Cool

Of course I have a real job now so I can't spend the entire summer hiking anymore, and dogs aren't allowed on trails in nearly all National Parks (Shenandoah being a notable exception), so I figured I'd section hike, or "complete-hike" Joshua Tree.

The park claims on its website to have 300 miles of trail, but  only lists 79 miles' worth.  There are about 190 miles of maintained trail according to my copy of the National Geographic Trails Illustrated map, which is my main source of determining what counts as a maintained trail. My main definition is that it's on the map, and depicted as a maintained trail. There are a handful of unmaintained trails/old roads that I'll probably eventually hike too, but not yet. There are also a few short (<0.5 miles) nature trails that I haven't done, and don't really consider worth doing. So I've done every maintained trail longer than half a mile long. There are also some unmaintained routes that are some times old abandoned roads: Pushawalla Canyon, Berdoo Thermal Canyon, Fried Liver Wash, and Big Wash.

If I were doing this in Death Valley or Mojave Preserve, I would obviously be using Michel Digonnet's excellent guidebooks. However, the best guidebook to Joshua Tree is ---holy shit! I just looked on Amazon and Digonnet has a Joshua Tree guidebook coming out in May! At 480 pages, it looks to be full of amazing detail like his others. Until May, the best guidebook is Patty Furbush's On Foot in Joshua Tree National Park, which is decent but only 180 pages.

How many miles did it take? A more relevant answer is that it took me about two years of living near the park. I'm no graph theory mathematician, but I'd guess I did at least twice the mileage due to out and back or repetition of individual segments. There are two or three areas with a decent amount of loops and crossing trails (Black Rock campground, the Maze/Window Loop, and Quail Springs), and one trail across northern portion of the park (California Riding and Hiking Trail, 37 miles). 

The CRHT is the longest run I ever did in the park. Other days I'd do about 20 miles, sometimes with Amy dropping me off in the park, and I'd get a few miles of new trail, then run to Black Rock via the Bigfoot Trail, then home. Other days I'd do short loops in the park after work. I used Strava's heatmap functionality to track where I had and hadn't been. Basically, if anyone has done it on Strava, I've done it (or it's a road).

Some of my favorite trails are:

• Panorama Loop and Warren Peak, which are about a 9 mile loop from Black Rock campground. I've done numerous off-trail climbs and descents of Warren Peak on foot from the house, and adding the Panorama Loop gets you one enormous Joshua Tree and some nice views down toward the Coachella Valley.

  

  Rattler on Warren Summit
  

  
  
  
  
  
• Maze Loop and North View Trail. The parking lot is a glorified dirt pullout that can hold four cars, but at least Google knows where it is, and the trails are relatively well-marked. Nice running among boulders once you get away from the park road.
  



Nolina on Nolina Peak


• Nolina Peak: a 3.7 mile roundtrip on a dirt road. It's just my favorite steep runnable hill around here, with good sunsets and views of Yucca Valley. Since it's a road, the dogs are allowed.  It's also one of the first parcels Mojave Desert Land Trust (where Amy used to work) conveyed to the Park.
• Lost Palms Oasis Trail. 7+ miles roundtrip. The furthest south trail of any consequence in the park. You get a completely different set of plants: ocotillo rather than Joshua trees, and the palm oasis is impressive--running water in the desert.  
  

Big Ocotillo

Running Water

Would I recommend it? Not as a thru-hike, since it's very circuitous and repetitive, and there is essentially no water in the park. As pictured above, there of course is a tiny bit, but humans are not allowed to drink it, because it's essential for the survival of wildlife. If someone wanted to spend a few weeks (with a car) camping in and around the park, then sure, I think it's a worthy goal. Now that I've done it, it seems silly and arbitrary, and I would much prefer getting off trail into the small canyons or on top of some peaks. Speaking of which, I'm headed to Smith Water Canyon right now.