[ Lost in the Landscape ]

a little palm springs hike

The hol­i­day break begins with a quick trip to visit an old friend who’s vaca­tion­ing in Palm Springs. I seem to bring warm weather with me: the days are in the upper 70s and the air is desert-dry. The local weather report whines about only “par­tially sunny” con­di­tions, though the only clouds I see are thin white veils high in the atmos­phere. Good hik­ing weather, I think. My friend is just a lit­tle equiv­o­cal but he finally caves. “OK, but noth­ing too strenuous.”

The North Lykken Trail is picked for its easy prox­im­ity to where we’re stay­ing and its promise of nice aer­ial views of the Palm Springs and the rest of the Coachella Val­ley. The online writeup calls it “mod­er­ately stren­u­ous,” as does Philip Ferranti’s 140 Great Hikes in and Near Palm Springs. It seems doable and fun, so off we go.

Bloom­ing chu­parosa (Jus­ti­cia cal­i­for­nica, this first image) is every­where. And where there’s chu­parosa, there are hum­ming­birds and buzzing clouds of bees feed­ing on its nectar.

Plants of brit­tle­bush (Encelia fari­nosa) are every­where too, but most are just leaf­ing out from their long dry sum­mer­time coma. Soon they’ll be cov­ered in bright yel­low daisies. This plant usu­ally calls dryer areas home but can be found all the way to the coast, and it’s used a lot in land­scap­ing projects.

Here’s a bar­rel cac­tus (Fero­cac­tus cylin­draceus) with an awe­some view of the city.

Maybe we’re dis­tracted by the view or I’m too focused on the plantlife, but by about now we’re scram­bling over piles of rocks, in and out of drainages, look­ing for the trail. If we were deep some­where in the wilds with­out a map we might be get­ting con­cerned. But how can you say you’re lost when there’s a big city grid down below as a ref­er­ence point? Okay, we’re not really lost, but some of this is on the stren­u­ous side of “mod­er­ately stre­nous.” But not for too much longer. We find some other hik­ers off in the dis­tance and get back on the trail.

With the trail securely under­foot it’s eas­ier to take in the great rock for­ma­tions and enjoy more of the views.

It’s a bit away from peak bloom but there are a few other things to see. This is one of the desert plants I’ve always found pretty inter­est­ing, whether it’s in bloom or not. Desert trum­pet or pipe­weed (Eri­o­gonum infla­tum) is an unmis­tak­able buck­wheat that usu­ally has flow­er­ing stems with a fat trum­pet­ing pro­tu­ber­ance below the nodes of its bloom spikes. Often it’s a lot more pro­nounced than in these two photos.

Some­times, though, you find a plant that pro­duces stems that are wiry and del­i­cate, with none of the bulging that you see here. Some botanist had some fun nam­ing that one: Eri­o­gonum infla­tum var. defla­tum.

Look­ing at views and plants is hard work, so we take a num­ber of brief breaks, this one in Chino Canyon. (That’s me to the right, the slavedriver ready to move on to the next ridge.)

This is a hike that makes you hyper-aware of the edges where the desert ends and irri­gated human habi­ta­tion begins. Even though the plants used in this home’s land­scap­ing may say “desert” to you, you can see that the real desert here isn’t one that stays palm-tree-green year-round.

Even a col­lec­tion of dry­land plants can require water to keep look­ing good when they’re planted closer together than you’d find them in nature. Also, some of these plants–particularly the palms–would be only found in more ripar­ian desert habi­tats, not here where the home­owner wanted them. Check out the drip-irrigation octo­pus in the lower right corner.

But I sup­pose it’s hard to resist the temp­ta­tion to land­scape with the plant that’s in your city’s name. Now we’ll just have to work on the “springs” part to make sure all the palms have enough water to sur­vive this chal­leng­ing piece of desert.

So by now you’ve prob­a­bly guessed that at least one of us sur­vives the hike. We both do, actu­ally, but are a lit­tle sore the next morn­ing. That’s where the arti­fi­cial springs–the bur­bling hot tub, in this case, in the semi-shade of the palm trees–comes in handy.

And then my lib­eral guilt kicks in. As a tourist am I per­pet­u­at­ing a dou­ble stan­dard, expect­ing water and shade be pro­vided me, when I might expect the peo­ple liv­ing here to make do with less? Okay, if I had to choose, I really could do with­out the hot tub. But the hike was great.

December 21 2009 | Categories: landscape • places | Tags: desert plants • desert towns • hiking • native plants • Palm Springs | 8 Comments »