Yellow spire full loop

 

The yellow spire loop starts at the silica dome parking lot and goes downhill to the north east. Turned out to be 6 miles and 1000 ft.

Looking towards our goal.

On the way down the hill you pass some colorful rock.

Part way down the trail we dropped into the pretty wash on the right.

We followed it down to the junction withe the wash that leads to the excavator, but turned left to see yellow spire.

Walking through the pretty wash

Small arch near the entrance to yellow spire.

Yellow spire 

Over a small pass is the hoodoo area 

Then we followed a small wash for a short distance before turning off to the left side.

WE then turned left to go into a draw where we could cross over into the next valley. A small hoodoo was at the pass as well as the next photo of possibly petrified wood.

The Squeeze

Looking toward Virgin peak 

Finger rock

This is the pass over to the violet pastel wash

Small arch in the wash...correction, A natural bridge.

Small sand hoodoo

In the pastel wash. Yellow, purple, orange and white dominate

A petrified banana peel

Odd joints in the rock

I got off track and followed a wash to the west that came out in the middle of our previous track. We could retrace our track back to yellow spire from here. At yellow spire, instead of taking the usual old road up to the cars, we stayed in the wash to make it more interesting.

Climbing out of the wash to gain the old road again.

Palm Springs trip Dec 4-8, 2023

 We were invited to  a trip trip to Palm Springs to stay in a time share condo. We hiked every day for a week. This is the view from the condo

 

Our first hike was west of the valley in the Mecca Hills wilderness to the Grotto. The trailhead is off Box canyon road and requires 4 wheel drive to get there.

It starts by going over a desert ridge, then a couple more to get to a wash that leads to a narrows.

There were some flowers blooming. I hadn't seen this one before.

Desert Sunflower

Spanish needles

The start of the Grotto looked like a dead end, and it was for us. Next time we will try to get further.

There was a little scrambling around Mud stone conglomerate canyons.

Brenda going thru a rabbit hole.

Colorful clay hills.

An Ice cloud rainbow.

From the ridge we could see a palm oasis.

The nest day we drove to the Pacific Crest Trail to hike a short out and back. The scenery could not be more different.

The nest day we drouve around to the north side of Joshua Tree to hike the 49 palms trail.

That afternoon we hiked the Pushawalla Palms trail.

Next day we rode the Gondola to 8000 feet to hike in the cool mountains.

Sugar pines grow here

There was some ice and snow on the trail

Lodgepole pines