Joshua Tree National Park: Barker Dam Hike

After spending some time studying our hiking book, we decided to head for the Barker Dam Hike, which could be accessed from the West entrance to the park, some 14 miles from where we are camping.

Once inside the park, the Joshua Trees are only half the story. There also are the most interesting rock formations with immense boulders. The area is also a popular rock-climbing location.

When we reached the trailhead, we found this informational sign.

Here is a map of the trails in the area. We were to take the one-mile loop in the center of the map, marked in red.

This was also a nature trail, and so I'm providing images of some of the signs, along with the associated plants.

This first one was a fairly sizable tree.

We studied it in search of the galls or the acorns. We found none on the tree, but I found this acorn a few yards up the trail.

It was an easy hike with a well-marked trail. In some places, stone steps were provided.

We saw lots of squirrels and chipmunks, mostly running lickety-split across the trail in front of us. This guy was a ways off, sitting high on a rock, and he sat there seemingly bored with the foot traffic going by.

Also, we saw quite a bit of prickly pear cactus.

Halfway around the loop, we came to Barker Dam. Our hiking book informs us this area was a favorite of cattle rustlers, since it was easy to keep cattle contained within the boundaries of the rocks. However, there were legal operations here as well. Bill Keys ran a legal ranch, and it is still possible to tour his ranch on a guided tour with the park service. (There are a lot of things in the park named for Bill Keys.)

These names were written into the cement used to build the dam. The year is 1949-50.

It was possible to stand on top. This image was taken around the front side of the dam. You can see where the level was raised later on.

The water level is dependent on how much rainfall there is at any particular time of the year. On our hike, there was quite a bit of water behind the dam.

Below the dam was this trough. Our hiking book tells the inner circle held some kind of flotation device that kept it from overflowing.

Turning in the other direction, and moving on, we saw this view of the area known as the Piano Valley. It doesn't show well in this picture, but we could see snow-capped mountains off in the distance.

The large rock in the center of the image below is called "Piano Rock." Our hiking book tells us that you can use your imagination to see a grand piano in the rock, but that is not how it got its name. According to our hiking book, locals organized musical camping trips to this area in the 1930s. Willis Keys, then a young local resident, said a piano was placed on top of this boulder, and campers could sit and listen to music.

They sat on the Joshua tree logs you see in the image below.

Hard to imagine how they would have gotten a piano atop that boulder, but I don't attest to the veracity of this story...I'm just the messenger.

Here again, we could see snow on the mountains off in the distance.

We didn't actually see the plant listed below, but it contained the word "cat," and so I had to include it. We have our rules.

Until yesterday, we didn't know that manzanita is the Spanish word for "little apples." It makes sense though since I happen to know the Spanish word for "apples" is manzana.

This was a healthy specimen.

Looking more closely, you can see the red wood, and this one appears to be forming buds for a bloom.

It was lovely back in here with Joshua trees growing thick, and piles of boulders all around. Here is a panorama of where we stood.

A spur off the trail led to some petroglyphs. As for the vandalism, our hiking book informed us this was done by a filming crew in an attempt to make them more visible. You have to wonder the mindset of folks who would do such a thing.

Standing to the side, we could also see this arch in the rock.

Signs told us there were big horn sheep in the area, although we saw none, and so it wasn't surprising to see the drawing to the right.

We saw these "water saver" guys when we took our hike to Keane Springs in Death Valley. They look a lot like the kelp you might see along an ocean beach.

We found these along the Joshua Tree trail, but they were lying on the ground, rather than standing straight-up...apparently, trampled by someone or something.

We'd encountered some areas of wetness along the trail, and we wondered about the source of the moisture until we came to this area with snow on the ground where rocks shaded it from the sun.

A little more walking took us back to the parking lot where we'd started, and that was our hike for the day.

We may go do another hike today, or we might be discouraged by crowds. There were quite a few people on the trail yesterday, and it took about 10 minutes to enter the park with just four cars ahead of us. When we left just after noon, the line was amazingly long...perhaps 50 cars waiting to get through the gate. They were going to wait a very long time just to get into the park. This being Saturday, we could encounter a big line-up like that...and that would discourage us. So, we'll see. We haven't really talked about what the day holds. If there is hiking to be done, we'll need an early start. We come to this park frequently, and so there's always next year. We have one more day here before moving on to Hemet.