Quail Mountain

Amanda and I took advantage of a four day weekend around her birthday to head down to Joshua Tree National Park for some backpacking. J-Tree is a long drive from the Bay Area – nearly 8 hours – so we saved it for a long weekend. We left Palo Alto late Friday evening and stayed in a hotel a few hours south in Kettleman City. By Saturday afternoon we reached the Juniper Flats trailhead, from which we started our hike. With 4 gallons of water for the 3 day/2 night leisurely-paced trip, our packs were heavily laden. We hiked west along the California Riding and Hiking Trail for about 4 miles, before turning north on an old road, which brought us near the base of Quail Mountain, about 1.5 miles from the summit.

Temperatures were in the mid 70F’s, and with a light wind the conditions were perfect. We set up camp and ate dinner as the sun was setting, and captured some time lapse movies with the GoPro. The full moon rose at sunset, brightening the night sky to the extent that we couldn’t see the Milky Way, but the moon-produced shadows and silhouettes of the Joshua trees were spectacular nevertheless.

The next morning, we started hiking around 9am. We followed a faint user trail northward, and soon we reached a tall Joshua tree, from which we noticed a large red-tailed hawk fleeing as we approached. The hawk flew about a hundred feet away and perched on top of another Joshua tree. Curiously, it began shrieking every ten seconds or so.

“I wonder why it’s making that sound?” I asked Amanda rather loudly, since she was about 30 ft away.

“Shh,” she whispered, pointing to the top of the tree above us, “listen.”

Faintly, we could hear some peeping in the tree above us, and spotted the telltale twigs of a nest, tucked among the pointy leaves of the Joshua tree.

“See, the hawk’s trying to distract us from its nest,” she said. “Let’s walk away.”

Eager to assuage the fears of the parent hawk, we swiftly walked away and continued our climb. Still following the faint user trail, we aimed for a small canyon SW of the peak, and proceeded up the canyon, spotting some hares and deer. Soon, we reached the head of the canyon, and ascended up a steep hill to the top of a 5,787′ peak. From this peak, we traversed NE along the side of a ridge, reaching the summit of Quail Mountain around 10:30am.

With minimal cloud cover, the views were spectacular. In the distance, we could see the peaks of Mts. San Gorgonio and San Jacinto dusted with snow. Looking eastward, we gazed over the expansive national park, and to the south we could barely make out the Salton Sea. We signed the summit register, and spotted Eric’s sign-in from 10/18/2015. We noticed that some years, there were no sign-ins from June, July, or August – evidence, I guess, that it’s just do darn hot to be enjoyable in the summertime.

We took a short nap and ate lunch on the summit, finally departing around 1pm. As we descended, the temperature rose somewhat into the upper 70F’s, but the winds kept it feeling pleasant. After brushing though some mini cacti, and quickly skirting by the hawk’s nest, we were back in camp by 2:30pm.