Joshua Tree National Park is located directly east of Los Angeles and it takes about 3 hours to drive there. It is located on the border between the Mojave and Colorado deserts and we decided to go to the Mojave desert part.
We arrived around 16:30 and parked at the P on the map to the right and started distributing everything we had to carry with us to be able to camp in the wild in the park. We were armed with two tents (a 3-person tent and a 1,5-person tent), 24 liters of water, 48 power bars, bread with peanut butter and jam, some rope, three sleeping mats, two sleeping bags and one small pocket knife.
We headed south towards the abandoned Lost Horse Mine which turned out to be quite a hike already. On the way we encountered lots of Joshua Trees after which the park was named, and a lot of small bushes and cacti. We also spotted a couple of lizards, quite a big hare and two other people (of the 3 we would see in total during our visit) on the way to the mine.
As the sun was starting to set we quickly realized we had to stray off the trail for at least a mile before we were allowed to set up camp. We decided to go down the mountain (about 300 meters high) on the other side of the mine and find a spot in the valley beneath. The mountain was a bit steeper than we had anticipated and it started to get dark. Bram navigated us down the mountain and it became completely dark right before we were all the way at the bottom. We noticed the temperature dropping rapidly as well and a very harsh wind started to act up in the valley. We used a gps to determine if we were far enough away from the trail but at some point we just gave up. It was getting too dark and too windy for us to keep walking towards a safe spot. We decided to find a relatively safe spot between some rocks (at the S on the map above) to set up camp. The harsh wind made it very hard to build up our tents, but eventually we got all our stuff inside the two tents and they seemed to hold. We ate some dinner at 22:00 with all 6 of us inside the 3-person tent (the left picture underneath) after which we immediately tried to fall asleep (4 in the big tent, 2 in the small).
Because of the extreme cold and winds no one really got any good sleep and some of us decided to go out at around 3:30 to look at the stars instead. Sharing body heat gave us a little bit of warmth and in turn helped us get at least an hour of sleep before the morning sun woke us again.
We got up around 7:30 (the right picture above is our small encampment) and ate some breakfast. At 8:30 we had everything packed up and were on our way again. We decided to hike up to the Malapai Hills through the desert shrub land and debated whether we should climb it. We noticed it was steeper than the mountain we climbed the day before, but it was also a bit less high. We climbed it, enjoyed the views on top and went down very carefully, all within an hour.
We then had to hike back to the car which was at least 6 miles through sandy trails. At the last resting spot we took before reaching the parking lot, we found a small cave which was blocked off with another fence. Again we could creep through to check inside, but it was just a dark corridor leading to a dead end after a couple of meters. Everyone was quite relieved when we reached the car at 13:30 and we quickly made our way back to L.A. because we were going to eat with the whole group at 17:30.
This weekend has probably been the toughest hike I've ever done but also the most beautiful. I'm glad we got to camp in the wild and am glad there were 5 other people crazy enough to do this with me.
Jeremy