Joshua Tree National Park, Day 2: Lost Horse Mine hike

We decided early in the day that we would stay another night at Jumbo Rock campground. It was well enough situated for any other hike we chose to do, the tent was set up, and we could leave part of our stuff at the campsite.

At the visitor centre we had found out that there was going to be a ranger talk at Barker Dam on Thursday morning. We attended this 1 1/2 hour interpretive hike, and also the one on Friday morning that started at Skull Rock. Both were highly interesting and very worthwhile, as we have found ranger talks to be in general, but I won't dwell on them now and instead move on to our hike on Thursday afternoon.

Again on the recommendation of the first ranger at the visitor centre we chose the six-mile hike that would lead us to Lost Horse Mine and then loop back to the parking lot. The loop was one option; the other, chosen by most visitors, would have been to return the way we came, which sounded less enticing.

This time the sun was blazing down and the sky a deep blue, the promise of the starry night fulfilled. The hike to the mine – named, supposedly, after miner Johnny Lang's search for a lost horse that led him here – led through an area where a fire had gone through. Blackened tree trunks and chollas, hillsides even barer of brush than we had seen before seemed a bit dreary at first sight. Yet the soil seemed more fertile, almost moist at times, and everywhere we looked it had started to green up. Yucca, grass, phacelia, desert paintbrush,

tiny purplish flowers, small tufts of herbaceous plants – this was well on its way to recovery, even if it would be a long, long time until the trees and shrubs were growing again. Birds were singing from outcrops of rock along the way, and like everywhere else lizards darted across our path.

 

The mill itself is surrounded by a page-wire fence because of poisonous materials still present in the soil, but also to conserve the site. From 1893 to 1936 gold was mined here with the help of a ten-stamp mill, 9000 ounces of it. The different parts of the machinery are still well recognizable, and a ten-stamp mill must have been a very effective and progressive way of mining.

One of many abandoned attempts

All over these hills is evidence of mining, by far not all practiced at such a great scale. Here, too, I tried to imagine what it might have been like for those solitary men to come here into this waterless wilderness, to start digging again and again, every time full of hope that this time it was going to be the big find. How many times did they go through all that hard work in vain? How many disappointments, how much loneliness, how much hardship? All for the desire to strike it rich. Or was it, after a while, just something that they couldn't escape anymore? An urge to keep digging, sometimes against all odds, just because they had been there so long that they couldn't imagine not to do any longer?

But all this, of course, is idle speculation, triggered, maybe, by things like this iron bedstead, these rusted pails, the oven made from carefully piled rocks we came upon on our way down from the mine?

I loved this part of the hike, the narrow trail winding along the side of the slope, without any evidence of fire, the plain stretching below, strange rock formations and a black cone – one of the volcanoes the ranger had mentioned, perhaps? - rising like warts from its expanse. After some up and down we descended to the bottom of the valley and walked in loose, gritty sand again, through a plain with a forest of the trees after which the park has been named. Joshua trees in all sizes grew here, some old and with many branches, others just a single 'sapling' rising from the ground.

Joshua trees are close relatives of the yucca, but even in their young stages it is not difficult to tell one from the other. The Joshua's leaves are narrower and without the white fibres fringing the leaves of the yucca. Both are not trees, even though the name of the Joshua suggests it, but yuccas, related to palms: all are monocots. It is impossible to exactly tell their age because they don't have rings; they only means of determining how old they are is to take photographs of the same plant at intervals and compare them with each other. The Joshua tree blossoms are just as spectacular as those of the yucca, and often there are several on one tree, one on each branch. These huge, heavy blossoms, plus the fact that their trunks are not very strong and their roots are shallow, make them susceptible to the onslaught of strong winds.

It felt strange to walk through this prehistoric landscape where dinosaurs would not have felt out of place. I would have easily switched the bigger part of that part of the trail for the middle part that led us through the rugged beauty of the rocky hills. 

 

 Joshua Tree National Park was a wonderful experience, and there would be many more hiking trails to explore. Maybe another year ...

Tomorrow we will move on to Death Valley National Park and pitch our tents there for a couple of nights if we can find a camp spot. Will it really be as desolate as it sounds?  

I guess we'll soon find out.