When was the last time you shook off the bad winter weather and followed the snowbirds to the sunniest part of Southern California? Palm Springs. Well, if you’re coming to Palm Springs, you need to pack a t-shirt, some shorts, and I could recommend some walking shoes, why do you ask? Because in and around Palm Springs there are great hiking trails and the weather is good year-round. Yes, it’s very hot in the summer, but if you can handle the heat and carry some water on your hikes, you’ll surely lose water weight. Okay, let’s talk about this and your next vacation, okay?
First, if you are going to be hiking in the Palm Springs area, I would like to recommend a very good book, it is completely easy to use and gives you exact mileage for almost all great hiking trails within a 50 mile radius. . This is a book that I personally own and use regularly. The name of the book is;
“140 Great Hikes In and near Palm Springs”, by Philip Ferranti and Hank Koenig, published by Westcliffe Publishers, 2008, 296 pages, ISBN: 1-56579-490-7.
These guys really know their stuff, and the authors are avid hikers, and even dedicated their book to their favorite hiking dog; parodies. This book has hiking trails in Mecca Hills and Box Canyon, almost 30 of them. There are also great hiking trails listed in the Coachella Valley Preserve. There are a number of desert cities that surround Palm Springs, it is no longer isolated on its own. In fact, there are 550,000 people in the Coachella Valley during the season, which is winter when all the snowbirds come out. The rest of the time the population is around 300,000.
In any case, all of these other desert cities have trails as well, and they have listed 12 extremely excellent trails, four of which I have ridden myself in some of the other cities. There are 16 trails listed in the Palm Springs and Indian Canyon areas, and 30 trails in the nearby San Jacinto Mountains, with six trails in the Santa Rosa Mountains, as well as several trails in Joshua Tree National Park. The park is amazing, and if you have never been there, you must go.
The book also has trails in the San Bernardino Pass and the Orocopia Mountain Wilderness Area. There are detailed maps of each individual trail with all the distances and directions of how to get to the trailhead, and important tips along the way, along with several listed landmarks and scenic views. Regardless, this is the best book I have found for those wanting to go hiking in and around the Palm Springs area. In fact, I hope you will consider all of this, and I recommend this book to you.
