Emily T. Troscianko

Distance: 5.6 miles (9 km)
Time: 2 hours 50 minutes including half-hour break at the peak
Elevation gain: 1106 feet (337 m)
Difficulty: terrain-wise, easy; navigation-wise, easy; fitness-wise, moderate (easy until the final ascent)
Drive: about 2.5 hours (135 miles) from old town Pasadena, east on the 210, the 10, and the 62, and then take the right fork on to Yucca Trail, which becomes Alta Loma Road. Turn right on Palomar Drive, which joins Joshua Lane and then Black Rock Canyon Drive. There’s plenty of parking at the campground; I think it’s free (we came by taxi!).
Rattlers spotted: zero (but one other snake of indeterminate type)
Here’s the AllTrails version. They also suggest a longer (12.4 km) option including a detour around Panorama Loop, as does Hiking Guy.

Monday 7 October 2024 was our first wedding anniversary, and we’d set aside the morning for a hike to echo the wedding one. We were one week into our two Joshua Tree months, and we considered driving back to the San Gabriels where we got married, but it seemed a bit of a waste with all of J-Tree on our doorstep. It looked like Black Rock Campground should be easily accessible without our own car, since you don’t have to drive into the Park proper (though you’ll need the Park pass if you park there), and it clearly had plenty of trails to choose from. We tried to get an Uber there, but as ever, the app claimed to be finding drivers and never did, so we took an old-fashioned taxi to the campground instead, and asked the driver to come back for us in 3 hours, at noon.

The sign at the visitor centre showed all the main routes as taking 3 to 5 hours, which wasn’t ideal given we wanted time for a picnic stop, but we decided to set off towards Warren Peak, and it turned out to be a perfect distance for the time we had (including picnic!). The directions for this write-up won’t be particularly thorough, so you should follow Hiking Guy or someone else, but basically you want to get onto Black Rock Canyon trail and then keep right onto Warren Peak trail to the summit, and the signposts are pretty good.

The 5103 ft/1555m blob isn’t actually marked as Warren Peak on this visitor centre map, which is presumably because, as Hiking Guy explains, it isn’t an official US Geological Survey peak, and is sometimes also called Warren Point. Anyway, it is apparently the westernmost point over 5000 feet in the Park, and it has views to match.

The trail south out of the campground is pretty from the start.

Keeping right at the first decision point!

Keeping left at the next one, a few minutes later, rather than proceeding on to West Side loop.

Lovely open Joshua tree-studded country.

Unidentified snake!

Another half-hour along, keeping right again to not go round Panorama loop. (See the variants listed at the top if you want to add this on.)

A bit more canyon-y, but the sand never gets very deep underfoot.

After 10 more minutes, keeping right again to not go round Panorama loop backwards!

The final decision point, again forking right for Warren peak rather than the other slightly lower viewpoint. The peak is cleverly concealed behind the Joshua tree in this photo, but it looks quite dramatically spiky.

After a few minutes you start to climb, and the views open up to the southwest.

Patiently waiting for my slower companion 🙂

The peak really plays a trick on the eyes: James was convinced, from the foot of the slope, that we wouldn’t get anywhere near the top in the time we had left before we needed to turn back, but in fact it took us under 10 minutes to get there. Maybe the optical effect of it seeming much more massive than it is comes from something about the steepness of a mountain-like shape amidst the desert undulations; the mind doesn’t quite know how to process height.

Anyway, we were soon atop the rocky summit.

The northerly views and the easterly ones back across to the hills encircling the Park are nice and wide, and the rocks are comfy backrests.

But it’s the southwesterly views that are really magnificent, across the Coachella Valley to the striated heights of Mount San Jacinto, southern California’s second-highest peak; I hadn’t at all expected its massiveness to be right there. You can see Mount San Gorgonio (the very highest) almost directly west, too. And there turned out to be a hikers’ box in a crevice in the rocks, so we were able to record our anniversary in the log book, right below the previous entry from a Park ranger who had been there two days before.

Then it was a wonderful spot to eat our breakfast/brunch sandwiches and nectarine and then do a little rereading of our vows, with me playing our officiant Simon this year (we agreed that we’d alternate). At the end, we briefly swapped rings so we could re-warm them for each other as the Mount Islip congregation had done for us a year before, and then we put them back on. And of course wrapped up with a swig of unidentified whisky from the hip flask.

And then we took a selfie before setting off. Turns out Swansea City stash is just too useful not to wear in the desert!

And then we enjoyed retracing our steps—at what looks here like a very leisurely amble!

We were back at the start with over 10 minutes to spare—and of course the taxi driver was late! But it was all beautifully organic and unplanned, and it’s a wonderful way to get a little taste of the Park from the less well-known western borders of it.

The morning adventure segued nicely into the pleasantly hot haze of the afternoon, with 805s over a salady lunch. Then later we opened the first set of the 1-year, 3-year, 5-year, and 10-year envelopes from our wedding guests, one of which (thanks Franca!) included fun thinking prompts that generated some literal back-of-the-envelope scribblings.

And then it turned out that Veuve Clicquot goes as well with cremated corn on the cob as it does with Collin Street Bakery cake and hot tub.

(Oh, and I think the left-hand glass—not mine!—includes an odd mixture of our windowsill tea and gin, inspired by a G&T pun whose details I now forget.)

Thank you Joshua Tree for giving us this anniversary, and California for giving me the year between it and the wedding.