Agile Trekker: Black Rock Loop Trail: Eureka Peak and Back via California Riding and Hiking Trail, Joshua Tree National Park

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
12/31/2017	14 miles

Map: National Geographic Joshua Tree Map
Guide book: Hiking Joshua Tree National Park, a Falcon Guide
Directions: Hike #37 in guide book, Black Rock Loop Trail: Eureka Peak and Back via California Riding and Hiking Trail

After yesterday's PCT hike, I was so ready to keep doing additional PCT hikes. The temperature in Joshua Tree seemed to trend 10 degrees cooler than in Palm Springs though, so Glen much preferred to hike in Joshua Tree. Today our hotel didn't serve breakfast until 7 am, which put us starting a bit later. We got to the trailhead for our hike at 8:30 am, and the parking area was already full. Parking has been a bit frustrating, but we do realize its a holiday week, and hopefully next week is a bit better. We found another parking area .7 miles away, down a sand road (past a horse area and fire station). Our original hike was intended to be 10.5 miles, so we just figured this would extend it to be a 12 mile hike. I was concerned about water, even though it was cloudy in the morning, so I brought 5 liters of water. 5 liters is crazy heavy! I also brought my puffy, since I hate starting cold. But that just ended up being more extra weight I had to carry after I warmed up (which doesn't take long). I also pre-hydrated, drinking .75 liters before we started. I so over-packed! I only ended up drinking 2.5 liters on the hike. My pack was way too heavy. I tried to tell myself that this is good training for future backpacking trips in 2018. Yeah, that's it.

We saw a backpacker who started at the same time as us on the trail, but otherwise we saw no one! I loved the solitude. This trail was 95% sandy wash - blah. I'm not so fond of sandy washes. They just add extra effort. Our guide book said this was a very well mark trailed. We found some places confusing. Our National Geographic map showed most of the trails, but not their names. I really would have loved a higher resolution map for this hike. If I did this one again, I'd download a USGS map for the hike. Our guide book also didn't show all the trails we passed. Actually, I'm not sure if we carried it with us. That was kind of another mistake. We should have ideally photocopied hike instructions in our guidebook, so we wouldn't have to carry the whole book with us. Some days we carried it, and some days we didn't. Sometimes it had useful instructions that we missed because we chose not to carry it (it's just more extra weight). We got to a peak on this hike - Glen thought it was Eureka Peak, but it wasn't! We had a nice rest there. Soon after we continued on, we passed the Bigfoot Trail & realized we weren't at Eureka Peak yet. The summit had a great view. We continued on the California Riding & Hiking Trail for the return trip. We got confused there too. There was a dirt jeep road and a trail next to it - we ended up okay though. I think we did end up checking our compass to make sure we were hiking in roughly the right direction at least. Then, near the end of the hike, we missed a turn again. We ended up leaving the park border at a wire fence. We turned around and took the East Boundary Trail (not our original intent) back to the camping area & then back to our car. The hike ended up being 14 miles - longer than the description due to our parking issue and due to us missing a turn near the end. We were really tired at the end of the hike.

This hike mostly had very gentle elevation gains. There were only a few steep areas at the beginning and then approaching the summit. It was still tiring due to all of the hiking on soft sand. I am hoping to find a hike with a more solid surface tomorrow!