IntroductionThe United States Congress designated the Orocopia Mountains Wilderness (map) in 1994 and it now has a total of 55,614 acres. All of this wilderness is located in California and is managed by the Bureau of Land Management. The Orocopia Mountains Wilderness is bordered by the Mecca Hills Wilderness to the west.DescriptionImmediately to the east of Mecca Hills Wilderness, you'll find Orocopia Mountains Wilderness, where the unpredictable forces of nature--primarily the San Andreas Fault--have created a striking landscape of open desert valleys, ridges, and dramatically colored and eroded canyons. The canyons and washes are deep and often extremely long, with exposed walls shaded from bright red to dark black. Despite the harshness of the climate, you should see a wide variety of plants and animals adapted to life in the desert. Bighorn sheep and burro deer live in the mountains, and desert tortoises crawl below. In washes and along stony slopes, you may encounter the spiny-leaved Orocopia sage, Alverson's foxtail cactus, Orcutt's woody aster, and the Mecca aster.Keep an eye open for evidence of this area's long history--there's everything from the fossilized remains of prehistoric animals resembling horses, camels, and deer to traces of trade routes used by Indians in the not-too-distant past.
Nearby Community Trips
~3 hour dual sport ride on a Husky TE310 and Honda 450. Accessible from the gas station at the summit. Some paved roads leading to the trails. The video is of the first 1/3rd of the ride (it gets progressively more sandy with canyons as you loop back to the I-10).
Drove the Pinkham Canyon trail in Joshua Tree. Easy trail, a couple of small rocky areas to negotiate. Quite a bit of soft sand throughout the trip.
Hike from Chiriaco Summit into Lost Palms Canyon.We hiked from the park boundary up an old dirt road. The road climbs up the bajada from Chiriaco Summit and passes through a beautiful desert ironwood open scrub. As we made our way up the bajada, we encountered the edge of an enormous teddy-bear cholla garden. The cholla, possibly all clones of one ancient ancestor, extended for miles up the canyon. We dropped down into the...
