TR - Putting the epic back in the Palm Canyon Epic
I first read about the Palm Canyon Epic a few months after I moved to SoCal and started exploring. Descriptions included hard to navigate, all-day beatdown, rugged, remote, and were followed with all sorts of warnings about the spare parts and provisions to bring along. Most riders had heard of it back then but not very many had ridden it. Fast forward 12 years and there is a shuttle service that'll take any e-biker or endur-bro with a fanny pack to the top. Strava tards brag about shredding it in 3 hours. Maybe that is possible now that the cactus gets trimmed back, rocky sections have been sanitized and turns straight-lined. It used to be a raw backcountry trail but has been smoothed top to bottom by thousands of tires over the years. It's still one of my favorite rides but I don't consider it to be an "epic" ride anymore. I've ridden every combination of trails in the area, including riding PCE starting 3,000ft higher atop Santa Rosa Mtn. Some of these rides are very tough but it's pretty hard to get over 40 miles. The one permutation I've never tried is to start in Palm Springs and climb up to Hwy 74, then ride the full PCE route. I know people who've done it, and this weekend I decided to give it a go before temps get too high.
My original plan was to do the ride Saturday, but I wasn't able to get away Friday night so I moved it back to Sunday. Temps would be a few degrees warmer with high of 87* so I decided to start even earlier. I got in a hike and some sightseeing on the way out on Saturday, and then grabbed a campsite Saturday night. I crawled out of my sleeping bag at 4am to get down to the start for 5. Finally rolled away from the truck at 5:15 in darkness, perfect temps, and total silence.
First sign of dawn came as I climbed my way up the Goat trails
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Had a snack and put lights away at the top of Wildhorse ridge. Watched the sun come up, surprised there were no hikers up here for sunrise.
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Instead it was just me and the flowers. Lots of flowers.
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My options were to climb up Dunn Rd, climb up Hahn Buena Vista trail, or traverse further and climb 3 miles of sand wash. I chose the trail.
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I met the only rider I'd see all day at the bottom of Hahn. Hahn is a bit loose but pretty much all ridable and is not a bad climb at all.
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Looking over at upper Dunn Road, which I will be climbing next
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Top of Hahn, and still no one else around. Thought I might run into some shuttlers by now.
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First big pear blossom cactus bloom of the season
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The old tractor at Mike's desert oasis. Stopped here and ate half my breakfast burrito
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I've climbed Dunn Road below the oasis but never above it. As expected, it was little used, washed out in spots, steep in places, and generally a slog.
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Views were great though. Looking down on the sand wash that riders climb doing the standard PCE route. It seems flat but climbs 1100ft in about 3.5 miles
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What really made this ride awesome was the flowers. There weren't any massive, thick blooms like some places have seen. It was just flowers of all kinds peppered everywhere.
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Collected a couple mylar balloons as well.
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After what seemed like forever I got to the first high point on Dunn Rd. Unfortunately from here I would drop down hundreds of feet only to climb back up hundreds more.
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The road got very rough here. It was all ridable going down, but climbing it in either direction will be hike a bike.
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Hmm... end of the road? I pushed past the rockfall and found a singletrack on the other side, which was a nice change even if it required hiking.
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The singletrack was only 1/3mi long before it dumped me on a maintained section of Dunn Rd. below some houses.
Looking back from where I came.
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I found another singletrack that looked like it might bypass the whole neighborhood, but that was too optimistic as the trail meandered around and eventually petered out. I never did see what happened to the fresh bike tracks on it, all of a sudden they were gone. I ended up going cross-country to the nearest road. This was easy enough and pretty soon I was ordering a mexi-coke at the re-opened Sugarloaf Cafe on Hwy 74. I headed over to the campground I'd stayed at the night before to eat the rest of my burrito. I ran into a friend of mine there and it turns out I had camped next to him the night before without realizing, since it was dark when I'd arrived. Oh well, would have been too late to hang out anyways.
