CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A one-way ride of 110 km, Joshua Tree to the finish - roughly 2 h 18 in the saddle. The stops in between: Hidden Valley, Keys View and Cholla Cactus Garden. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,100 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 23 km this is Joshua Tree Park Boulevard, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Joshua Tree Village is the little desert town at the western gate of Joshua Tree National Park, a place of low buildings, rock shops, cafes, vintage stores and art galleries, where the desert light seems to have drawn a good many musicians, painters and hikers. It sits at about twenty-seven hundred feet in the high Mojave, where the air is dry and clear, the nights are cold, and the horizon is a long line of boulders and yucca. It has a relaxed, slightly eccentric feel.
Read the complete Joshua Tree Village write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Joshua Tree Village is where the day begins. Next is Hidden Valley.
Hidden Valley is a small, boulder-ringed basin in Joshua Tree National Park, and it looks, appropriately enough, like a place a person might hide something. Piles of pale monzogranite, rounded by weathering into stacked blocks and domes, form a natural wall around a flat of grass and desert shrubs, with a one-mile loop trail running through it. The local legend says that cattle rustlers used the valley to hide stolen herds in the late nineteenth century, behind rock walls that made a natural corral, and that a rancher named Bill Keys later improved the site for his own cattle. The story is well worn, but the setting makes it easy to believe.
Read the complete Hidden Valley write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hidden Valley comes up about 23 km into the recorded legs. Next is Keys View.
Keys View sits on the crest of the Little San Bernardino Mountains at about 1,580 metres, and the view from it is the longest in Joshua Tree National Park. Below you the land falls away sharply into the Coachella Valley, a broad, flat basin of date palms, golf courses and spreading towns, with Palm Springs on the near side and the Salton Sea glinting far off to the south on a clear day. Beyond lie the high peaks of the San Jacinto and San Gorgonio mountains, snow-capped for much of the winter.
Read the complete Keys View write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 35 km into the recorded legs you reach Keys View. Next is Cholla Cactus Garden.
The Cholla Cactus Garden is the sort of place that makes you slow down on instinct. Over a flat expanse of the Pinto Basin, thousands of teddy bear cholla stand in dense, silvery stands, each one a spiny cluster of jointed stems that glows with a golden halo when the light hits it from behind. They look soft, which is the trap. The spines are barbed, the joints detach at a touch, and anyone who has met one will tell you it does not feel cuddly. A short loop trail winds through the thickest part, and you should stay on it.
Read the complete Cholla Cactus Garden write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cholla Cactus Garden, late in the day. Next is Cottonwood Spring.
Cottonwood Spring is an oasis in the lower corner of Joshua Tree National Park, where the high Mojave desert gives way to the hotter Colorado Desert, and a small cluster of fan palms and cottonwood trees grows around a spring that has been used for centuries. The Cahuilla people gathered here, grinding seeds and mesquite beans in rock mortars, and the holes can still be seen in the boulders. Later, gold miners camped by the water, and ruins of their mills survive in the hills.
Read the complete Cottonwood Spring write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Finish at Cottonwood Spring. That is the ride.
Joshua Tree Village → Hidden Valley is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hidden Valley → Keys View is 12 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Keys View → Cholla Cactus Garden is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cholla Cactus Garden → Cottonwood Spring is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.