Hiking Amboy Crater

5 Days in the Desert travelog #6
Amboy, CA - Say, 24 Dec 2022, 12:30pm

In my previous blog I wrote about driving to Amboy Crater in the Mojave Desert. ...Well, driving there and then hiking the first mile or so up to its base. From there it was up, up, up to the top.



That's all volcanic rock on the slope. Most of it is pumice so it's surprisingly light when you pick up a piece... but it's also sharp so you don't want to fool around with it too much. Or trip and fall on it.



The trail enters the side of the crater where it's kind of open. From here paths diverge and you can go into the middle or up around either side of the rim. We decided to loop the rim, taking the left branch first.



Climbing to the ridge was more up, up, up. Not a huge elevation change; remember it's only a few hundred feet vertical from the base to the highest point on the rim. But with this Martian landscape distances seem off.



Once atop the ridge it's still beautiful... in a Martian landscape kind of way.

At places the rim is very narrow, barely 2 feet wide with steep— and sharp— dropoffs on both sides.



Here's a panoramic picture from the top that shows the whole crater. Click the link to expand the picture if it's cropped or low-res on your screen.

In the last pic above you can see lower ridges inside the crater. The volcano here has erupted at least 4 times. The concentric ridges are subsequent eruptions. THe most recent was about 10,000 years ago.

After looping the ridge we headed back down the side— carefully!— and then a mile back across the desert plane to the parking area.

On our drive to our next adventure for the day we passed the town of Amboy. Yes, there is a town called Amboy. It's about a mile east of the crater. And it's a proverbial one-horse town. There are a handful of nondescript buildings around a gas station with two pumps... and the gas is an eye-watering $7.85/gallon. For context, that's more than double what we paid in Barstow ($3.79/gallon) last night.

Christmas Eve, Christmas Morning... In the Desert

5 Days in the Desert travelog #9
Barstow, CA - Sun, 25 Dec 2022, 7:15am

Okay, I'm running behind on getting pictures from this trip ready to blog— as always. I'm going to pull this entry forward since it's topical to Christmas and I don't want to leave it in the queue until the 27th or whenever.

Let me start by saying Christmas isn't a big deal to either me or Hawk. Hawk is Jewish, so she never celebrated Christmas. I grew up in a Christian family but have been atheist for... decades now. As part of my atheism I have no interest in celebrating Christian holy days... of which Christmas is one, despite modern American society's efforts to redefine it as a weeks-long secular holiday all about having parties, drinking, and exchanging gifts. ...Which is basically what the ancient Roman celebration of Saturnalia was, BTW.

So we don't celebrate Christmas. We do other things with our time off from work instead. Like, travel! That's why we're doing this 5 Days in the Desert thing. Traveling over Christmas means, though, that lots of stuff we might otherwise depend on shuts down for a day or two. We don't begrudge businesses shutting down to let their employees enjoy the day off. We just plan around it.

For example, we shopped for groceries ahead of time to stash in our hotel room so that we could eat dinner on Christmas Eve and all day on Christmas out of our own supply rather than depend on finding restaurants that are open. Not everything is closed, though. As we drove back to Barstow from a beautiful hike at Hole-in-the-Wall and the Rings Loop (links to come when I publish these entries!) Hawk phoned ahead to several restaurants to find out if anyone's open. Mostly she called Chinese restaurants. It's a Jewish tradition from her upbringing to eat Chinese food on Christmas Eve.

Chinese food is not exactly plentiful in desert towns. It's also not exactly good. We did find one Chinese restaurant open... and as you might expect from the category of "Chinese restaurant in a desert town" it was basically pan-Asian food cuisine plus burgers, steaks, and fries. And it was... edible.

This morning for breakfast we ate in the room. Hawk had leftover chow fun from last night. I didn't bring home my leftovers because they were... no better than "edible". I ate some sliced meat, cheese, and crackers from what I stashed in the room's fridge. As a plus, eating in the room means breakfast has been fast. We're looking to hit the road by 7:30am so we can get in a full day with at least two hikes before dusk.

Hiking at Hole in the Rock (Mojave Preserve)

5 Days in the Desert travelog #7
Mojave Preserve, CA - Sat, 24 Dec 2022, 4:15pm

This afternoon we hiked the Rings Trail at Banshee Canyon in Mojave National Preserve. We did it as a two-fer after hiking at Amboy Crater earlier in the day.

As metal as this hike's name sounds (Banshee Canyon? Sign me up!) it was actually our second choice for an afternoon hike. First choice was a cave tour at Mitchell Caverns in Providence Mountains State Park. We weren't able to get a reservation in advance (they only take phone reservations one day per week) so we tried our luck just showing up on Christmas Eve. No luck; the tour was already full. But the ranger there suggested we visit Hole-in-Wall at Mojave National Preserve nearby.



The visitor center at Hole-in-the-Wall has an interesting Old West motif. Being nestled at the base of a colorful set of buttes really helps. The rangers there were fairly helpful and recommended the Rings Loop as a short-ish hike we could do the same afternoon. The trail departed from the far side of the parking lot and looped around those buttes... and up through a slot canyon between two of them.



Compared to all those promises about buttes and slot canyons the trail started off mildly. We followed a sandy wash to an old cattle fence. I'm not sure if there used to be a gate of some kind here (see picture above) but it's been torn open. I'm like, 🎵 Who let the cows out/Who, who, who, moo-moo? 🎵



Sure enough as we rounded the bend, sunlit views of the buttes overhead came into view. On some of these lichen-splashed rocks near the base there are Native rock carvings.



While there are views up the cliffs on one side of the trail there are far-off views across the desert scrub on the other. As we got toward the eponymous Hole in the Wall we passed a small herd of horses grazing on wild grass. Beneath another butte, of course, because high desert terrain.



Just past the horses we caught our first glimpse of the Hole in the Wall. BTW, lots of places in the American West are named "Hole in the Wall". I can think of three places right off the top of my head I've hiked with that name, and I'm sure there are dozens more. Basically anyplace there's, well... a hole in a wall... it's a good bet some 19th century settler was like, "OMG, Hole in the Wall!! Best name EVER!!!"

But this one has a second and third name to live up to. It's Banshee Canyon. That sounds like something worth screaming about, right? And it's the Rings Hike... as in, the trail is so steep there in places there are rings anchored into the rock to help you climb up.

To be continued....

Keep reading: Into Banshee Canyons & Up the Rings!