Johnny Lang eludes us

...but to be honest, we weren't trying all that hard to catch him.

There's a ravine in the northwestern part of Joshua Tree National Park called Johnny Lang Canyon. It's named for an old gold miner who struck a claim and built a cabin in this part of the park. On a winter's day in 1925, Lang ran low on supplies and, in a bit of desperation (after eventually dispatching and consuming all of his unfortunate burros) tried to hike out of the desert. He left a note that said, "Gone for grub. Be back soon." Sadly, that confidence was misplaced. He only made it a few miles before setting up camp and succumbing, apparently to natural causes, in the Lost Horse Valley area - just a little south of the canyon that bears his name.

We headed for Johnny Lang Canyon from the Quail Springs picnic area. Our plan included skirting the north end of the hills to the west and entering from the north outfall. Then we would follow the wash south up to the main canyon area, and finally loop back along what is optimistically called the Johnny Lang connector trail (actual trails ended up being hard to come by for most of this hike). The idea was to check out the remains of Lang's cabin and mine along the way. As it turned out, we had a great hike, but somehow managed to miss out on both of those objectives.

Joshua Tree preserves a good bit of history. Relatively modern (last couple of centuries) sites preserve mines and stamp mills, old adobe walls, even crazy prospector hidey-holes. Laura and I have visited plenty of these spots and they are always interesting. But Joshua Tree also has incredible monzogranite boulder piles, and gorgeous desert vistas, and amazing animals and plants like, well, Joshua trees. Call us Philistines, but we nearly always find the latter list much more compelling than old cans, abandoned shacks and rusted-out cars. And the sad truth of this hike was that while appreciating the canyon scenery we forgot all about Lang's cabin on our way up the wash. It wasn't until we were close to the mine that we consulted our guidebook* and discovered the cabin site was a half-mile or so back the way we came. Later research suggests there wasn't much to see anyway (or maybe that's just me wishing it were true).

So, after shrugging our shoulders we continued our sometimes on-trail, sometimes cairn-following, often cross-country traipse up the gently ascending canyon. As we neared the "junction" with the connector trail the canyon opened up into a scenic sort of cirque (though obviously non-glacial) with a spectacular stack of boulders in the middle. We rounded the pile, following cairns at that point, and dropped down into the wash once more. It was here we looked at each other and considered with raised eyebrows whether we really wanted to go look for the mine. It was no contest. Backstory simply couldn't compete with "I wonder what's on the other side of those rocks?" So we took bearings for the connector trail and continued on our way with no regrets.

As you circle back to the north on (or hopefully in the vicinity of) the Johnny Lang connector you have to climb over and around some of the rock mounds now and then, but it's little trouble. In fact it's part of the fun. Soon the scene opens to the northeast, giving you a breathtaking view of the Wonderland of Rocks area, as well as the park road and your trailhead below in the middle distance. This sort of vista is part of why we come here, and it's just one of the ways (history included) that Joshua Tree so often delights.

Before striking out on the return, it's important to take the time to consider your course as you survey the territory from this lofty spot. The trails are barely, or not at all, there. The washes can lead one astray - several times we found ourselves in a small gully that was directly adjacent to the correct one. It continues to be quite beautiful all the way down, but the hike back is less direct, and takes longer than you might think. And, assuming you won't be bringing any burros along for a late afternoon snack, you're eventually going to want to get some grub.

[*We've done our best in the Guide for this trip to reconstruct the paths we followed. But it is absolutely essential that anyone emulating this hike bring a compass, a map (and know how to use them), and some sort of instructions or guidebook. We also consulted the maps on one of our GPS tracking programs and it was quite helpful.]