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| | | North View Maze Window Rock Loop, CA | | | |
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North View Maze Window Rock Loop, CA
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| Hiking | 8.11 Miles |
865 AEG |
| | Hiking | 8.11 Miles | 3 Hrs 31 Mns | | 2.57 mph |
| 865 ft AEG | 22 Mns Break | | | |
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| partners | | I'd been to Joshua Tree a few times over the years but had never hiked the Maze, so we started the morning there, and ours was the only vehicle at the small pullout when we arrived just after sunrise. We started a clockwise loop on North View trail, which leads through a beautiful, massive jumble of boulders that's a common landscape in Joshua Tree. That area is full of little windows and balancing rocks, and the trail climbs up toward two short side spurs to overlooks. The first is Copper Mountain View, looking north toward the town of Joshua Tree, and the second is Western Hills View, overlooking North View trail that we'd hike up and the peaks off to the west.
The trail climbs gradually before it connects with Maze Loop Trail. With the route we chose, we were only on Maze Loop for about a mile, and it wanders through the boulder piles on the east side of the route before moving farther away from the mountain and out into the more open desert as it connects with Window Rock Loop Trail. Near the intersection, the namesake rock window came into view up at the top of the rock pile, and we followed Window Rock Loop to the south, which is a more scenic route than staying on Maze Loop. Window Rock Loop gets back into the boulder piles and Joshua trees and offers views of the window from the south side of the mountain, whereas the Maze Loop mainly follows a wash back to the west. Window Rock Loop eventually reconnects with Maze Loop to complete the route.
The sole triplog for Maze Loop mentioned it's "sort of boring", and it's true that it's not a challenging hike, and there's not a lot of variety in scenery. But it's consistently beautiful landscape, and adding North View and Window Rock Loop provides more hiking among the boulders and some nice overlooks. The one thing that surprised me was the ease of route finding. The Maze had a reputation for being difficult to stay on the trail, but the park service has added so many signs that getting lost would be tough, even without a GPS route...so the Maze is no longer very maze-like.
There were three other vehicles in the lot when we finished the loop, but we managed to complete the hike without seeing anyone else on the trails--an early start paid off. There were plenty of people in the park by the time we finished...when we drove toward the second hike of the day and left Joshua Tree, there was a huge line of cars at the entrance, waiting to get in. |
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