5 min
Overview
The Santa Rosa Mountains offer some of the most remote, difficult, and rewarding hiking in all of Southern California. This unforgiving spur of the Peninsular Ranges divides Borrego Valley from the Coachella Valley, and the scruffy Santa Rosa Crest serrates the desert sky at elevations generally exceeding 5,000′. While much of this wild terrain lies outside the realm of most hikers, the Cactus Spring Trail – one of only two official trails in the high desert portion of the range – is an opportunity to get a taste of the magic of the Santa Rosas without biting off more than you can chew. The Cactus Spring Trail roughly adheres to an alignment of an ancient Cahuilla route that traversed Martinez Canyon from the desert floor before mounting a saddle connecting Martinez Mountain to the main block of the Santa Rosas. The ancient trail stopped at Cactus Spring, which once served as a water source to a large Cahuilla village and remains a sacred site to their ancestors. From the spring, the trail follows an undulating course through a complex drainage system feeding Deep Canyon before connecting with other older remnants that drop down Palm Canyon toward today’s Agua Caliente Indian Reservation. Many sections of the Cactus Spring Trail, especially those beyond Horsethief Creek, look like they’ve had very little maintenance since the ancient Cahuilla beat the path in with centuries of foot traffic. In some places, a faint, overgrown tread marked haphazardly by the occasional sign is all you have to go by unless you’re utilizing a map, a compass, and your finely honed navigational skills — which you definitely should have before you tackle this route. Sure, you could rely on the GPS track, but I don’t recommend it since a failure of your technology could leave you lost in a relatively confusing area. The overall 9.2 mile trip makes for a fairly challenging day hike owing to the rollercoaster nature of the first half. In navigating the complicated terrain I alluded to earlier, the trail follows a lot of ups and downs
Trail Stats
15.0 km
670 m
1281 m
1023 m
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