Trails heads into Cathedral City foothills

The Dunn Road Trail offers great views of the Santa Rosa Mountains.

Topo map of Dunn Road Trail-Art Smith Trail loop.
Click for larger version.

The following article originally was written for and appeared at the Uken Report.

Hikers can enjoy great views of Cathedral City Cove and the surrounding Coachella Valley on a segment of the Dunn Road Trail.

The entire Dunn Hill Trail runs 14.7 miles with a 6% average grade uphill almost all the way. For a day hike, though, you can simply do a segment of it. One good route is taking part of Dunn Road Trail and combining it with a segment of the Art Smith Trail so that you loop between the two ends of Cathedral City Cove. That comes to about 4.55 miles with a good portion of it downhill.

To reach the trailhead, in Cathedral City at the intersection of East Palm Canyon Drive/Calif. Hwy. 111 with Cathedral Canyon Drive, take the latter south. Turn right/west onto Terrace Road, which becomes Charlesworth Drive when the street curves south. Next, turn right/west onto Valley Vista Drive, which becomes Channel Drive when the street veers south. The trailhead is at the intersection of Channel and Carroll drives; park along the street.

Starting at 728 feet elevation in a wash, the trail quickly comes to a line of small boulders known as the Lower Dunn Road Wall. Past the “wall,” the trail curls south (some maps refer to this as the “Dunn Ramp, east trailhead”) and heads up the ridgeline.

To the northwest is Murray Hill, a prominent foothill visible in Cathedral City. The hill tops out at 2202 feet.

About 0.5 miles in, you’ll arrive at a junction with a narrower trail heading north (some maps refer to this as the “Dunn Ramp, west trailhead”). Continue straight-left/southwest.

Road’s origins
Dunn Road is remnant of a conflict during the early 1970s between landowners and conservationists. At the time, Mike Dunn began building a road that would connect Palm Springs to Pinyon Flats so landowners could better access their property. The Bureau of Land Management – which oversaw the foothills at that time – believed the road posed a threat to peninsular bighorn sheep and promptly gated off the road.

Lawsuits followed, and eventually Dunn gave up on the project. Higher up the trail, remains of road construction equipment that Dunn left behind still can be seen. The land wilderness has become part of the San Bernardino National Forest, managed by the U.S. Forest Service.

Despite being decades old, the road portion of the trail is in good condition. It’s wide and the surface is a smooth hard pack. Sometimes small sections wash out, though, so at times you’ll walk over rocks for a few yards. Hiking boots are recommended.

The trail soon arrives at one of its few flat stretches. The trail’s orientation changes as well, allowing for excellent views of the cove and the Coachella Valley below.

Cathedral Canyon
About 2.3 miles in, just before the trail starts climbing again, a trail junctions from the east. This is the Art Smith Trail. If you need a break, this is a good spot to rest as there are picnic tables.

Go left/east onto the Art Smith Trail. You’re at 1641 feet elevation and will begin your descent into Cathedral Canyon.

Interesting rock formations can be seen on the way through the canyon.

The trail arrives back in a wash at the Cathedral City Trailhead. From there, take Foothill Drive northwest back to Channel Drive and your vehicle, about a three block walk.

The trail is entirely exposed to the sun, so be sure to don sunscreen, sunglasses and sunhat. Leashed dogs are allowed on the route.

Day trail heads into valley’s thermal belt

Red-tailed hawks often can be seen riding the thermals above the
Cathedral City Foothills Trail.

Cathedral City Foothills Trail aerial map.
Click for larger version.

The following blog entry originally was written for and published by the Uken Report.

Day hikers can traipse across the metaphorical coals that make the Coachella Valley such a pleasant place to be via the Cathedral City Foothills Trail.

While many trails crisscross the foothills surrounding the valley floor, a moderately challenging hike that’s easy to reach is this 1.5-mile round trip path that leaves from the cove at the end of Cathedral Canyon. There’s no official name for well-worn path, so it has been christened the Foothills Trail here for convenience sake.

To reach the trailhead, from Calif. Hwy. 111 in Cathedral City, turn south onto Cathedral Canyon Drive then left/west onto Terrace Road. At the Vista Drive intersection, park on the street; head north onto the sand-covered, unfinished Vista Drive. When the road curves west and ends at the development’s edge, take the dirt path entering a wash and then the foothills.

The wash marks the boundary of the San Jacinto-Santa Rosa Mountains National Monument. The public land, administered by a number of federal and state agencies, covers 280,071 acres and stretches from the border of San Diego and Riverside counties southwest of Mecca to Interstate 10 east of Cabazon.

About midway through the wash, which sits at 450 feet elevation, the trail forks. Go left/west. You’ll soon begin climbing a ridgeline. In less than a fifth of a mile, the trail reaches 656 feet elevation.

Thermal belt
The ridgeline offers increasingly great views of the Coachella Valley below and the Little San Bernardino Mountains beyond. You also get a good sense of the crumpled landscape that makes up the foothills, which can appear monolithic from the valley floor. If hiking in the morning, you might even feel heat rising off the surface.

If so, you’re sensing the thermals that help ensure the Coachella Valley is a tourist and snowbird destination.

As sun warms the earth, the ground heats the air directly above it. Soon small plumes of warm air – known as thermals –rise then twist and flow with the wind at a rate of up 1-3 yards a second. This displaces the cooler air above that then descends to the ground and in turn is warmed. The sparse, rocky surface of the foothills and mountains surrounding the valley are an ideal surface for creating thermals, because they have a more direct angle to the sun than the valley floor and so heat faster.

The thermal belts across the foothills leads to higher night-time temperatures in the winter and lower daytime temps during the summer. For example, in nearby Palm Desert, the average daily high is 87.1 degrees F while the average daily low is 62.8 F – the usual temperature across the valley at the end of April or mid-October.

Red-tailed hawks
Besides the temperate climate, thermals also create a great amount of lift, which birds can take advantage of. On the Foothill Trail, red-tailed hawks often can be seen riding the thermals, usually in wide circles.

Red-tailed hawks prefer the foothill’s open country where they can more easily spot prey. If you see one dive slowly, its legs outstretched, in its attack mode.

The red-tailed hawk can be difficult to identify unless you’re above them or they tip your direction as curving through their air. They are dark brown with light barring on their wing feathers and brilliant red tail feathers. Though adults stretch 18 to 26 inches from head to tail and boast a wingspan of 3.4-4.8 feet, they are extremely light, weighing a mere 2.4 pounds.

In addition to being beautiful, they are vital to population control of rodents, which can make up to 85 percent of their diet. They also enjoy a good snake, lizard and even a jackrabbit now and then.

Another benefit of the thermals is the valley’s agricultural industry. While it can’t be seen amid the housing developments and golf resorts from this trail, in the valley’s southern portion the warm year-round climate allows farmers to grow fruits such as dates, figs and mangoes. Indeed, overall crop production exceeds half a billion dollars a year in the valley.

When the Foothill Trail reaches a T-intersection with another unnamed trail at 1148 feet elevation, you’ve reached the turnback point at about 0.75 miles from the trailhead. Take in the great views, and then retrace your steps back to Terrace Road.