The last few months, I've been fiddling a little bit with alltrails.com. It strikes me as a sort of a crowd-sourced hiking app. The blurbs in the actual description tend to be really generic and not very helpful. But the directions to trailheads can be helpful, and some of the reviews of trails are very detailed. Alternatively, some "trails" aren't trails at all but sometimes roads and sometimes cross-country, unmarked routes, sometimes with very difficult terrain.
I think this was only the second time I used it to try out a trail. I'm pretty sure the first time was to the "Noah's Ark" trail, near Cedar City. I haven't blogged that hike yet, either.
Based upon the distance, the description, and the existence of an actual trail, and that I am pretty sure I never walked this trail, I choose this one.
From the North Entrance (Twentynine Palms, you stay on Park Blvd approximately 5 miles past the split to Pinto Basin (you drive towards Yucca Valley and the West Entrance). Desert Queen Mine Road is on your right. It's listed as "DQ Mine Road" on the Trails Illustrated map of Joshua Tree NP, and as Dessert (sic) Queen Mine Road on All Trails. It's a narrow dirt road, no problem in my Prius, but narrow enough that if you run into traffic, one of you may need to back up, or stop at a spot to allow two cars to pass each other.
8/10ths of a mile up this road is a small parking area on the right, with room for 3-4 cars. I started here. The trailhead sign is in the first photograph, above.
According to the sign, Lucky Boy Loop is 3.8 miles, plus an extra 1/2 mile if you go to the vista and back. It also includes a 1/2 mile along the dirt road, from the larger parking area for Desert Queen and Pine City trails, and the smaller lot you're parked in, here.
This trail starts out without a lot of flare: Just typical Joshua tree, with the namesake tree common at the start, and mixed with yucca, elsewhere. Mostly relatively flat, with just a few shorter inclines, to a vista that is also somewhat non-prominent. You have a nice panorama to the south. And, apparently, there is an unmaintained and non-evident trail that continues down from the vista into the Split Rock loop trail. By the map, it cant be more than 1/4 of a mile down there, but I didn't look super hard and did not see the linkage.
After returning to the loop and continuing to the north, the mostly flat path climbs a bit, and there are some impressive rocky areas that are adjacent to the trail. A nice mixture of pinyon pine, juniper, and yucca and Joshua tree are evident in this section..
After a relatively short such section, the trail returns to the sandy flats and washes for the last bit to the larger parking lot. In fact, you parallel the dirt road (which remains out of sight, but not out of sound) for the last 1/4 mile or so.
Once at the larger parking lot, and with just a bit of sun remaining, I walked 1/4 mile or so on the Desert Queen Mine trail, to an overlook of what appears to have been a huge mining operation. Then I returned towards, first the larger parking area, then walked along the road, back to my car. Snapped a nice shot of some clouds and the silhouette of a young couple, heading towards the overlook.
Walked the last half mile as the light quickly faded. Brilliant Venus shone, low to the southwest.
All told, about 4.4 miles for the day. It was enough to hit my fitbit step target, but not much more.
Overall, I'd describe this as a nice, but not outstanding, hike. Nothing spectacular, but definitely nice. On the day I hiked, I saw maybe four other hikers on my loop, compared to a lot more than that on just the short segment of the Desert Queen trail and parking area I hiked.
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