Chino Hills State Park - Upper Bane Ridge, Sidewinder, Aliso Canyon, Raptor Ridge, Bovidian Delight, and South Ridge Trails

Hiked March 1, 2026. Eleventh hike of the year, taken the day before my previous post, which was my twelfth of the year. My second visit to Chino Hills State Park in as many weeks. The trip last week was blogged, here. Previous hikes were linked inside that post.

The Chino Hills are still pleasantly green. The most common flowers are black mustard and wild radish, but there was a wider variety of flowers on this hike than what I saw last week, or at least greater densities of those other flowers. On the other hand, the snow cover around Mount San Antonio / Mount Baldy has *really* retreated!

The last time I came this way, the entrance from Sapphire Road was just curb parking, outside of a gate, that blocked a dirt road, that you walked up. Now, Bane Road is paved (albeit very narrow, in places). This isn't helped by the fact that groups of pedestrians often walk 4 or 5 abreast, more than filling entire lanes.

About 1/2 mile after turning on Bane Canyon Road, you reach the entry kiosk. Normal entrance costs $10, or $9 for seniors over age 62. Dogs are permitted on the paved road and parking areas, but not on the trails. The same with e-bikes. Mountain bikes and equestrians are permitted on trails. Flying of drones is not permitted.

The pavement continues for about another mile, ending in the camping area, where day parking is not generally permitted. A 1/4 mile or so before that is the equestrian / group camping area, where there is substantial parking. Between the equestrian area and the entry kiosk were about three overlook or picnic areas, each with room for only two or three vehicles.

I parked in the equestrian area. There are flush toilets and an outside water spigot there. The Upper Bane Ridge trail starts from above the restrooms, at the north end of the parking area.

It's a pretty long set of climbs to get to the ridge top. The trail is narrow in spots, at least when the grasses are tall and hug the trail, as they do, in late winter and early spring. The main flower on the lower areas were invasive black mustard and various wild radish.

The trail generally trends north or north-northwest. Some nice views of Mount San Antonio / Mount Baldy, beyond mustard blooms.

This was a Sunday, and the trail was moderately busy. Seems like most people walking up the pavement must have hiked elsewhere, however, and there were less than a dozen cars in the parking area, here.

This trail eventually takes you to some high tension powerline structures. There's a "trail" that shoots off to the left around here, but it is signed for SCE use, only. Another trail (Pomona Trail) goes down the right, just before the powerlines, towards the paved Bane Canyon Road (a trail parallels much of the road down there).

The upper Bane Canyon Road ends at the next fork. Going straight is the East Fence Line trail, which also loops down towards paved Bane Canyon Road. Left is the Sidewinder trail, which I took.

The Sidewinder trial was narrow on the way down, with lots of thistle. Even through my long pants, I could feel the point leaves, poking through.

I wanted to get to San Juan Hill, the highest point in the park, so I took the most direct route, as I looked at a two-dimenstional map. This may have led to some unnecesssary climbing and losing of altitude along the way. When I came to the Aliso Canyon Trail, I turned right, there, crossing a small, seasonal seep.

The next right was the Raptor Ridge trail, just over a mile after starting the Aliso Canyon trail. Followed Raptor Ridge for another mile, to where it ends, at "Five Points."

In addition to Raptor Ridge, the Telegraph Canyon Trail passes through Five Points, as does another trail, from the north. Heading straight through Five Points from Raptor Ridge, however, the trail becomes Bovinian Delight. This reminds me of a previous trip to Chino Hills State Park, when I ran into a cow. I don't think cow graze here, anymore.

About 1.25 mile from there to the South Ridge Trail. A left turn there leads you up to San Juan Hill, albeit with a slight diversion off the South Ridge Trail, for a more direct approach to the summit. Communications antenna and a concrete marker are at the top.

Spent about ten minutes snapping photos up there, then continued on down the South Ridge Trail for about three miles. Slight jig down near the campground to get from the South Ridge trail over to a spur trail that would take me back to the group camping parking area without needing to spend much time walking on the actual road.

10.44 miles for the day, and 1834 feet of vertical gain. Pretty long hike. Some nice flowers. Lots of green grass. It was a good day for hiking.

Wildflowers along I-10, North Palm Springs, Whitewater, and JOTR National Park

March 2, 2026. This is the more timely of my weekend activites, so I'll post it, now.

Mostly driving, with, at most, a few hundred yards of walking around the area west of Haugen-Lehmann Way (north of I-10), then a few hundred yards around the windmills of North Palm Springs (south of I-10, west of Indian Canyon Drive), then probably a few miles total of walking around in several areas of the southernmost four miles or so of Cottonwood Springs Road, both within Joshua Tree National Park, and in the BLM-administered areas south of the park.

I noticed brittlebush starting to bloom two weeks ago, and thought I'd see how the bloom has progressed. I'm not sure, but we may be at peak, which is good, but not great in terms of flower density. The top two brittlebush blooms were near Haugen-Lehmann Way, which I previously visited just under three years ago, during a superbloom.

Substantially less density on this trip, but it's over a month earlier on the calendar than the "superbloom" shots. Still, the rainfall and warmth was earlier this year than that year, so I would have figured the bloom would be accelerated, and I'm not expecting it will be as good, this year. Still, I may be in the area again in two weeks, so I may be making one more in-bloom trip up here. That'll tell me if we are past peak, or not.

My second stop was under the windmills of North Palm Springs.

I could see good coverage of desert dandelion from the freeway, and intended to get off at Indian Canyon Road, anyway. There's a Pilot truckstop there, which usually means decent gasoline prices, clean restrooms with running water, and easy availability of drinks and snacks. (I have noticed that the Costco in Palm Desert usually has significantly cheaper gas, but less convenient restrooms!). Stopped at a few spots along the road that parallels I-10, heading west from Indian Canyon Road.

My third series of stops was along Cottonwood Springs Road, from north of I-10 on up to the visitor center at Cottonwood Oasis Drive. I first stopped at the Bajada nature trail, but was somewhat disappointed by what I saw there (flower-wise). So I continued on to the visitor center.

The available personnel there seemed to have a surprising lack of interest in engaging me, so I just went with my suspicion that the best flowers were going to be heading back south, so that's what I did. Stopped at a dirt road, just south of the visitor center (Pinkham Canyon Road, I assume), then again at several pullouts along the way back, and past, the Bajada nature trail, including areas south of the park boundary. I did the most walking down at that last stop, although desert mallow shot was in the wash near Pinkham Canyon.

I'm pretty sure the rest of the shots I posted here were on the southernmost section I walked. Brittlebush was still the dominent flower, but there were nice patches of desert poppy and various lupine species, and additional desert dandelion. The phacelia shot may also have been from the wash, though.

These are Fremont pincushion, then phacelia, below. Not sure about the low white flowers, above. They look like a small daisy.

So plenty of specimen shots, and pretty good coverage of brittlebush, but not super-dense.

There were lots of high, thin clouds, so it was very comfortable, and definitely cooler than back in the L.A. Basin. As usual, just wandering in the open space was relaxing and enjoyable.

When off-trail, I tried to stick to the wash areas as much as possible, to limit my impact on the wildflowers. Some of the flowers are tiny and thin, so you really need to be careful not to step on anything. But the sandy wash bottoms are less dense. Otherwise, stepping on rocks would also be a good idea. And, if I'm near a developed trail, I'm much less likely to do any wandering, at all, because there's already going to be so much off-trail impacts that I don't want to add to that.

So, bottom line, not a "super" bloom in this area, but lots of blooming plants, and still cool enough to wander, comfortably.

Did not use Alltrails to measure my walks, since I knew most would be short, without significant altitude gain. But I'm pretty sure I got over three miles walking, total (possibly closer to five miles), so I'd count it as a hike, even if only in the aggregate. That makes it my twelfth hike of the year. I still need to blog my eleventh hike, which I took on March 1, 2026.