Posted by Jeff on Mar 18, 2016 @ 8:52 am in Hiking News | 0 comments | Last modified: March 18, 2016
Don’t let the name Hellhole Canyon scare you off. In early March the 6-mile hike in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park is alive with striking desert blooms, a lush palm oasis and hidden waterfalls. Sure, the start of the route into the sun-beaten canyon is hot.
Flowering indigo, beavertail cactus and desert dandelions buzz with insects along the seemingly misnamed trail. Camera-toting hikers, including the California Native Plant Society’s Bay Area members, wander among towering ocotillo, yellow brittlebush and red chuparosa.
Some hikers will say there are no waterfalls. That is easy to believe in what appears to be a vast, waterless landscape. But keep hiking, determined to find waterfalls in a desert. You will be rewarded.
Farther in, canyon wrens laugh as the trail scrambles over boulders and criss-crosses a creek meandering through a lush, shady palm oasis until at last you find secluded Maidenhair Falls, a slender cascade dropping 18 to 20 feet into a small pool beneath a wall of ferns.
Anza-Borrego is one of California’s southernmost state parks – stretching nearly to the Mexican border.
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