Rattlesnake Canyon Hike in Joshua Tree National Park

Joshua Tree National Park is one of those places that lives up to the hype, leaving you amazed and wishing to explore more! There are so many awesome features to explore in Joshua Tree but it’s always a treat to find hikes with water while on a desert adventure. The Rattlesnake Canyon hike is a really fun and unique hiking experience where you’ll want to play all day (and maybe even take a dip)!

From the CA-62 you can already see the massive amount of boulders in the Indian Cove area. Indian Cove is a really cool part of Joshua Tree National Park. There is a campground that has a lot of awesome spots among towering rock formations. Rock climbing is really popular in this area and you can scramble and explore here for daysss! You can access numerous trails here, including Rattlesnake Canyon.

The Rattlesnake Canyon hike is not your typical, but is instead more of a choose your route and play as long and as hard as you want. These are our favorite kind of hikes! The ones that make us feel like kids being let loose at a epic playground. Although footprints and a wash help to point you in the right direction, there is no strict path on this hike. And how far, how high and how difficult is all up to the adventurer! Keep reading to get an idea of what to expect on a hike through Rattlesnake Canyon.

Quick Info:

Directions: From Twenytnine Palms, follow the CA-62 W for about 6 miles. Then turn left onto Indian Cove Road for 2.7 miles and turn left at the T-intersection. After about 1.2 miles you’ll reach the Rattlesnake Canyon parking area.

Distance: This hike can be as short or long as you’d like – it’s about a mile to reach the grotto with the small waterfall/pool but can be lengthened to 6+ miles.

Difficulty: Easy-Moderate; to reach the grotto area is relatively easy but the trail does climb up, over and around some rocks. Taking the trail further gets more technical.

At the Trailhead: There are vault toilets, picnic tables, and grills. This parking/picnic area is day use only but Indian Cove Campground is about a mile away.

Rattlesnake Canyon Hike

We’ve spent some time exploring the Indian Cove area – usually camping, rock climbing, and lots of rock scrambling for as far as we wanted! But we had just learned about the nearby trailhead and decided to check out the Rattlesnake Canyon hike.

From the day use area, the trail began near giant boulders and looked promising as it lead right into the rocky canyon. We love climbing around on rocks so even the picnic area was fun! The trail climbs and passes up, through, and over rocks and boulders. There aren’t any trail signs along the way but there are a lot of footsteps in the sandy wash.

Not long after we started hiking, we noticed a stream of wet sand. There wasn’t much of a water flow but we followed the wet sand to a really cool grotto area.

The grotto was made up of a rock formation with a small pool and waterfall inside. And on the other side of the pool and waterfall there was a cave-like area that we crawled around in and found more water trickling. We also heard some frogs! We were happy to have found some water!

From the grotto we climbed up the boulders and continued heading up to where we found snaking tall slot (mostly) dryfall with water-carved walls. So, we walked and climbed up the massive and steep boulders until we plateaued a bit. From here we found our way over the where the dryfall we had spotted before was.

Here, we noticed there was water in some of the small pools. Shane actually immersed himself in the water in one of them! This was in January, so it was pretty cold!!

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We walked to the edge of the top of the tall carved out dryfall and looked down to the bottom pools, the grotto, and the vast desert in the distance below.

We decided to keep exploring! After a few more obstacles, the trail does level out a bit. There are some more areas where we followed the stream up through the wash before it turned into more scrambling on boulders.

At this point, the hike is climbing but still at the floor of a massive canyon with walls made up of an infinite number of rocks. This canyon leads to an area known as Wonderland of Rocks.

We continued following the boulders on the canyon floor until we reached even more water!

Between some large boulders we found this large pool of water that we weren’t expecting. Of course, Shane couldn’t resist…

We followed the trail further still, with no destination in mind. And we decided to go up, get some good scrambling in before our lunch break. The boulders were fun and challenging to climb up. The views of the surrounding rocky canyon were amazing.

One could seriously spend all day here just climbing around, exploring. There were endless rock scrambling opportunities. We had lunch and turned back from here.

What an Adventure!

We absolutely love hikes like the Rattlesnake Canyon hike. Hikes that allow for an extra element of adventure – climbing, swimming, going wherever it is that our senses pull us.

Let us know in the comments below about a super adventurous hike that you love!

And thanks so much for reading! Here are a few more hikes we love that go that extra mile, have that extra element of excitement:

• Summiting Picacho Peak
• Ding and Dang Canyons
• Best Hikes in the Badlands
• Backpacking Peeler Lake
• Camping and Exploring at Trona Pinnacles

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