Indian Canyons — Attraction in Palm Springs

Ever eager to escape the interminable Midwest winters, this spring we diverted from the well-worn trail of tears to Florida and dropped a pin on Palm Springs, CA. Palm Springs is in California’s Central Desert region where the Colorado and Mojave Deserts meet. If you go, it’s best to visit during the window of tolerable temperatures which occur roughly between December 27th and January 3rd.

Keen on seeing something of Palm Springs beyond the four walls of the Airbnb, we followed the advice of our eldest daughter and planned an early morning hike at Indian Canyons on the nearby Agua Caliente Indian Reservation.

Located just south of Palm Springs, Indian Canyons consists of a lush, verdant valley surrounded by the arid and rocky terrain of the Agua Caliente mountains. Palm and West Palm Canyon Creeks wind through the parched hills supplying life-sustaining moisture to America’s largest growth of California Fan Palms along with the other creatures who call this unforgiving landscape home including lizards, scorpions, rattlesnakes, mountain lions, and lost hikers.

The visitor’s guide described the Victor Trail as a short, moderate, three-mile loop beginning in the cool shade of Palm Canyon Creek and ending in a fully exposed stretch of desert. Locals recommend an early start to avoid the severe, life-threatening heat. If, however, you arrive late morning because your children want to sleep in, you’ll have the place pretty much to yourselves.

Your adventure begins at the ranger station/trading post where most visitors buy drinks and snacks for the hike. We opted to travel light, bringing only one water bottle each. From the trading post, you will make an easy descent to the valley floor and follow a wide, level trail through the dappled sunlight streaming between the palms lining Palm Canyon Creek.

After passing other hikers headed back in the direction you just came, in short order you will reach the abrupt end of the palm-shrouded outbound loop and find yourselves alone at the start of the exposed 1.5-mile return trail. Lulled into false security by the relative comfort of the canyon and flush with anticipation over what awaits, you will forge eagerly into a blazing crucible consisting of a scorched, barren landscape of scrub-encrusted hills bereft of vegetation or other humans.

Despite the mountain lion scat prevalent along the narrow, rocky, uphill grade leading toward the ridge above the creek, fear not as the only living things you are likely to encounter are cacti as the local critters are too smart to venture out this time of day. Upon reaching the canyon’s summit which stretches skyward to within a few feet of the sun, you will witness a spectacular vista of a monotone landscape bisected by the green ribbon of Palm Canyon zig-zagging its way toward Cochellla Valley.

As vultures circle lazily overhead, it will finally sink in that you’re immersed in a real-life wilderness adventure you probably won’t survive. This is about the time your older daughter will coerce her younger sister into surrendering her remaining water in exchange for a “like” on her Snapchat story while she complains how the lack of cell service won’t let her upload Tik Tok videos documenting her last hours on earth. This is also when your heat-stroked wife will come to the panicked conclusion that the only way out is extraction by helicopter which she has no way of contacting, prompting her to crawl under a rock outcropping which offers the only shade within 200 miles and that even a novice Cub Scout would recognize as a nesting place for rattlesnakes.

In what seems like only four hours, the trail will descend again into the palm-shaded valley where your molten family can wade in the cool stream to get their body temperatures back below 190 degrees.

Meanwhile, you will climb back up to the the trading post where you buy four bottles of ice-cold water from the Native American park ranger who shakes his head in wonder at how the white man managed to steal his...

Shocked and disappointed by the visitor safety protocols and business practices at Indian Canyons. After an unusual heavy rain and localized flooding the previous day, we were looking for a safe place to hike. As out-of-country visitors to Palm Springs, we chose the Indian Canyons, managed by the Aqua Caliente Tribe.

At the toll gate, we paid $24 USD for two visitors. No information was provided at the toll gate about unsafe trail conditions. We drove 5 minutes uphill to the Palm Canyon parking area where high winds and intense rain squalls presented higher risk trail conditions for our chosen hike (and available gear). We immediately drove back down to the toll booth and asked for a refund or deferral to the next day. The attendant refused to offer any refund, deferral, or discount on a future visit, despite that we were inside the gate for less than 15 minutes. We asked to speak to a manager and were given a phone number that no one answered.

Frustrated and not wanting to lose our entry fees, we decided to try a lower elevation hike. At the official trailhead sign, no warnings about unsafe trail conditions were posted. However, within 10 minutes, we approached a flooded stream that was not safe to cross after the previous day’s heavy rain. We and other visitors turned around. We backtracked and tried another lower canyon trail, but encountered another unsafe stream in flood within 20 minutes of hiking. We finally decided to leave rather than risk our safety and potentially ruin our holiday. We were very frustrated to lose both the pricey entry fees and a day of...

If you are going to charge $9 a person you should at least make the effort of customer service. The lady at the gate was extremely rude, dismissive, unhelpful and couldn’t care less about customers. We didn’t even enter as the day we were there the card machine was not working. But the lady at the gate did not make this known at all. She simply said "cash only" when I handed my card over. I said where does it say that. She responded "nowhere". I then mentioned the sign at the front said debit and credit are accepted. It was at this point she said the machine was not working due to the wind. So I asked if i can pay on exit (when the machine might be working again) or is there an atm nearby so I can get cash out. The response was go back to Palm Springs to get cash out in the most rude and dismissive manner. We decided we weren’t going to drive 15-20min back to town and then the same again back to the canyon. We would have if we had received decent customer service, but not after that terrible experience. So make sure to bring cash as I imagine if the reader doesn’t work in the wind then it would be down fairly often.

In summary, we visited oases in both Joshua Tree NP and the Coachella Valley preserve. Both were stunning and the staff there were amazing. I’m sure the oases at Indian Canyon are beautiful but at $9 a person you are better off spending your time and money at Joshua Tree or Coachella Valley where the staff actually want to help make your visit enjoyable and the landscape is...