Home Animals Desert Map Photography What's New?

In The Desert

Back to
Day Trips

Home Animals Desert Map Photography What's New?

Back to
Day Trips

Red Canyon

Bradshaw Trail, California

The first part of the trip to get to the Bradshaw Trail is running along side the Cochella Canal. We did find a dead Rattlesnake here on March 18, 2009. Keep going on the GPS track till you get to siphon No. 24 where you'll turn East onto the Bradshaw Trail.

Download Garmin GPS track

This is the old railroad tressle bridge. This rail line is no longer in use. The road up thru this section to Red Canyon is pretty much as shown here. Here you'll see the Choclate Mts. to the South and Orocopia Mts to the North. This wash and Trail being the dividing line between them.

Looking to the North you'll see this Butte. The entrance to Red Canyon is directly to the left of it. -------->
When you get to the turn into the canyon you'll see this marker post shown below.

There was a lot of flowers blooming in the canyon when we were there on March 18th. Center bush with the red flowers is a Desert Globe Mallow.

Driving up into the main wash (there are side runs also) this is what you'll see. Some areas look tight but have plenty of room for a large 4x4. This area has a lot of diverse rock formations.

Here is one of many slot canyons you can hike into. Some are larger and some are smaller. A person could fit into this one easily. This area recieves a lot of traffic so most of them have already been explored. But who knows what you might find in any one of them?

For size comparison. The FJ Cruiser went thru all the canyons here with plenty of room to spare. My wife says I'm never in any of the photos -- so here I am doing what I'm normaly doing! While we were there we heard rumblings sounds and later found out that they were having a rather numerous amount of earthquakes in the Salton Sea not far from here. Scary!

This is as far as you can go in the main canyon. The wash from here on is full of boulders. At least for us it was. This area is very pretty and exploring it was really neat. This is an easy one of our day trips in the desert.

Here's a section that was shoved up during a major movement of the Earth's crust. Bet you didn't know that I was a volcanologist too. This is a great place for a photographer and explorer. There's something new around every bend in the desert trails here.

One of the many pinnacles you'll encounter in this side canyon. This canyon is on the GPS track and is the second main canyon off to the West from the main canyon. This canyon is narrower than the others, but passable and definetly worth seeing.

Another view! There are more pinnacles in this side canyon and shouldn't be missed on this trip to Red Canyon or a trip across the Bradshaw Trail. There's also a neat waterfall at the end of the canyon that you need to see.

We ate lunch in this canyon after navigating by the stars and the sun and really roughing it on our trip. Ok so we use a GPS and watched a movie on our portable DVD player while eating our lunch. You have to take some comforts with you? This is another one fo the day trips that you can fit into an easy trip across the Bradshaw Trail. You need to get in the desert and see this area for yourself.
Have fun -----

This is an inter-active Maps.google Satellite Map. You can zoom in / out and change the formats to Street Map or Terrain; drag the map to scroll. Try it!
Shown here -- Entrance to Red Canyon.