Читать книгу 101 Hikes in Southern California. Exploring Mountains, Seashore, and Desert онлайн

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As the highest peak in the entire Peninsular Ranges province, 10,800-foot San Jacinto Peak would outrank all other Southern California peaks were it not for the slightly higher San Gorgonio massif looming just 20 miles north. For sheer dramatic impact, however, San Jacinto wins hands down. Viewed from I-10 outside Palm Springs, the north and east escarpments of San Jacinto appear to rise nearly straight up from the desert floor—10,000 feet in 10 miles or less. Every plant community we have mentioned so far except Joshua tree woodland thrives at one level or another on the mountain.

San Jacinto’s pine-clad western slopes shelter several resort communities (such as Idyllwild); otherwise nearly all of the mountain’s upper elevations lie within national-forest wilderness or state wilderness areas.

The Colorado Desert

East of the northernmost Peninsular Ranges lie Palm Springs, the Coachella Valley, and the Salton Trough (Salton Sea). They are within the domain known as the Colorado Desert—California’s low desert—so called because it stretches west from the lower Colorado River, which divides California from Arizona. A 1,000-square-mile chunk of the Colorado Desert lies within Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, by far the largest state park in California. Especially close and convenient for San Diegans, Anza-Borrego’s vast acreage ranges from intricately dissected, desiccated terrain known as badlands to the pinyon-juniper and yellow-pine forests of the Peninsular Ranges.