Indian Canyons: the Palm Springs hike you can do every week

Outdoors · Palm Springs

What are the Indian Canyons, and when are they best?

The Indian Canyons sit at the south end of Palm Springs, on the ancestral lands of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, and they hold the largest California fan palm oases anywhere. Palm Canyon, Andreas Canyon and Murray Canyon each carry water for much of the year. Entry is ticketed at a gate, and the canyons keep seasonal hours.

Short visitors all do the same thing here. They arrive mid-morning in March, walk the paved overlook at the top of Palm Canyon, take the photograph, and drive back up to Highway 111 for lunch. It is a perfectly good hour, and it is a fraction of the place. If you are living in Palm Springs for a month or more, you get the version that only repetition gives you: the canyon floor rather than the rim, and the mornings when nobody else is there.

Go on a Tuesday or Wednesday, first thing after the gate opens. The canyons face east, so the low sun lands on the west walls while the palm groves hold shade and cool air for the first couple of hours. Walk down into Palm Canyon instead of along the rim; the trail drops through the grove and the sound changes completely once you are under the fronds, with water running over rock and no traffic at all. Andreas Canyon is the shortest loop, with the most reliable water and rock formations right against the path. Murray Canyon is the one most people skip, because it takes longer and the trail crosses the stream repeatedly. That is exactly why it is worth your third and fourth visit.

The season is genuinely narrow, and it is worth being blunt about that. November through April is when this is a pleasant walk. By late May the canyon floor is already hot, and from June through September Palm Springs runs highs commonly between 108 and 115 degrees, when the canyons are not somewhere to be after mid-morning at all. If you are here in the warm months, the honest answer is that you go at opening and you are back in the car before it turns serious, or you do not go. December and January mornings, at the other extreme, can start cold enough for a jacket, which catches people out.

Bring more water than the walk seems to justify, because the dry air takes it out of you faster than the distance suggests. Shoes with real tread matter in Murray Canyon because of the stream crossings. Dogs are restricted in parts of the canyons, so check the current rules at the gate rather than assuming. And there is no shade in the parking areas, so a windshield shade stops being an accessory somewhere around April.

If you're here for a month or more

Treat the canyons as your weekly walk rather than a single outing. Rotate the three — Andreas when you have an hour, Palm Canyon when you have a whole morning, Murray when you want to be alone — and over a month you will watch the water drop and the wildflowers come and go, which no short visitor ever sees. Ask your local manager which approach is quickest from your neighborhood: from the Indian Canyons neighborhood or Deepwell you are close, and from Uptown you will want to leave earlier to be there at opening.