I have been hiking Palm Canyon in the Anza Borrego Desert every year right after New Year. This year I went today, January 1, 2014.

Starting out, on January 3, 2010, I noticed a brand new stand of palm trees developing. I took a picture and marked the spot (click to enlarge):

When I came back two years later on January 7, 2012, here is the identical view:

Then I came back on March 10, 2013. This is what it looked like:

Today I went out again to Palm Canyon. When I got to the trailhead, there was a sign warning that there had been a severe flood during the summer in 2013, and that the trail had been obliterated in a number of places. Indeed, as I hiked in, I noticed that I found myself hiking off-trail quite a few times, but since the canyon narrows toward the oasis, there is no way to miss it.

When I got to my little experimental palm grove, I hardly recognized it. Here is what it looked like today:

The trees that were formerly where I placed the blue and green arrows are completely gone. The water pulled them out completely and washed them away. There is not a trace of them left. The center grove is still there, but it has hardly grown since last year, and it is severely bent at the root, obviously from the rush of the creek downstream.

When I got to the main oasis, I also didn’t recognize some of the terrain. Huge boulders and giant trunks of dead palm trees had been moved around.

If you have never seen a “real” oasis, the oasis at Palm Canyon is perfect. It’s 1.5 miles from the trailhead. After about a mile of desert hiking through extremely hot and dry terrain up the canyon, a small trickle develops in the stream bed, and within a few minutes it turns into a real creek. Then the oasis becomes visible from the distance.

These palm trees have been there for a long time. Their trunks are gigantic, and the boulders around them massive. It takes some real scrambling to get in there.

Here is a view from “inside.” The oasis is so large, there is no good way to take a picture once inside.

Then, on the way back out, I was treated to an exceptional surprise. I looked up and suddenly I saw a bighorn sheep right in front of me on the cliff. I got a few pictures to share here:

Seeing the sheep so close to me, and being able to watch it climb down the cliff and then prance away was a magnificent way to end my annual visit to Palm Canyon at Borrego Springs.