Mar 19, 2018 — By far my favorite Joshua Tree National Park backcountry loop to date, this route up Munsen Canyon links the very popular Lost Palms Oasis Trail with the not nearly as popular Eagle Mountain route via a super fun boulder-filled remote canyon with at least five palm oases, two of which don't appear to have names, despite my ample research. Although there are some footprints up Munsen Canyon for a time, any human impact disappeared about a third of the way up.
From the Cottonwood Spring Trailhead, follow the Lost Palms Oasis Trail until you reach the palms, and then continue down the canyon. You'll scramble down a bunch of boulders before reaching Victory Palms, where there are only a couple of palms. Much more interesting oases to come, for sure. An old pipe marks a fairly easy way down until this point. Head through a sandy wash and turn left up Munsen Canyon, where you'll do some more scrambling and soon meet up with Summit Spring Oasis, a much more remote version of Lost Palms. Onward to Munsen Canyon, with similar scrambling and progressively more gorgeous rock formations everywhere. If you're feeling tired here, best to head back. The next couple of oases (unnamed) are in my opinion more interesting than anything so far, but there's lots more scrambling to come.
The section between Unnamed Oasis 1 and Unnamed Oasis 2 (see map) is beautiful but has some bramble to bushwhack through, but it is gone for good once you reach Unnamed Oasis 2. If you make it to this oasis and are feeling good, I recommend you keep going because the best views are yet to come. There is also a gorgeous natural arch with no name that you can see if you look back toward Unnamed Oasis 2. There may be an easier route, but the mapped route that I took includes some rough Class 3 scrambling and route-finding under and over bright-hot white boulders and with the occasional inconvenient cactus. As soon as you get past the Class 3 section, however, it's smooth and easy hiking up to the summit of Eagle Mountain. There's a cairned route that is easy to lose that brings you to a steep descent gully that open up into open desert. I passed a small but pretty natural arch, and I'm sure you can find lots of other cool stuff in this section of slickrock granite. Continue through the easily navigable wide open desert until you get to a wash that leads to the Cottonwood Campground.
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Hire/refer me as a web developer or send me a few bucks if you find my site useful. I'm not sponsored, so all fees are out-of-pocket and my time preparing trip reports is unpaid. I really appreciate it!