Hike Mecca Hill Benchmark Mecca Hills BLM, CA

Feb 26, 2024 — For our final day of peakbagging together, Chris and I set out for the difficult-to-reach high point of the Mecca Hills BLM, Mecca Hill Benchmark. The area is mostly known for the Ladder and Painted Canyons Loop, but the surrounding badlands are gorgeous and have plenty of nooks and crannies to explore. The Mecca Hills Wilderness, shaped by the San Andreas Fault, is a labyrinth of narrow canyons that resemble little more than eroded and dried mud. Sandy washes divide the landscape and can be used to access various slot canyons. The problem with reaching Mecca Hill Benchmark is that it is guarded by these narrows, each drainage and ridge offering a variety difficulties or danger. It's also hard to determine a ridgeline that might work best since the terrain is too complex to decipher until you're actually looking up at it, but we had a couple of ridgeline options in mind before starting, an fortunately one did the trick.

The non-Wilderness corridor of Box Canyon Road leads to the trailhead and the wilderness boundary, and despite seeing many tire marks leading northwest, we left our cars and headed on foot. Wildflowers were blooming along the wash banks, and colorful layers were etched into the canyon walls, also dotted with blooming greenery. Our progress was quick on the packed sand for a couple of miles until we reached a turn-off from the main wash.

Mecca Hill Benchmark was clearly visible above, so we chose a canyon that seemed viable. We weaved through a series of sharp curves and eventually reached a dryfall. In order to get around it, we scrambled up a Class 2 slope over a crinkle in the badlands and dropped into an adjacent canyon above a dryfall in its drainage. Another Class 2 slope led up to another little ridge, where a steep Class 2+ move brought us higher out of the badlands as this ridge started to gain any sort of girth. Fortunately it continued to expand into what seemed like a viable route out of the maze.

Following the ridge wasn't a problem, but coming back later was, since there are various crinkles in the ridgeline that appear to be the correct one, and taking the wrong route down could result in getting cliffed-out. While there are likely other ways to reach the summit, this worked for us quite well and it seemed likely we would get into trouble if we'd tried to descend another direction on the way back. There were some minor undulations formed by the eroding faces of the steep ridge, but overall it was just a pleasant walk with neat drops on either side, plus we could see the complex erosion patterns on adjacent slopes and it was a cool persepective from here.

At some point we passed a silver spray-painted rock, so it was clear others had been this way, but certainly not in a long time. As we neared the summit, a slightly sketchier narrow portion of the ridge required some focus, but otherwise we made it up without too much hassle after the initial labyrinth in the complex ground-level terrain. The summit of Mecca Hill Benchmark awarded us really interesting views toward the Salton Sea, Mount San Jacinto, and Rabbit Peak across the populated Coachella Valley.