Painted Canyon was a place of childhood lore. My parents would describe a landscape where rocks were all colors and moving in all directions. As geology graduate students in the 1980s, they lead undergraduate field trips here because it is on the San Andreas Fault. There was not a designated trail and they would drive up the canyon until they couldn’t drive any more, then get out and start climbing around. I went searching for this spot after I moved to Los Angeles. It is now a marked “hike” with parking lot, marked entrance, ladder assists and all. The hike begins in a sandy-bottomed canyon but the “painted” canyon begins once the canyon narrows and a truck no longer fits. A series of ladders takes you up and at the top of the last rope guide, the mythical Painted Canyon appears! A wonderland of swirling rocks of all colors: reds, pinks, yellows, greens, tints of blue-black and zebra patterns. Quartz crystals galore! Maybe growing up a geologist’s daughter mythologized the place as a wonderland but I have always felt a little bit like Alice there. The ladders are the rabbit hole or the looking glass and the other side is this strange world created by a massive (still active) fault line where swirling metamorphic majesty and bright desert light distort scale and misplace me in space and time. The trail continues up along the ridgeline, but I have always gotten thoroughly distracted by the rocks in the canyon.

Located at the end of Painted Canyon Rd, Mecca, CA 92254