Explore Eagle Canyon and Jane Hoffbrau Palm Oasis On a Short Hike in Palm Springs
- Steve
- Nov 5
- 5 min read
Why Hike Eagle Canyon
If you are looking for a great short hike trail to a desert palm oasis near Palm Springs, Eagle Canyon offers an adventure that combines stunning views, fascinating geology, and a peaceful natural retreat without the crowds.
Hike Distance: 3.9 miles
Elevation Gain: 682 feet
TrailsNH Hiking Difficulty Calculator: 73 – Moderate
Click here to navigate to the TrailsNH website for a description of the hiking difficulty calculator
Let's Start Hiking
The trailhead for Eagle Canyon or as its more commonly known ‘Jane Hoffbrau Oasis Trail’ is located at the end of Palm Hills Drive in Palm Springs. Multiple trails start in this vicinity but if you head toward the gate and then follow the dirt road you’ll be heading in the right direction.
This road was initially intended to provide access for construction of a housing development in the foothills that never got off the ground. Now the road is used by the Coachella Valley Water District to access water storage tanks.
The trail begins on the lowest foothills in the Santa Rosa Mountains where the mountains begin to rise out of the Coachella Valley. This transition is no accident. Palm Springs sits directly along the San Andreas Fault system, where the Earth’s crust has been fractured, shifted, and lifted rapidly relative to the valley floor.
After 0.3 miles and a few hundred feet in elevation gain we reach a small plateau that provides excellent views of the valley. The road continues but we decided to follow an eroded path rather than stay on the road. Both route takes you to the same location, but personally I’d rather be climbing up hillls than slugging on an abandoned road.
Climbing the Foothills
We aren’t hiking on bedrock, we are climbing the Santa Rosa 'foothill apron'. The apron is a thick accumulation of rock debris, sand and cobble shed from the rising mountains above us.
Most of the dark, angular rocks littering the hillside are metamorphic rocks that at a minimum are 110 million years old but may be 250+ million years old. They were buried miles below the surface and covered the granite that today rise so prominently above the valley. As the granite was uplifted it broke through the metamorphic layer, fracturing and splitting the metamorphic rocks. Then 1-2 million years ago the bulk of the uplift that produced the mountains we see today occurred. The metamorphic rocks detached from granite and then gravity became the dominant force.
Rockfalls, landslides, and debris flows carried the metamorphic rock downslope. This slow continuous process continues today as the mountains continue creeping upwards fracturing and detaching more of layers. That’s why it’s common to see metamorphic boulders strewn across these foothills. Every step uphill is essentially walking on material shed from the slope above.
That’s why the surface looks chaotic with angular rocks of different sizes mixed together with little sorting.
The terrain levels off as we reach a plateau. These step-like landscapes are created because the mountains rise along multiple faults and different blocks move at different rates. Sometime movements shifts, leaving a previously uplifted block stuck in a position and a plateau forms. The pyramid-shaped peak left of center is Murray Hill. We’ve hikes that ‘almost mountain’, here is a link to that blog.
We’ll continue hiking on this relatively flat terrain until we begin our descent to Eagle Canyon. This photo was taken looking back at the plateau
Around 1.1 miles into the hike, a small cairn marks the entrance to the trail to the left that leads into the canyon. It’s easy to miss since the main trail continues further up the foothills.
Heading into the Eagle Canyon and Jane Hoffbrau Palm Oasis
After a few minutes, the terrain was broken by a deep gash that was Eagle Canyon and Jane Hoffbrau Palm Oasis.
The trail leading into the canyon is less than a half-mile long.
Entering the Desert Fan Palm Oasis
This sign was placed here to honor Jan Lykken Hoff, one of the original members of Desert Riders. She was a Palm Springs legend, pioneering horsewoman, and the first woman to lead major riding clubs, known for her lifelong connection to the desert and its trails. Jane has additional ties to the Palm Springs trail system. The Lykken Trail is named after her father, Carl Lykken, and she was married to Boo Hoff, known for the Boo Hoff Trail.
While not as expansive as more famous groves like Willis Palms and Palm Canyon, the palms here are plentiful and appear healthy. The larger groves occur in deeper and longer canyons that drain high elevations of the area mountains. The additional runoff they receive significantly helps to recharge subsurface groundwater that ultimately reaches these palm groves.
Eagle Canyon, by contrast, is a short steep foothill canyon with a small watershed. These palms survive because the oasis sites on highly fractured bedrock which acts as an underground plumbing system to direct water to the surface.
There was a visible seep in a crevice against the back canyon wall and water seeping from a fracture in a rock near the base of the wall.
Honey bee and common side-blotched lizard concentrate around the palm oasis because it solves the two hardest problems in the desert: water and food.
This fan palm growing out of the canyon wall near the seep is a first time experience for us.
The dense plant growth along the wall further indicated the presence of a seep at the wall's base.
Juvenile palm are one of the best visible indicators of a functioning and self-sustaining oasis. They suggest groundwater conditions have been stable in recent years to support successful germination and continued growth.
As we explored down canyon, the palms ended abruptly because the geology changes abruptly. This is because fan palms don't grow where there is limited water. They grow only where groundwater is consistently close to the surface, often within a few meters. The moment groundwater drops deeper than their roots can reach, palms cease to survive. Palms simply cannot survive. Looking back at that invisible line in the sand which no palms cross.
When hiking Eagle Canyon be sure to venture beyond the palms to where the canyon reveals its impressive geology.
Eagle Canyon feels out of place—a deep canyon forming almost right at the desert floor instead of high in the mountains where you expect a dramatic gash. The answer is easy to explain.
The canyon forms in this location because that is where uplift is fastest, slopes are steepest, rock is fractured, and flash floods are most concentrated. The canyon didn’t wait to form higher up—the mountains rose around it, and the water immediately went to work where gravity gave it the most leverage.
After 45 minutes in the palm oasis it was time to begin the climb out and leave the palms behind.
After climbing out of the canyon, the shift is immediate. The rustling of palm fronds in the breeze and the cool shade provided by the canyon walls give way to the noise of hiking boots scuffing against the hard-packed earth and the heat rising from the desert floor.
It's a fast downhill hike back to the trailhead and the end of a great day of hiking.
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