With its vast aqua pools and sea-size golf courses, it’s easy to forget that Palm Springs, Calif., is in the middle of a desert. But a quick hike up the Bump and Grind trail will immediately remind you. Here, struck by heat and forged by dryness, the barren region unfolds. The path starts off inauspiciously behind a Target store on the west side of town, but soon it rises—steeply—until you are amid the brush and scrub of the San Jacinto mountainside. Higher and higher the trail heads until, after two miles, you reach the plateau, a windswept promontory under which the entire Coachella Valley unfolds. It’s beautiful stuff, worth an O’Keeff e canvas. The best time to go: before sunrise, so you summit as the rosy fingers of the dawn bathe the landscape. There’s nothing like a hike and a view to mitigate the effects of a week’s worth of partying.
With its vast aqua pools and sea-size golf courses, it’s easy to forget that Palm Springs, Calif., is in the middle of a desert. But a quick hike up the Bump and Grind trail will immediately remind you. Here, struck by heat and forged by dryness, the barren region unfolds. The path starts off inauspiciously behind a Target store on the west side of town, but soon it rises—steeply—until you are amid the brush and scrub of the San Jacinto mountainside. Higher and higher the trail heads until, after two miles, you reach the plateau, a windswept promontory under which the entire Coachella Valley unfolds. It’s beautiful stuff, worth an O’Keeff e canvas. The best time to go: before sunrise, so you summit as the rosy fingers of the dawn bathe the landscape. There’s nothing like a hike and a view to mitigate the effects of a week’s worth of partying.
