Dip Into the Punchbowl : The Geological Marvel at the Mojave Desert’s Edge Is a Popular Destination for Exploring

Among the fragile works of nature, earthquake is a dirty word. Especially in Los Angeles.

But not at the Devil’s Punchbowl, a Los Angeles County park 24 miles southeast of Palmdale on the edge of the Mojave Desert. Here, earthquake power has built a mighty geological marvel. But this living earthquake laboratory dances with at least seven veils, unfolding its rough beauty slowly.

Your first look at the rim from the Visitors’ Center reveals a rugged gorge chockablock with rocks and more rocks. Not stones, mind you, but boulders, huge smooth sandstone behemoths jumbled up and tossed on end like many scattered matchsticks.

“At first, it all looks alike,” says Dave Numer, a ranger at the 1,310-acre Los Angeles County park. After 16 years here, he’s still astonished by nature’s ways. “The Punchbowl geology is amazing, because the more you learn, the more you see what’s really happening out there.”

The problem with earthquakes--at least for geologists who want to study them--is that the shakes and rattles are over as soon as they’ve begun. But not at the Punchbowl.

Here, at 4,700-foot elevation, where the desert floor rises to meet the mighty San Gabriel Mountains, the San Andreas, Pinyon and Punchbowl faults converge in a 1- to 2-mile fracture zone deep below the crust.

As constant movement along the faults slides the Mojave Desert past the mountains at about two inches a year, pressure squeezes the underlying sandstone layers, forcing them upward. Over the millennia, erosion by wind and water wears away softer material, continually sculpting a bowl-shaped depression and exposing hundreds of peaks and pinnacles.

Below the Punchbowl rim, a juniper and pinon pine forest nourishes native mammals, reptiles, insects and birds, a community as compelling to botanists and biologists as earthquakes are to geologists.

But on a typical weekend, it is fun, not scientific study, that brings people out.

The park, created in 1963, was far enough from any city so that for the first few years, the number of visitors was small. But a housing explosion in the Antelope Valley has made the Punchbowl Park a popular local destination for hiking, mountain biking, nature walks, picnics, bird-watching and photography.

Dramatic sculptured rocks and generally sunny days are ideal for color film, especially in winter, when snow frosts the red manzanita and green pines.

“We’re getting more than triple the number of visitors we did when I started here 16 years ago,” says ranger Jack Farley. In 1990, he says, there were about 70,000 visitors--twice that of five years ago.

According to Farley, the busiest days used to be spring and fall weekends, when temperatures are a moderate 50 to 75 degrees. “Now we get a constant trickle all year.”

The impact on the Punchbowl is inevitable. Now there is as much concern over preserving the park as there used to be over attracting more visitors, Numer says.

“Take the rock climbers, for example. I’ve always welcomed them, but there are more of them now, and they’re putting in more routes faster than ever, using . . . battery-powered drills and masonry bits.”

Hammering in nails to secure climbing-ropes was a slow process when done by hand with a hammer, Numer says. “But now they can drill a hole in a few seconds and we don’t see or hear them. Yes, they know the rules, but they think just one more hole won’t hurt.”

Although artifacts found in the area indicate that American Indians once lived here, the Devil’s Punchbowl escaped official mention in records until 1853, when a government expedition scouting railroad routes to the coast stumbled upon it.

For a century, the only way to reach the Punchbowl was an arduous hike on a long, tough trail through national forest land. Finally in the late 1950s, the county purchased 40 acres of land along the rim of a side canyon, allowing access by car and creating a site for a parking lot and the present park buildings.

Numer and Farley are the only full-time salaried employees at the Punchbowl, and maintenance is their first duty. But they have also developed a naturalist program that is one reason so many families--and school groups on field trips--visit the area.

For younger children, Numer suggests a walk on the Pinon Pathway, a self-guided nature trail one-third of a mile long with eight numbered points of interest keyed to a printed trail guide.

Good walkers can take the one-mile Loop Trail descending 300 feet among tall boulders to the canyon floor and along Punchbowl Creek before climbing back to the rim.

In spring or after a rain, this seasonal stream often flows through the canyon, cascading over waterfalls and into scoured-out rock basins before leaving the Punchbowl at the low end.

For hikers, a 3.7-mile trail follows the canyon rim up to the mountains, then traverses through Digger and Ponderosa Pine forests with spectacular views of the Punchbowl sandstone.

A mile up the trail, in a ravine where a pipe carries spring water to drinking fountains near the Visitors Center, millions of migrating ladybugs collect in fall, massing on rocks and logs--and even on bystanders--in preparation for winter.

For the last half mile, the trail drops down a series of steep switchbacks to the Devil’s Chair, a narrow, chalk-white sandstone finger--enclosed with metal fencing--projecting over the canyon floor.

From this point, the trail, which is also open to horseback riders and mountain bicyclists, continues on to South Fork Campground, eventually connecting with other Angeles National Forest trails and with the Pacific Crest Trail.

The Visitor’s Center was recently remodeled with knotty pine paneling and built-in glass cases where exhibits include animal skeletons, arrowheads and grinding bowls, mounted bird specimens and a collection of live animals, including a Pacific rattler, gopher snake, tarantula, scorpion and a gecko.

On a recent weekend, the rattler stole the spotlight, capturing the attention of several small children and their parents by producing four baby rattlers. Outdoors, a large “rehab” pen for injured animals houses three dignified Great Horned Owls brought in after near-fatal collisions with barbed wire and city power lines.

GETTING THERE

Devil’s Punchbowl is open daily from dawn to dusk; there is no entrance fee. Sometimes the Visitors Center is closed temporarily because rangers are out checking trails. School groups require reservations. There is no overnight camping. Call (805) 944-2743 or 944-9151. To get there: Take California 14 toward Palmdale, exit at California 138 (Pearblossom Highway), continue through the towns of Pearblossom and Little Rock, turn right at County Road N6 and continue for seven miles, following Devil’s Punchbowl signs. The trip is about 70 miles from downtown Los Angeles.