My husband and I had previously climbed Rabbit peak via the East approach a few years ago. It was an epic adventure lasting many hours and involved 16 miles of cross-country hiking through pointy desert plants. (One of the pointy plants found poor Erik’s knee) … Needless to say, I was very excited to climb the beautiful and challenging Rabbit Peak again and make my first assent of neighboring Villager peak. Our total hiking distance for the trip was around 21 miles with over 8,000 feet of elevation gain.
Given the distance, it did necessitate an earlier start… and as a result we got to enjoy a magical sunrise on our drive from Palm Springs.
We made the drive from palm springs, and parked 14.8 miles from our turnoff on road s22, where the route started (per the route directions on the HPS website). Once at the parking spot the route is evident. It is the ridge coming south down from Villager Peak
We hiked north across the desert, just past the east end of “Lute” ridge to the prominent ridge on the left (west) side of Rattlesnake Canyon. The weather was beautiful, and the clouds made for some great photos
Finally after a bunch of climbing we got to the top of Villager!
From the top of Villager, the route to Rabbit was clear, just follow the ridge!
We saw some pretty rocks and flowers along the way 🙂
We had to make haste on our way down, as the sun was setting. We were treated to a georgous desert sunset! However, I was experiencing some trouble with a hamstring injury I had ignored for about a year (this was the trip that actually sent me to several months of rest and PT to heal up completely). The injury added some time to our dessent as each step was pretty painful, but the beautiful scenery took my mind off of it.
Oh liz, how beautiful! My fav…the sunset pics and those century plants. what an amazing accomplishment.