Ladder Canyon Trail is a 4.5 mile hike (unless you made a wrong turn like we did) in the Mecca Hills Wilderness of Southern California. This hike is a loop trail that goes through a slot canyon, along a ridge line, and then through a wash along the bottom of Big Painted Canyon. It’s listed as a moderate hike, but was full of elevation gain, slots, bouldering, going through slot canyons, and climbing up/down many ladders when it was too difficult to climb up the side of the canyon. This was one of my favorite hikes.
To get to the canyon, you must first drive the 4 mile dirt road called Painted Canyon Road. Take Highway 111 toward Salton Sea and head through the city of Mecca onto 66th Ave. That becomes Box Canyon Road and once you pass a canal, turn left onto Painted Canyon Road. Once you get to the parking lot at the end of road, there’s a wash to the right of the signage and that is where the trail starts. I didn’t feel like that part was clearly marked but there were no problems following the trail once we got started. After walking in the wash for about .25 miles, the wash splits. If you go left, you begin going through the canyon and up the ladders. If you go right, which is up a wash and counterclockwise, you will spend half of the trail walking up a wash which is not as much fun and a little hard to walk in. Look for the sign indicating the trailhead starts and then look for the arrow that I’m standing beside. That’s where the fun begins.
After you climb up the rocks as I’m doing above, you’ll encounter your first ladder. There were several ladders on this part of the hike and while they weren’t too difficult to climb, one didn’t make it to the top so you had to scurry a bit once you reached the top rung. After climbing the ladders, you were then in the slot portion of the hike which was interesting to walk through and not so hot as there was shading from the rocks in the slot. Below are pictures of some ladders and portions of the slot canyon before we did more climbing outside of the slots.
I’m not a huge fan of small, enclosed spaces or climbing up ladders but each different section of the hike was short, fun and not that scary to me. There was a lot of climbing uphill going clockwise, but you were always climbing up the ladders and hills which I think is much easier than climbing down them. Once you are out of the slot section, the trail brings you out of the canyon and you begin climbing hills, following the trail and arrows that were often on the trail (and made out of rocks). These arrows are about the only indication that you are on the right trail. Once we climbed to the top of a hill, the trail continued toward some cell towers and then curved and began to descend back to the canyon floor. We made a small mistake when we reached a plateau after climbing up the hill from the canyon. Another trail intersects with this one and we turned LEFT and headed down the wrong trail. What we should have done is followed the arrows in our trail which were clearly marked so we could continue the Ladder Hike. By turning left and NOT heading toward the cell towers, we jumped onto another trail, the Rope Hike which took us about 1 mile across a ledge on a beautiful hike to a section of ropes that you must scurry down to get back onto the canyon floor. Once I realized there were ropes, we retraced our steps back another mile, and got back on the correct trail. Once back on the trail, it was easy to follow the rock arrows toward the cell towers and around the canyon to the wash which we followed for about another mile.
Once out of the slot canyon, climb the trail to the plateau with this beautiful view.
Once you reach the plateau, it’s a good time to take a break, enjoy the scenery and catch your breath. (And have a drink of water which hopefully you brought!!)
At the plateau, it shows you where to stop walking by having a border of stones where you should stop and arrows pointing to where you should walk.
Once we reached the plateau and started the climb toward the cell towers, we just followed the rock arrows in the trail to a bend in the trail and down a small incline which wasn’t hard, but was a little slippery with the stones. We walked in a wash for most of the trail back toward the beginning of the hike. There were two more ladders that we had to go down but these weren’t steep, just a little trickier going down rather than up.
This was an incredible hike with the exception of the one mistake we made by not following the arrows. We watched some other much younger hikers turn and go in that direction rather than following the rock arrows. It added two miles to our hike but we really enjoyed the extra two miles. The views were great and the hike was along the ridge line so it was a pretty cool addition to the hike. Below is the hike as seen by my Apple Watch. You can see where the hike began and ended (red dot) and where we lost reception while in the slots. You can also see where we turned left then retraced our steps and got back on the trail. The mistake occurred at the plateau where the ocotillo were. Arrows clearly showed that we should continue toward the cell towers. The trail was blocked off as we got closer to the towers and we were directed to curve on our loop down a hill and into the wash. Again, lesson learned, just follow the arrows and go clockwise the whole time!! I would highly recommend this great hike!!
Camping Konneys 