Butcher’s Cave

We spent a lot of time hiking around Joshua Tree National Park when we lived in the Mojave desert. Initially we stayed on the well-known trails, but then I started corresponding with a man who grew up in the area and he told me about all sorts of interesting hikes not listed in the guide books. In fact, the park rangers tend to remain pretty mum about some of these places because they are filled with petroglyphs and other archeological finds.

One of these “secret” locations is Butcher’s Cave. Park rangers say that when the cave was “discovered” in the 1920’s, there were over 50 big horn sheep skulls inside and anthropologists speculate the cave was used for butchering. Hence the name. But our experience makes us suspect something different…

Our hike started a bit south of the base of Queen Mountain and from there it was up and over a pretty steep ridge into a valley filled with Western tanagers in full red and yellow breeding plumage. They were flying about everywhere as we walked along through some oaks toward the next small ridge. Then, in the midst of doing a bit of rock scrambling to get over the ridge, we were stopped by the calls of rock wrens and spent about ten minutes frozen in place trying to spot one of those furtive little birds. Although not our initial focus for the day, it was turning into a great birding hike!

The directions from my pen pal said to hike down the next large wash and then branch off to a smaller wash directly across from a rock formation of three big rectangular blocks in the cliff face. Well, you’d think we’d be able to notice something that was literally as big as a house, but no… so after going too far (when the big wash started to bear south, we knew we’d missed our turn), we turned around, trudged about a half of a mile back through the sand and found the smaller wash. We didn’t mind the backtracking, it goes with navigating around that part of the park (in fact, the area adjacent to where we were hiking is called “The Wonderland of Rocks” and is a veritable maze) and can result in the discovery of all sorts of interesting things (but that story is for another day).

The side wash lead to another smaller wash and then to yet another small valley, very similar to the first, but this one also contained phainopeplas (for you east coast people, picture a svelte, black cardinal) and black-throated sparrows. Definitely a good birding day. The map showed one more small hill to cross and we’d be in the valley containing Butcher’s Cave.

We crested the ridge and expected to see the cave entrance on the far side of the valley, but there were numerous rock formations on the valley floor blocking the view. Eventually we hiked around enough of them that... there it was… Butcher’s Cave.



The cave is not at the level of the valley floor (and since the rocks are constantly eroding and filling the valleys of the park with sand, the cave was even higher up in prehistoric times) and we had to do a bit of rock scrambling to get up to the opening. RWT went in, I took this picture…



… and then he wanted to leave. Immediately. Now RWT is not one to notice the subtleties in life, but even he felt what the voice inside my head had been screaming (Amityville Horror-like) since we’d entered that valley… “get out”. There was something not right about this area. In general, most of the park has a nice, feel-good vibe to it. It can be harsh, daunting and incredibly dangerous, but not scary. However, this valley and particularly the cave were somehow different. Creepy. Bad. A purely instinctive feeling that we should not be there.

Since both of us were in complete agreement, we didn’t hang around to picnic at the cave as we’d planned. And then, as we were walking out of the valley we noticed it… no birds. None. No bird songs. Totally, eerily silent.

If the surrounding areas had not been filled with birds, we would have written it off as one of those bad birding days when all the birds seem to be napping or gone off on holiday. But as soon as we were back in the next valley, there was a pair of blue-gray gnatcatchers chattering at us from a creosote bush. And a flock of bushtits in a desert willow further down the side wash. We ended the hike by climbing up the back side of Queen Mountain and reversing the route of a previous hike (not the easiest or most direct way back to the car, but it was fun).

RWT and I often talk about that day and wonder if we were imagining things. We never had the opportunity to go back to Butcher's Cave, but even if we did, I doubt we would be able to overcome our first oh-so-strong and oh-so-negative impressions. Regardless, we’ll never know what the early people who lived there did in that cave, there were no petroglyphs and the skulls are long gone. But I disagree that the cave was used simply for butchering sheep, it is too difficult to get to and way, way too ominous.