The Hunt for Ojo Oro Arch
Hi, my name is Adam, and I’m addicted to hunting for natural arches. At this point, you could probably classify it as a sickness more than anything. So imagine the angst I felt at the start of December planning my first trip to Joshua Tree National Park in California when I came across an arch called Ojo Oro that I could only find a small handful of people talking about online.
I spent some time looking for a location for this mysterious little arch but came up empty-handed. Still, I had to see it. I would see it.
This is the story of my off-trail hunt for Ojo Oro Arch.
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Some Background
Okay, perhaps I should calm down and take a step back. How exactly did we get here?
Simply put, Krystal and I decided to spend some time in Joshua Tree National Park on our way to visit family for the holidays. I had never been to this national park, so I did what anyone would do… I started researching. This research turned up all of the usual sites, but I tend to prefer stuff that’s a bit further off the beaten path, so I dug deeper.
Eventually, I came across a blog whose author spends quite a bit of time in Joshua Tree and most of his adventures are right up my alley. As such, I spent some time scrolling through this blog when I came across a post where the author is pontificating about the prettiest arch in Joshua Tree. This is where I first came across a picture of Ojo Oro Arch (Spanish for Golden Eye Arch).
Understandably, the author did not provide a location for the arch. I did some more searching and found a few other people who have shared pictures of this natural beauty but couldn’t come up with a location. This is where I may have gone off the deep end a bit.
NOTE: The author of said blog requested that I don’t link to his blog, which is why it’s not linked here.
Trying to Find Ojo Oro
I quickly realized that I was not going to be able to just easily Google a location for this arch. Not even the World Arch Database had the coordinates for it. So, how was I going to find it?
The answer was actually quite simple, although a bit obsessive.
First, I trolled through all of the blogs I could find that shared any pictures or details about Ojo Oro. I scoured these posts for clues and saved any images of the arch to my computer for later analysis. This initial research told me a few things:
First of all, I knew that Ojo Oro was somewhere in the Northeast corner of the park.
The pictures allowed me to determine which two mountain ranges the arch was between.
I knew that the arch was only a few miles from the nearest road.
Somewhere “not too far” from the arch was an old Ford pickup truck buried in the sand of a remote wash.
These four details were enough to get me in the right general area, so I started scouring Google Earth looking for more clues. The old truck ended up being a critical clue for this search as I was initially looking at the wrong side of this desert valley. Krystal had pointed out another was on the opposite side of where I was initially looking. Scouring that wash, I was able to confirm the location of the old truck using satellite imagery.
This got me tantalizingly close to where Ojo Oro Arch must be, but I still needed to narrow down where in this massive, remote valley I though the arch was. This is where the obsessive part comes in.
I began identifying prominent mountains in the background of the images I could find online. I then matched these mountains to what I was seeing in Google Earth. I also used the fact that some of the images were taken at sunset (and that I knew when they were taken) to determine where in the sky the sun was during that period. This allowed me to better orient myself when making these comparisons. Finally, I determined where, approximately, the arch would have to be located in order to get the perspectives I was seeing in all of these images.
After more time than I care to admit, I finally had a GPS point that I felt was relatively close to where Ojo Oro Arch must be. I figured at this point there was nothing to do but get some boots on the ground!
The Hunt
The night before I found a secluded area in the desert where we could pull off and set up camp for the night. This spot got us within twenty minutes of where our off-trail excursion would begin. This also gave me an opportunity to charge up some batteries and backup my footage from the day before.
After a glorious night’s sleep in the rooftop tent, Krystal and I awoke early and made a quick breakfast of oatmeal, broke down camp, and drove to a pull-off I had pre-scouted to begin our journey. The plan was pretty simple: hike through the open desert to the old truck and then start working our way to my guess of where Ojo Oro Arch was.
Being December, just a couple of days before Christmas, the weather was absolutely perfect for hiking in the desert. The low at night was close to 50 degrees and the high during the day was about 70. There was even a gentle breeze blowing through the open desert, making it feel even more pleasant.
The terrain in this area ended up being even easier than I had expected. I, of course, knew beforehand that the area we would be hiking in was completely flat, but I had expected the sand to be much softer and for there to be more obstructions, such as large boulders or plant life, that we would have to navigate around. To my surprise, however, the ground was mostly hardpacked and we could largely travel in a straight line out here.
It didn’t take long for us to reach the old truck.
Your guess is as good as mine as to how this old Ford F-150 came to be so hopelessly stuck out here. While the terrain isn’t overly difficult, it is in a very remote wash that is about 2 miles straight line from the nearest road. It’s clearly been out here for some time. It’s also apparent that someone had been using this old truck for their target practice. The truck is riddled with bullet holes, and there are still some rifle casings scattered around the ground.
As cool as this old truck is, it’s not what I wanted to find. After spending some time photographing this truck, we started heading in the direction of where I thought Ojo Oro might be. The terrain started to get a bit more challenging as we had to navigate around huge boulder fields, but it was still pretty easy to find washes that cut right through these, making travel easy.
I did that the opportunity to climb up some of these and get a lay of the land, however. Not only was it fun to climb around on these boulders, but I had also hoped that I might be able to spot Ojo Oro in the distance. This turned out to not be the case, but the more I saw the landscape in front of me, the more I was confident that I was on the right track.
The scenery out here was absolutely breathtaking!
We continued navigating these boulder fields, inching ever closer to my GPS point. Along the way, we found more little windows and tiny arches than you could shake a stick at.
We finally reached the GPS point I had marked. Of course, the arch wasn’t there. Not surprising considering this point was only meant to be a rough location to really get the search going. We found a shady spot to take a break and have a snack. I, however, could not contain myself. While Krystal had a quick snack, I decided to climb up one more boulder to scan the area.
The spot I chose wasn’t even all that high up, but it still provided a decent view of the landscape in front of me. I continued to scan the horizon, but all I could see was a seemingly endless field of boulders. I was starting to feel discouraged; like this was going to be like trying to find a needle in a stack of needles.
I was about to head back to Krystal when, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted something. At first, I wasn’t really sure what had grabbed my attention, but looking closer, I swore I could see a glimmer of light seemingly piercing through a boulder. As my eyes continued to focus on the spot, I realized that I was looking at the unmistakable shape of Ojo Oro Arch. I had found it!
I’m sure I was a tad impatient waiting for Krystal to finish her snack when I returned to tell her the news! A few moments later, though, we were standing at the base of Ojo Oro Arch!
My only complaint is that, by this point, it was midday and the lighting was horrendous for pictures. Even if the light had been good, I had stupidly left my widest angle lens in the car. Despite this, was happy just to have achieved my goal. It’s always fun managing to locate these sorts of things with such scant clues.
Besides, now that I know exactly where it’s located, it would be trivial for me to return to this arch in the future to shoot it properly. Let’s just say that the gears are already turning in that regard!
Mission Success
At this point, I had achieved my main goal of locating Ojo Oro Arch. My mission was successful, but I did want to search around a bit more.
In all honesty, the arch that I really wanted to find was called Anteater Arch. I know that it’s somewhere near Ojo Oro but I, unfortunately, did not come across it on this trip. There are much fewer images of Anteater, so I don’t have nearly as much to work with.
While searching around, I found a bunch of other small arches and windows. I even saw what I’m pretty certain is Vampire Arch way off in the distance, but that’ll have to wait until a future trip.
Frankly, this one valley has so much in it that I could spend a significant amount of time exploring it. In fact, I may just do that in the near future!
Until then, however, our adventure was coming to an end. Krystal and I worked our way back to a wash that would take us back out to the car. After a quick couple of miles through the open desert, we were back at my car.
Though the adventure is over, I find myself still thinking about it. Clearly, my obsession isn’t over just yet.
