The Dialectic of Dialogue

I have been working on geometry projects lately, and haven't been hiking much at all, except here on Moody Ridge, where spring has sprung early, and the rare Phantom Orchids are already in bloom, three weeks ahead of normal, and hungry rattlesnakes roam.

I occasionally receive emails from people seeking information about the North Fork. I am always glad to oblige. At times these exchanges develop a life of their own. A man named Fraser wrote some months ago; he wanted to visit the North Fork, "near Snow Mountain," at the end of April. He asked which trail would be best, and explained he would have his 12-year-old son with him.

I replied that all the trails near Snow Mountain would be blocked with snow, likely until June, but that he could drive up past Foresthill and use the Mumford Bar Trail, possibly hiking over a little snow at first, and once down on the river, follow the North Fork trail up to Sailor Canyon, and even beyond, with all due vigor, prudence, and so on.

Fraser responded to this, quite quickly: he had looked at a map, and thought the Big Granite Trail would work well for him. I was a little taken aback. Hadn't I just told him that it, and all the others up there, would be blocked with snow? I replied at some length, warning him that even if he managed to hike over the snow, or ski, or snowshoe, to get to the trail, it crossed Big Granite Creek along the way, and he would be taking his life in his hands to ford that creek, at the end of April.

Being surprised by his apparent willingness to cross miles of snow to reach one of the toughest trails in the big canyon, I Googled him.

I found he is quite an adventurer, with a lot of wilderness and whitewater experience. So. He was certainly capable. But his son? His son worried me. I suggested that what he envisioned might be a little much, for the son.

He did not deign to respond to my worries. A new idea had possessed him: he would hike over the miles of snow to the Beacroft Trail, or to the Sailor Flat Trail, drop into the canyon, swim across the North Fork, visit Big Granite Creek, and then hike up and out to the north, over more miles of snow, to Big Bend, on the South Yuba.

I was pretty thoroughly shocked. I wrote back, hesitantly, that for my part I would never ever, ever, swim that river at the end of April, and that what he envisioned was a truly major hike, and that I did not think it at all suitable for a twelve-year-old, but that, if he was determined to do it, good camping spots could be found at Bluff Camp, and then, across the river, at the base of Big Granite Creek. Three days would be about the minimum, I suggested.

To my complete astonishment, Fraser replied that he and his son would do it in one day!

By then, I was about six emails, and two thousand words, and one custom map, deep into our dialogue. Whatever wisdom I had to offer seemed to count for nothing. I finally knew when to stop "helping" Fraser.

A few weeks ago I heard from Fraser again. What with the warm dry spring, he had been able to drive almost up to the Beacroft, cross a few patches of snow, and follow the trail down into the canyon. He and his son camped at Bluff Camp, and made a day hike to look at Big Granite Creek the next day. They did not swim the river. The following day they hiked up and out on the Beacroft.

So the bottom line was that, while appearing to ignore my advice, Fraser actually took my advice. I wrote back, congratulating him on a good trip, and asked if he had seen the big waterfall across the North Fork from Bluff Camp.

No reply. Goodness, people are busy, nowadays.

Odds; Ends; A New Old Trail

I am giving up on my ISP, recently purchased by some sleazy outfit in Virginia, and soon my only email address will be russelltowle@gmail.com.

Over recent weeks I have been clearing a beautiful little patch of forest up on Moody Ridge, and burning tons of dead wood in the snow. I walk half a mile or so to the job site, and while walking, I have seen many a mountain lion track, likely all from one and the same lion. I have had a chance to see what tracks look like in soft snow, in hard snow, what they look like after one day, or after four days, and so on.

Yesterday afternoon I was walking home and thought to take a shortcut to avoid some deep snow. I got myself into a real tangle of young conifers and brush and broke through into a small opening. Lion tracks dotted the snow, extremely fresh, retaining every detail. Hours old at best. I quickly scanned the trees above me: no lion. Then I looked down at the snow again and was puzzled to see that the lion had walked in circles. All the tracks looked very fresh. I looked again, up, and all around; nothing, but the forest is so overgrown I couldn't see far in any case. So I blundered along my supposed shortcut. In another few yards a disgusting smell wafted my way, and at first I thought of the gamy smell a bear can have, which I have only smelled a few times in my life. I walked another few paces, the smell ever stronger, and suddenly realized it was the smell of Death. The lion had left its kill somewhere very near, possibly up in a tree. I hastened away.

Recently I was contacted by a nice young man who had tried and failed to find the Green Valley Trail. He had no idea that a public parking area exists, and, while walking in along "Aquila Lane" (the Green Valley Trail road), saw enough in the way of "No Trespassing" and "No Parking" signs to deter him. I reassured him that it was indeed a public trail, and told him about the parking area. Strangely, the parking area, recently constructed by Placer County for the public's use, itself has a "No Trespassing" sign, facing its entrance from Moody Ridge Road.

Last fall I explored the area around Hayden Hill, a high knoll jutting into Green Valley from the south canyon wall (see http://northforktrails.blogspot.com/2007/10/hayden-hill.html). The USGS 7.5 minute "Dutch Flat" quadrangle topographic map shows a trail leading down to Hayden Hill from Elliot Ranch Road, on the canyon rim; but as with so many Tahoe National Forest trails, this trail has been abandoned by the Forest Service, in favor of clearcutting, it seems. The trail is almost impossible to follow in its uppermost section, and impossible to follow, having been utterly erased, within the clearcut. However, one can leave the line of where the trail used to be, and strike out cross-country.

By the way, it is an entirely unacceptable violation of the public's trust for Tahoe National Forest to abandon any historic foot trails; but the Forest has made a regular business out of abandoning historic trails and historic roads. Not only that, these momentous derelictions of duty have been executed without public input or comment of any kind. It has all been done slyly, secretly, and under the table.

My own grandfather, who joined the Forest Service at a time when Teddy Roosevelt had inspired many a young man to join, in order to protect the public trust, in order to protect the public trails, in order to protect the wildlife--my own grandfather would be so shocked and ashamed.

Back to Hayden Hill.There is some really beautiful forest down there, with springs, and some old mine tunnels, and old mining ditches and cabin sites, and to my surprise, at the very summit of Hayden Hill itself, I found traces of an old trail plunging down the ridge-crest into Green Valley. Far below, far far below, is the historic Hayden Hill Mine, a hydraulic mine which worked the very highest and oldest of the glacial outwash sediments in Green Valley. At this mine, according to local legend, a few, or perhaps "twenty" Chinese miners were buried in a horrific landslide, way back when. I have never found any verification of this legend in the old newspapers of Placer County; but I may have missed it.

Today Ron Gould called my attention to a 1930 Tahoe National Forest map which actually shows this "Hayden Hill Trail." It will be interesting to explore it, someday, although it showed every sign of being badly overgrown.

Thrusting Shoo Fly

On YouTube, at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3KryrAGkBo

is an animation of a flight up the American River Canyon, using the USGS Digital Elevation Model 30-meter data set, and merging a couple dozen DEM quadrangles to build a landscape spanning Colfax on the west, the Sierra Crest on the east, the San Juan Ridge and Grouse Ridge to the north, and the Middle Fork of the American on the south. The virtual camera follows an almost due east heading from west of Rollins Lake, crossing over Lovers Leap and Green Valley, and flying on up the canyon into the Royal Gorge. The animation finishes with the virtual camera making an orbit of 360 degrees around Snow Mountain.

Thrusting Shoo Fly: on my iMac I can set the screensaver to loop through any folder of images in my iPhoto library. It so happens that right now it loops through a folder of some of my favorite photographs in the North Fork. Here is Giant Gap, from the west, and now from the east; or the 500-foot waterfall in New York Canyon, or Big Valley Bluff at dawn, as seen from the North Fork, a couple miles up the canyon.

And so on. It's not hard to take beautiful photographs in such a beautiful place.

It happens that one of these special photographs shows what I call Bluff Camp, an old mining camp immediately adjacent to the river, set on a cliff-bounded strath terrace bearing a fine grove of Canyon Live Oaks. From the North Fork American River Trail, connecting Sailor Canyon to Mumford Bar, a side trail leads one down a hundred yards, or so, to Bluff Camp. I have camped there many a time. It is half a mile or so east of Tadpole Canyon, and directly below Big Valley Bluff, rising in ragged cliffs all of 3500', across the river to the north.

And the photograph was taken from a point upstream from Bluff Camp; so one sees a part of the encircling cliffs, and a flat area--the strath terrace--perhaps thirty feet above river level. (A "strath terrace" is a glacio-fluvial landform associated with glacial outwash sediments which once occupied the terrace itself; and it was these very sediments which planed down the bedrock, to make the terrace).

It caught my eye, the other day, the Bluff Camp photo, as it filled the screen; I could see an abrupt change in the bedrock, right at the upstream end of the strath terrace. Slowly, dimly, I realized I was seeing a thrust fault. Two disparate bodies of rock had been juxtaposed by faulting.

The bedrock for miles up and down the canyon is composed of metasediments of the early-Paleozoic "Shoo Fly Complex," the oldest rocks in all the Sierra. I have a wonderfully precise geologic map of this part of the North Fork canyon, made by David S. Harwood et. al. of the USGS, in the early 1990s. Harwood shows many thrust faults in the Shoo Fly Complex near Big Valley Bluff, Sugar Pine Point, and New York Canyon. The faults sometimes bring big blocks of chert, hundreds of yards in extent, or more, into contact with slates and other types of rock in the Shoo Fly Complex.

By the way, it is called a "Complex" because it is composed of many distinct formations, spanning many millions of years in time, but all very old. Harwood describes and names four such formations in this particular area. His map does not show the Bluff Camp Thrust, which is probably a sensible choice, for it is likely not very long or large as thrust faults go, and if he were to put every such minor thrust fault on his map, well, there would be room for precious little else.

It has long been considered that the great mashing-together, the epochal juxtaposition of the disparate Sierran metamorphic rocks alongside one another, took place around 145 million years ago, in what was named the "Nevadan Orogeny" (an "orogeny" is a mountain-building). It was this Nevadan Orogeny which acted to rotate all these disparate bodies of metamorphic rock almost 90 degrees to the east, so that what were once flat-lying beds are now almost vertical, or even slightly overturned. And it is considered that the "penetrative fabric" of these disparate metamorphic rocks is mainly due to the Nevadan Orogeny. The compressive and shearing forces which imparted the fabric were fairly well parallel with the current, almost-vertical orientation of the beds. Very likely it all had to do with continental accretion, at a time when Pacific ocean floor was being actively subducted beneath the continental margin, moving from west to east, but also plunging steeply down.

However, in many of these different metamorphic rock formations, whether they be down by Auburn or up at Big Valley Bluff, an experienced eye can detect at least two different episodes of deformation, each leaving its footprint, or imposing its fabric, upon the rocks. There is the later Nevadan Orogeny; and at Bluff Camp, there is a thrust fault vastly older than the Nevadan Orogeny. That is to say, the Shoo Fly was already well-deformed, well-sliced and diced by thrust faults, long before the Nevadan Orogeny.

And Harwood discusses all this in the twelve-page essay which accompanies his map. There are a couple of typographical errors in this essay which play the very devil in understanding the thing.

It is not at all easy to learn to recognize these different rock types. That this is chert, and that is quartzite, may not be discernible except under a microscope. To develop a simple portrait of the bedrock geology, one can read what was written about it a century and more ago. At that time the focus was upon the broad outlines, not the higgley-piggley details. And for a time, the following usage had currency, for instance, in the articles by C.J. Brown of Dutch Flat, published in the Mining & Scientific Press, in 1875.

Brown divides the metamorphic rocks as follows: the Western Slate, the Middle Slate, and the Eastern Slate. Between the Middle Slate and the Eastern Slate, he identifies the long narrow serpentine belt we now name for its associated Melones Fault Zone.

Hence his Eastern Slate corresponds to the Shoo Fly Complex, and those other Paleozoic and Mesozoic rocks which lie on top of the Shoo Fly, and therefore, to the east (the whole shebang, be it remembered, rotating 90 degrees to the east during the Nevadan Orogeny).

Brown's Middle Slate corresponds to the Calaveras Complex, another complex of formations, but late-Paleozoic in age, and he correctly identifies the rock of Giant Gap as metavolcanic--in fact, Brown declares it to be metabasalt; and his Western Slate corresponds to all those metamorphic rocks west of Cape Horn, in which there are several distinct formations, often dominated by metavolcanic rock, but containing some metasediments, too.

So, if we wish to blur our focus and appreciate the broader outlines of local bedrock geology, we might give C.J. Brown's Western/Middle/Serpentine/Eastern model a try.

The Secret Trails of Green Valley

I was surprised to hear from someone, in response to my "Visit to Green Valley," that she wishes the trails of Green Valley kept a secret. She objects to my mention of hiking on old mining ditches or on this or that old trail; there are, it seems, Nefarious People on this North Fork Trails email list, who, though my malfeasance, now know about the mining ditches and old trails in Green Valley.

Never mind that I have often written about precisely these ditches and trails before.

The Nefarious People, she writes, will tie plastic flagging all along the ditches, all along the trails, spray-painting a boulder now and then for good measure, with artful messages like "Green Valley Blue Gravel Mine Ditch, .25."

Perhaps one spray-painted boulder would warn of rattlesnakes. Another might read, "Euchre Bar, 1 mile, If You Like Jumping on Cliffs and Fording Raging Rivers."

Well, I'm sorry, but it is my philosophy that the old trails of the North Fork need to be known, not unknown. The North Fork of the American River--its wildness, its beautiful scenery, its historic trails and mining ditches and prehistoric sites--deserves every kind of protection and preservation. But this protection and preservation is hardly possible if no one knows the great canyon, and its great old trails.

This email list is all about making this wildness, this beauty, these old trails and ditches, known. In Green Valley, a number of private parcels exist, old patented mining claims, any one of which could on any given day sprout "No Trespassing" signs, or even a cabin. The purchase of these private parcels, and the transfer of the titles to Tahoe National Forest, or to the Bureau of Land Management, depending upon the location of the parcel-- the purchase of these parcels is critical to the future of Green Valley.

So, don't forget, the High Ditch is quite near the 2080' contour, in Green Valley, north of the river. Hike it, and let me know if you like it; it makes for a nearly level walk of a mile or so, from one end of Green Valley to the other. It crosses the East Trail about three hundred yards above Joe Steiner's grave, with another ditch, at that point, closely paralleling it, just above. The Still-Higher Ditch, as it were. But the High Ditch itself is the ticket.

Below, a map of Green Valley, showing some of its trails and ditches--which are also trails.

A Visit to Green Valley

Yesterday I joined Ron Gould and Catherine O'Riley for a visit to Green Valley. The snow at the head of the trail had diminished to small patches, the sun was bright, and a stiff north wind aloft brought chill, turbulent breezes on and near the north rim of the canyon, where small vortices easily form, for the sunwarmed slopes below give rise to updrafts, and the updrafts collide with the north wind aloft, which skims directly across the summit of Moody Ridge ... and winds result which blow any which way. There was a singing of the wind in the groves of tall pines.

On the Green Valley Trail, we found very little in the way of storm damage from the recent cycle of storms. A branch here, a boulder there. The trail was in decent shape, sometimes tunneling through stands of manzanita, sometimes crossing open ridge crests with broad views. One watches, for instance, as Snow Mountain drops out of view behind Sawtooth Ridge. In fact, one can also see away up the Foresthill Divide to Tadpole Canyon and the (snow-covered) brushfields at the head of the Iowa Hill Canal, and a hair beyond, to the somewhat unremarkable spur ridge dividing the North Fork from New York Canyon. Yes, some fairly high country is in view at first. Then one drops too low, and the world shrinks to Green Valley itself, guarded on the west by the cliffs of Giant Gap.

We were on a mission to visit several old mining ditches. There are many old ditches in Green Valley, which is about a mile long, east to west, and a half-mile broad. The place lies directly in the Melones Fault Zone, which is marked by a narrow belt of peridotite and serpentine extending around a hundred miles from north to south. The bedrock in Green Valley is mostly serpentine. Faults place the serpentine in direct contact with completely different rocks to the west, in Giant Gap (late-Paleozoic "Calaveras Complex" metavolcanics), and to the east (a very narrow Mesozoic belt of mixed metasediments and metavolcanics, including marble, followed immediately by the miles-broad exposures of the "Shoo Fly Complex," early-Paleozoic metasediments).

So merely upon the basis of the bedrock we find some interesting geology in Green Valley. The faults bounding the Melones Fault Zone strike north and south and dip almost ninety degrees, that is, the fault zones are nearly vertical planes.

Of course they're not *really* planes. The fault zones curve back and forth, they shrink back and swell forward--but they are roughly planar.

And then, covering a lot of this interesting bedrock geology, are the Pleistocene sediments of Green Valley, rich in gold, rife in tunnels, with many many a mining ditch, to serve the many claims. They are glacial outwash sediments from several to many different periods of glaciation; but they are varied, and include a fascinating cemented conglomerate which cannot be a hundred thousand years old, one feels, but on the other hand, it is so incredibly cohesive--this mass of rounded pebbles and boulders and sand which, somehow, became so glued together it can stand firmly against the crushing floods of the river, so firmly it is worn into broad smooth surfaces like bedrock, not ripped apart pebble-by-pebble.

What is the cementing agent? This is not known. The "cemented outwash" is always, always, always found in direct contact with serpentine bedrock. So it is natural to deduce that some mineral leaching from the serpentine is the cementing agent.

Then there are much larger volumes of entirely uncemented, unconsolidated gravels, out-and-out river gravels, all Pleistocene in age, and including "exotic" boulders of many types of rock which not only washed directly down the canyon for many a mile (and what must have been the flood stages of the river which moved *those* big boulders!), but also including boulders of granite which very possibly originated in the upper basin of the South Yuba River, and were delivered into the North Fork by a glacier; since the North Fork robbed vast volumes of ice from the South Yuba basin during every major glaciation. The Yuba ice flowed right across the dividing ridge, from north to south, from the crest down to Blue Canyon.

Hmm. I should say that the rounded granite boulder is the quintessential glacial "erratic" left by stolen South Yuba ice. Although there is some granite in the upper North Fork, the basin is dominated by metamorphic rocks; whereas, the upper South Yuba is dominated by granite. So one can be somewhere in the North Fork, in Shoo Fly Complex bedrock, say, and walk through a forest growing on a body of glacial till of mostly South Yuba origins: and one sign of that provenance is that the boulders in the till are, mostly, granite.

There were many major glaciations. In fact, if a glaciation comes along, more major than many before, as may well be, it will tend to erase the moraines of all weaker predecessors. So many parts of the geologic record are missing. But who knows what might be deduced from the entire spectrum of Pleistocene gravels in Green Valley? A careful radiogenic dating, and a careful petrological analysis, of these sediments might reveal traces of a dozen different glaciations. The glacial sediments can be found as much as 600 feet, perhaps 700 feet, above the present river. This betokens age. Paleontology might even enter the picture, in the study of these interesting gravels.

Our first ditch took its water from Pyramid Ravine, at the west end of Green Valley, heading on Moody Ridge, and flowing from north to south. It led the water into the Vale of the Pyramid, or whatever you call that lovely little swale along the High West Trail, as you descend towards Cedar Meadow, at the foot of the Vale. Directly above Cedar Meadow to the west stands the summit of The Pyramid, a serpentine knoll of elevation 2277', thus 477' above the river, which flows another quarter-mile or so south. We took a brief look at the brush-infested ditch, of fairly large proportions, for such a small stream, and then dropped back into the Vale and traversed along south until we could climb to the crest of the Pyramid Spur, a ridge dropping from the summit of Moody Ridge, over two thousand feet, to the river. We followed the ridge crest south to The Pyramid, where a gnarled Canyon Live Oak has an old horseshoe draped around one branch, and now deeply embedded in the wood.

We dropped down the ridge to the south, thrashing through some brush before entering the more open coniferous forest, below, exactly where the Pleistocene gravels pick up, and the serpentine ends. Here we found another old ditch of modest proportions, and followed it east to Pyramid Camp, where a depressing amount of garbage still hasn't been carried up and out. A few steps further brought us back to the West Trail. We followed this north, away from the river, reaching Cedar Meadow, with its piped spring, which needs work, and turning east onto the Low West Trail. This led us onto the High Ditch Trail, quite a remarkably nice trail, which follows along near the 2080' contour from near Cedar Meadow on the west, all the way to the Iron Point Trail, on the east, the sinuous and even angular curve of its length measuring over a mile.

From the eastern terminus of the High Ditch we dropped back towards the North Fork, south, on the Iron Point Trail, which itself branches from the Euchre Bar Trail, until we reached the Green Valley Blue Gravel Mine (GVBGM) ditch. We followed this large mining ditch to the south and east until we broke out upon the cliffs at the east end of Green Valley, near cliffs of pure marble rising steeply from the river. Here we had our lunch, sitting in warm sun, while enjoying a fine view down the river.

Next we followed the GVBGM canal the other way, back to the Iron Point Trail, and then continuing to the terminus, where the ditch widens into a small reservoir. Here one can continue west, crossing Moonshine Ravine and finding yet another ditch, leading west, which brings one immediately to the High East Trail. There are actual several ways to get back and forth from east to west in Green Valley. The mining ditches make wonderful trails. Both the High Ditch and the GVBGM, slightly below the High Ditch--oh, a hundred yards at least are between them--both pass through the mysterious patch of Valley Springs rhyolite ash boulders, lying mainly on the east of Moonshine Ravine. There must be several acres of ground covered with this deposit. Some of the boulders are eight feet through, maybe more. They have been weathering and eroding for a long time, and show deeply pitted and hollowed surfaces, sometimes ribbed, along multiple layers of rhyolite ash, which differ in hardness or integrity, slightly, somehow. So. This is a sedimentary deposit, I am willing to hazard, which is not derived from the North Fork, and is not really glacial outwash, or, at least, not the usual sort of glacial outwash.

The "area of rhyolite boulders" masks the serpentine indefinitely far beneath, but certainly less than one hundred feet down, I would say. The rhyolite "sweetens" the soil, as it were, and there is an unusual meadowy aspect there.

So, we followed various mining ditches, and obscure trails, back and forth and up and down in Green Valley. As the shadows lengthened we started back up on the East Trail. We had gained the shelter of the canyon, coming down the trail: for the sharp breezes had been stilled, and the January sun was comfortably warm. But, as we climbed back up the trail we left the shelter of the canyon depths. At first, I noticed a singing from the pines atop Moody Ridge, a thousand feet above me. Th North Fork could also be heard roaring along quietly a thousand below, to the south. "Odd, to hear that steady river of wind in the trees, from such a distance," thought I. But the mystery was soon solved, for I climbed right up into the wind. It steadily strengthened as I steadily climbed.

However it was nice to be wind-cooled while climbing the old trail. And it was a very nice day in Green Valley.

Land Acquisition, Green Valley

I hear tell that an important land acquisition has taken place, in Green Valley, just upstream from Giant Gap. The Siller Brothers Timber Company has owned these lands since at least as early as 1976. The land lies about in the center of Green Valley and carries a fine stand of pine timber, which the Sillers wished to helicopter log, back in 1976.

The Sierra Sun reports:

Two conservation groups have purchased 94 acres of land along the upper reaches of the American River’s north fork.
The Placer Land Trust and the American River Conservancy acquired two parcels totaling 94 acres of land within the North Fork’s wild and scenic river corridor for $100,000 from the Siller Brothers Timber Company.
The land is located southeast of the Gold Run area on Interstate 80. All the funding was provided by matching grants from private sources, including the United Auburn Indian Community in Rocklin.
Placer Land Trust Executive Director Jeff Darlington accepted $50,000 from the United Auburn Indian Community for the Giant Gap project.
“The North Fork American River Canyon, and particularly the area around Giant Gap, has been a focus area of Placer Land Trust since our inception in 1991,” said Darlington
The North Fork American River was added to the national system of Wild and Scenic Rivers in 1979.
“This acquisition brings one of the most spectacular river canyons in the western United States one step closer to full Wild & Scenic protection,” said Alan Ehrgott, ARC Executive Director. “We are very thankful for the cooperation and assistance that Siller Brothers has provided to us and the public for their support in this purchase.”
Ownership to the recently acquired 94 acres will be held by ARC until title can be transferred to the Tahoe National Forest for management as Wild & Scenic River lands.

This is great news. There remain a number of other private parcels in Green Valley which should also be acquired. Also, the Sillers own, or owned until very recently, the critically important 590 acres in and around Lost Camp, which contain the head of the China Trail. I hope that the Placer Land Trust and the American River Conservancy will become involved there, as well.

Lost Camp, etc.

Ron Gould has put up a web page about the road/trail closure at Lost Camp, see

http://www.northforktrails.com/lostcamproad/

There is all kinds of interesting stuff there. Thanks, Ron!

Also re Lost Camp, Ed Stadum, the lead attorney, pro bono, on our successful legal battle to re-open the historic road down to Smart's Crossing (on the Bear River above Dutch Flat), back in 1984, took interest in our Lost Camp problem, and drove out there with Jim Johnson, an Alta resident, to see for himself. Ed lives in Germany now and is not in a position to assume legal command with Lost Camp, but he has offered important advice. Ron Gould and Jim Johnson will meet soon with the man who (illegally) gated the Lost Camp road, and try to reason with him.

The closure of the Lost Camp road, and thus, public access to the China Trail, is an absurdity and a crime. It is lamentable that Tahoe National Forest has not intervened directly, but the Forest has changed a lot, in its philosophy, since the days when rangers actually patrolled and maintained the good old trails. In those days, which ended, let us say, around 1960, the forest rangers would not tolerate the closure of any Forest trail. I know, for instance, the family which once owned the land at the head of the Green Valley Trail, from 1931 to 1975, and in the 1950s, they put a gate on the road to the trailhead. Tahoe National Forest rangers visited them and told them they had to immediately remove the gate. They complied.

Nor has Placer County intervened. Were either entity, TNF or the County, to simply do their jobs, i.e., protect the public interest, that gate would have come down many moons ago.

At any rate, for more information check out Ron's Lost Camp web page.