Tuesday morning Jerry Rein and Catherine O'Riley and I walked down the Canyon Creek Trail (CCT), on our way to the High Old Upriver Trail or HOUT, where a tremendous bloom is in progress.
We noted very very many OHV tracks in the Gold Run Diggings, not only on the main road, but also wandering across hill and dale.
The increase in OHV use at Gold Run has itself been increasing. Five years ago there was essentially zero OHV use. On the BLM lands in the southern reaches of the Diggings, the main problem at that time was mining claims.
Having filed a claim, a claimant obtained a key to the BLM gate at the end of Garrett Road. Then it became time to use backhoe and bulldozer to make test pits and roads, suddenly disturbing the historic character of mines which had remained almost untouched since the 1880s.
That is, the people like you and me who might have used the gated road to drive to, say, the head of the Pickering Bar Trail, and who would not have damaged one iota of history, were barred from using this ancient road (depicted on the 1866 GLO map of the area).
But the people who explicitly intended to tear up the Diggings every which way had keys to the gate.
One such used his key, his backhoe, and his dump truck, to steal the last significant accumulation of Eocene-age petrified wood in that southern area. This was done about six years ago as I recall, and two or three years after I walked the Diggings with BLM personnel, pointing out the petrified wood, and asking that it be protected.
For the pretty petrified wood had already been looted from the old hydraulic mines everywhere in this part of the Sierra, and only a little remained. Elsewhere in the United States such petrified wood might have inspired creation of a State Park.
I believe that some part of the OHV use now occurring involves continued theft of petrified wood. I heard from a friend, earlier this year, that a group of people, apparently on foot, were gathering petrified wood in the southern Diggings.
The gate at the end of Garrett is probably a good thing. But mining claims and OHVs are bad things. Not everywhere bad; but there, at Gold Run, yes: bad.
Well.
At a certain point, well down the CCT, a fallen Canyon Live Oak has blocked the trail for many years. I seem to recall that it was there, lying across a switchback, in 1977. Recently this fairly large trunk broke a few feet above the root mass, and yesterday we had the pleasure and excitement of clearing it from the trail. It took some huffing and puffing, and when our perfectly coordinated efforts managed to roll the root mass over, it never stopped, but crashed directly down the slope and disappeared from view, breaking up into smaller chunks along the way.
Good thing no one was below us!
We cleared the remaining debris from the trail and felt quite gratified at a job well done.
Very pretty clouds graced the sky and sometimes shaded us as we marched upcanyon and marveled at the flowers. Since my previous visit last Friday, many many more Bush Monkeyflowers have started to bloom. I expect these very remarkable bushes will hit full bloom within a couple-few weeks, at least down around the 2000' contour and below. At Lovers Leap, 4000', this same species usually waits until the end of May to max out.
And when maxed out, one single bush can bear a couple hundred blooms, large, almost orchid-like, or more closely resembling snapdragons, in a salmon pink hue.
There are tens of thousands of these small bushes in Giant Gap and Canyon Creek.
We wandered a mile or so up the canyon, and watched the pretty clouds scoot by, heading south. Then certain clouds to the west began to look somewhat fuzzy and flared and we knew that rain showers must be falling from them. As the afternoon wore on, a compact mass of dark clouds formed to the west, and the showers became more visible.
On our way out the HOUT, raindrops kissed us every few minutes, but never enough to even begin to dampen clothes or hair. Yet on the CCT, plants were all wet from rain, and we saw that the showers hadn't missed us by much.
It was so very pleasant to hike the HOUT on a perfect spring day.
We were treated to a bird's-eye view of a bird, while on the HOUT near the Blue Lupine Bear Bed. Bears seem to like good scenic overlooks, and the Blue Lupine Bear Bed is a perfect example. A Great Blue Heron flew along the roaring river below, and with Jerry's binoculars we got a pretty good look at the thing, so tall and slender, patiently waiting on the rocks at river's edge for a chance to snag a fish with its long sharp beak.
Such was a fine day in the one and only American River Canyon.
Showing posts with label Giant Gap. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Giant Gap. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Thursday, June 10, 2004
Visit to Canyon Creek; the HOUT
Yesterday I met Catherine O'Riley for a hike on our beloved Canyon Creek Trail. After the thunderstorms and rain of the day before, Wednesday dawned cool under a general overcast, but by ten in the morning the clouds had parted into fair-weather cumulus, of which there were many, but all in all giving much more sun than shadow. It was in fact *the* perfect spring day.
We were delayed for a time while I learned the bad news about the family Subaru from Randy of Dutch Flat Motors. A rather modest dent would require some thousands to repair; and worse, Randy was not equipped to do the work. Randy is a jovial man, on the large side, now favoring hoggish Harley Davidsons, but once upon a time a racing bicyclist, who competed in the 1972 Olympics, at Munich.
We used our usual secret road into the Diggings and drove a mile or so to the trailhead in Potato Ravine. The Gold Run Diggings is a vast complex of hydraulic mines, once an irregular tiling of dozens of discrete claims, but over time some 800 acres fell into the ownership of one James Stewart, a friend of Jack London and Franklin Delano Roosevelt; except that a number of worked-out claims in the southern part of the Diggings had lapsed back into public lands, now managed by the BLM. For years many of us have urged the BLM to try to purchase ever so much of the 800 acres as possible; for a number of important trails, historical sites, and paleobotanical resources span the irregular boundary between private and public lands, there to the south.
In recognition of this most-remarkable part of the Diggings, when Congress designated the North Fork American a Wild & Scenic River, in 1978, they created a special "Gold Run Addition" to the W&SR corridor, which extends fully a mile north of the river, well into the Diggings. The BLM was directed to acquire the private inholdings within this special area; but the owners were not willing sellers, and nothing could be done.
The 800 acres has been for sale for the last few years. Time for the BLM and act, swiftly, decisively! But no. There is no money. Land trades have become difficult to execute. And now we learn that a credible offer has been received on the 800 acres, by someone desiring a "private reserve," and the owners have made a counter-offer. I have been afraid to call the one owner with whom I am acquainted, for fear that disaster has already struck, and the sale is in escrow.
We set off down the trail, winding out of Potato Ravine on the Indiana Hill Ditch (which, in testimony recorded during the 1881 trial, State of California vs. the Gold Run Ditch & Mining Company, we learn was completed on September 13, 1852), and then dropping away south and east to closely parallel Canyon Creek. For a time we were on BLM lands, then crossing onto a part of the 800 acres, which runs right down to the North Fork itself. We made rapid progress down the trail, across the little bridge, stopping briefly at the first large waterfall, and enjoying the late-season wildflowers.
Notable among these were the Two-Lobed Clarkia, Harvest Brodiaea, a species of Lotus, a species of Madia, and the very last of the Bush Monkeyflower. The bloom this warm and dry spring has been pushed forward nearly a month, so many species which would still make a fine display, have already shed their flowers and set seed.
We passed the Rock Slide and were on the steep slopes above the Big Waterfall when a family of Canyon Wrens caught our eye. They were foraging for insects among a jumble of rocks, not singing at all, but busily poking into every tiny cave and crevice. These birds are a rusty brown with a creamy breast, pert wren trails, and a curved beak. Their wild lilting descending sequence of notes is a classic ornament on cliffs and in canyons, in the Sierra and elsewhere.
Then to our amazement one of the mysterious white racing pigeons which had taken up residence near the Big Waterfall, winter-before-last, soared into view, disappearing towards the waterfall, then circling back and sweeping away south into the main North Fork.
We decided to break away east on the HOUT (High Old Upriver Trail), a strangely level thread of a path which can be followed miles up the canyon into the heart of Giant Gap. It is a relict of the Giant Gap Survey, a scheme of a hundred years past to divert waters of the North Fork for San Francisco's water supply. The schemers put men at work to rough in the line of the proposed canal, and they dutifully blasted out narrow ledges from the cliffs, and drove a couple of tunnels through the flaring rock spurs below Lovers Leap.
The clouds had gradually increased in size and their shadows drifted across the cliffs all around us. The views east, of Lovers Leap and the Pinnacles, which opened occasionally to our admiring eyes, were made even more dramatic and lovely by the fluffy clouds. These clouds seemed to swell higher before our eyes, and for most of the day, we felt a kind of restless excitement, at the prospect that a fully-blown thunderstorm might develop. To which we only said, bring it on!
At a certain point, nearly a mile east from the CCT, a fork is reached, where one can either hew to the line of the Survey (the HOUT), or drop away east and down to the North Fork, just shy of massive Big West Spur, which might be more esthetically named Castle Spur, in honor of a fine large conical mass of bare rock adorning its summit, a thousand feet above the river. The river makes a funny kind of square turn around the base of this spur ridge before turning again to bear nearly west to Canyon Creek. A large expanse of large boulders occupies the outside of this last big bend in the river; all the boulders look to derive from the steep slopes in the immediate area, being various types of metavolcanic rock of the late-Paleozoic Calaveras Complex.
We took a long lunch break here amid the boulders, which at the base of the little trail contain some level pockets of sand. The river was sparkling clear, moderately cold, and moving along quite nicely. Across from us and a ways upstream, a gigantic boulder reared up ten or fifteen feet above the water, and a little clump of moss caught my eye. I pointed it out to Catherine, remarking it looked much like what I had thought to be an extraordinary Water Ouzel nest, on a mid-river boulder, up in the Royal Gorge. These ouzels a like large grey wrens and dive right into the river, foraging for insects etc. underwater. They zoom up and down the river itself, a foot or so above the water, and have a rippling, chattering, random song which hardly sounds like a song at all. John Muir's favorite bird. And they nest, almost always, in the spray of waterfalls, making a hollow ball of moss and such, which a downward-sloping entrance, often impossible to see unless the birds are actually going in our out.
That's a water ouzel's nest. But I had seen that one rarely strange nest in the Royal Gorge, like some kind of miniature wigwam, perched atop a boulder. Here, perhaps, another, and I might have to stop thinking of such an ouzel nest as so rare or unusual. We went to investigate, hopping from boulder to boulder to boulder to a last boulder almost at mid-stream, only forty or fifty feet from the Big Boulder. The truth could not be denied. It was an ouzel nest, the rock near the entrance streaked with white excrement. The entrance was plain to see, opening to the west, downstream. The nest was about six feet above the water, on a ledge.
Swallows were zooming around, but there were no ouzels visiting the nest. The young must have been already fledged, several weeks ago perhaps. After a time we started back.
I placed my right foot on a polished little boss of stone and with my usual casual expertise made a leap to the next boulder. Then, with all the grace of a ballet dancer, I slipped and turned, in slow motion as it seemed, and made what amounted to a swan dive right into the North Fork. I remember seeing a boulder underwater as my face slammed down, and darting my hands down to break my fall. Boulders to either side bruised my hips as I plunged fully and completely into the river, but I kept my face safe. It was complete submersion, a total soaking from head to toe.
Standing up, the bruises almost incapacitated me; it felt as though I had pulled the muscles; I could really barely stand, and made a slow and awkward business of climbing out of the water.
After a minute I could move again, and used much more caution than usual in hopping back to the main boulder-field and our sand hollow.
I had a long-sleeved shirt to change into and just wore my blue jeans dry. Actually, they're still drying, right outside on my porch.
After a time we decided to follow an old miners' trail up the river to the first square corner of the base of Big West Spur. As we hopped along, I tested my bruises and kept up a decent pace and felt reassured that I was, after all, OK. Then a holler was heard. I looked back; no Catherine. What; a rattlesnake? A strange flower, a rare frog? What could make her holler like that? I retreated a dozen yards and she came in view, dripping water.
It was a double baptism, then, into the North Fork; except, Catherine had not equalled my own total submersion, only managing a modest three-quarters. We can now justly claim admission into the ranks of those hardy souls who swim the North Fork in spring.
So we squished along in our wet shoes and reached our square corner, a ways up above the river on a cliff, admiring the narrow gorge there, and the deep pools, and remembering a few years past when we had scrambled and swum Giant Gap, with Chris Schiller, and had finally left the swimming behind, at just this point, just this sunny bar of rounded boulders, a hundred feet below us.
Eventually it was time to start back, and we took it pretty easy, as is best after all, reaching Catherine's truck around six p.m.
Such was another fine day on the North Fork.
We were delayed for a time while I learned the bad news about the family Subaru from Randy of Dutch Flat Motors. A rather modest dent would require some thousands to repair; and worse, Randy was not equipped to do the work. Randy is a jovial man, on the large side, now favoring hoggish Harley Davidsons, but once upon a time a racing bicyclist, who competed in the 1972 Olympics, at Munich.
We used our usual secret road into the Diggings and drove a mile or so to the trailhead in Potato Ravine. The Gold Run Diggings is a vast complex of hydraulic mines, once an irregular tiling of dozens of discrete claims, but over time some 800 acres fell into the ownership of one James Stewart, a friend of Jack London and Franklin Delano Roosevelt; except that a number of worked-out claims in the southern part of the Diggings had lapsed back into public lands, now managed by the BLM. For years many of us have urged the BLM to try to purchase ever so much of the 800 acres as possible; for a number of important trails, historical sites, and paleobotanical resources span the irregular boundary between private and public lands, there to the south.
In recognition of this most-remarkable part of the Diggings, when Congress designated the North Fork American a Wild & Scenic River, in 1978, they created a special "Gold Run Addition" to the W&SR corridor, which extends fully a mile north of the river, well into the Diggings. The BLM was directed to acquire the private inholdings within this special area; but the owners were not willing sellers, and nothing could be done.
The 800 acres has been for sale for the last few years. Time for the BLM and act, swiftly, decisively! But no. There is no money. Land trades have become difficult to execute. And now we learn that a credible offer has been received on the 800 acres, by someone desiring a "private reserve," and the owners have made a counter-offer. I have been afraid to call the one owner with whom I am acquainted, for fear that disaster has already struck, and the sale is in escrow.
We set off down the trail, winding out of Potato Ravine on the Indiana Hill Ditch (which, in testimony recorded during the 1881 trial, State of California vs. the Gold Run Ditch & Mining Company, we learn was completed on September 13, 1852), and then dropping away south and east to closely parallel Canyon Creek. For a time we were on BLM lands, then crossing onto a part of the 800 acres, which runs right down to the North Fork itself. We made rapid progress down the trail, across the little bridge, stopping briefly at the first large waterfall, and enjoying the late-season wildflowers.
Notable among these were the Two-Lobed Clarkia, Harvest Brodiaea, a species of Lotus, a species of Madia, and the very last of the Bush Monkeyflower. The bloom this warm and dry spring has been pushed forward nearly a month, so many species which would still make a fine display, have already shed their flowers and set seed.
We passed the Rock Slide and were on the steep slopes above the Big Waterfall when a family of Canyon Wrens caught our eye. They were foraging for insects among a jumble of rocks, not singing at all, but busily poking into every tiny cave and crevice. These birds are a rusty brown with a creamy breast, pert wren trails, and a curved beak. Their wild lilting descending sequence of notes is a classic ornament on cliffs and in canyons, in the Sierra and elsewhere.
Then to our amazement one of the mysterious white racing pigeons which had taken up residence near the Big Waterfall, winter-before-last, soared into view, disappearing towards the waterfall, then circling back and sweeping away south into the main North Fork.
We decided to break away east on the HOUT (High Old Upriver Trail), a strangely level thread of a path which can be followed miles up the canyon into the heart of Giant Gap. It is a relict of the Giant Gap Survey, a scheme of a hundred years past to divert waters of the North Fork for San Francisco's water supply. The schemers put men at work to rough in the line of the proposed canal, and they dutifully blasted out narrow ledges from the cliffs, and drove a couple of tunnels through the flaring rock spurs below Lovers Leap.
The clouds had gradually increased in size and their shadows drifted across the cliffs all around us. The views east, of Lovers Leap and the Pinnacles, which opened occasionally to our admiring eyes, were made even more dramatic and lovely by the fluffy clouds. These clouds seemed to swell higher before our eyes, and for most of the day, we felt a kind of restless excitement, at the prospect that a fully-blown thunderstorm might develop. To which we only said, bring it on!
At a certain point, nearly a mile east from the CCT, a fork is reached, where one can either hew to the line of the Survey (the HOUT), or drop away east and down to the North Fork, just shy of massive Big West Spur, which might be more esthetically named Castle Spur, in honor of a fine large conical mass of bare rock adorning its summit, a thousand feet above the river. The river makes a funny kind of square turn around the base of this spur ridge before turning again to bear nearly west to Canyon Creek. A large expanse of large boulders occupies the outside of this last big bend in the river; all the boulders look to derive from the steep slopes in the immediate area, being various types of metavolcanic rock of the late-Paleozoic Calaveras Complex.
We took a long lunch break here amid the boulders, which at the base of the little trail contain some level pockets of sand. The river was sparkling clear, moderately cold, and moving along quite nicely. Across from us and a ways upstream, a gigantic boulder reared up ten or fifteen feet above the water, and a little clump of moss caught my eye. I pointed it out to Catherine, remarking it looked much like what I had thought to be an extraordinary Water Ouzel nest, on a mid-river boulder, up in the Royal Gorge. These ouzels a like large grey wrens and dive right into the river, foraging for insects etc. underwater. They zoom up and down the river itself, a foot or so above the water, and have a rippling, chattering, random song which hardly sounds like a song at all. John Muir's favorite bird. And they nest, almost always, in the spray of waterfalls, making a hollow ball of moss and such, which a downward-sloping entrance, often impossible to see unless the birds are actually going in our out.
That's a water ouzel's nest. But I had seen that one rarely strange nest in the Royal Gorge, like some kind of miniature wigwam, perched atop a boulder. Here, perhaps, another, and I might have to stop thinking of such an ouzel nest as so rare or unusual. We went to investigate, hopping from boulder to boulder to boulder to a last boulder almost at mid-stream, only forty or fifty feet from the Big Boulder. The truth could not be denied. It was an ouzel nest, the rock near the entrance streaked with white excrement. The entrance was plain to see, opening to the west, downstream. The nest was about six feet above the water, on a ledge.
Swallows were zooming around, but there were no ouzels visiting the nest. The young must have been already fledged, several weeks ago perhaps. After a time we started back.
I placed my right foot on a polished little boss of stone and with my usual casual expertise made a leap to the next boulder. Then, with all the grace of a ballet dancer, I slipped and turned, in slow motion as it seemed, and made what amounted to a swan dive right into the North Fork. I remember seeing a boulder underwater as my face slammed down, and darting my hands down to break my fall. Boulders to either side bruised my hips as I plunged fully and completely into the river, but I kept my face safe. It was complete submersion, a total soaking from head to toe.
Standing up, the bruises almost incapacitated me; it felt as though I had pulled the muscles; I could really barely stand, and made a slow and awkward business of climbing out of the water.
After a minute I could move again, and used much more caution than usual in hopping back to the main boulder-field and our sand hollow.
I had a long-sleeved shirt to change into and just wore my blue jeans dry. Actually, they're still drying, right outside on my porch.
After a time we decided to follow an old miners' trail up the river to the first square corner of the base of Big West Spur. As we hopped along, I tested my bruises and kept up a decent pace and felt reassured that I was, after all, OK. Then a holler was heard. I looked back; no Catherine. What; a rattlesnake? A strange flower, a rare frog? What could make her holler like that? I retreated a dozen yards and she came in view, dripping water.
It was a double baptism, then, into the North Fork; except, Catherine had not equalled my own total submersion, only managing a modest three-quarters. We can now justly claim admission into the ranks of those hardy souls who swim the North Fork in spring.
So we squished along in our wet shoes and reached our square corner, a ways up above the river on a cliff, admiring the narrow gorge there, and the deep pools, and remembering a few years past when we had scrambled and swum Giant Gap, with Chris Schiller, and had finally left the swimming behind, at just this point, just this sunny bar of rounded boulders, a hundred feet below us.
Eventually it was time to start back, and we took it pretty easy, as is best after all, reaching Catherine's truck around six p.m.
Such was another fine day on the North Fork.
Sunday, March 21, 2004
Green Valley & The Survey
Saturday morning I met Tom McGuire at the Monte Vista Inn, Dutch Flat exit, I-80, and after a drive of a few miles we set off down the Green Valley Trail towards certain large bags of garbage, away down, and down and down, in the North Fork canyon.
It was Tom's first visit to Green Valley. He is more familiar with the upper canyon, between Mumford Bar and the Royal Gorge, usually entering on the Sailor Flat Trail and camping at Big Granite Creek. In that area the American River Canyon is over 3000 feet deep, and since Green Valley is a scant 2000 to 2400 feet deep, Tom was full of optimism and even a little scorn, for the good old Green Valley Trail.
"This is easy," he kept on remarking as we descended, "strenuous, on the way back up, yes--but not 'overly' strenuous, or 'very' strenuous--it is just plain strenuous, without any need for a qualifier."
Tom, you see, is a writer. If a word has a qualifier, needs a qualifier, or doesn't need a qualifier, he will be quick to take note. He is a tall rugged man in the prime of life.
We took the High West Trail and paused to look at the garbage we would be carrying up the hill and all too soon. We contoured over to the Pyramid Ridge, where the forest of Ponderosa Pine with its understory of Canyon Live Oak gives way to ancient manzanita on the sun-scorched ridge. We then struck south along the crest, winding through groves of manzanita, and enjoying ever better views of Giant Gap, until we reached The Pyramid.
Tom had approached Giant Gap from the west on the HOUT last year, and was awed all over again by those plunging cliffs and monumental pinnacles. We decided to follow the trail on down to the Green Valley Blue Gravel hydraulic mine, where a suspension bridge once crossed, connecting to the Green Valley Trail climbing away south from the river, and to the Gold Ring Mine. From trail's end we would boulder-hop down the North Fork and scramble to the HOUT and to the East Tunnel.
A pair of hawks of uncertain species sailed past us, and landed in some trees. Soon some kayakers appeared, who said they'd been (inadvertently) chasing the hawks downstream. Ouzels were zooming up and down the river and chattering their songs. The river was high and cold and clear and very fast, higher than it had been last Sunday. We made it on down to the faint little trail which climbs, in most ridiculous, meandering fashion, to the HOUT, and soon were striding along the sheer cliffs on that impossible threadlike path. In the late 1890s one E.L. Dunn had tried to sell the idea of using the North Fork as *the* principal water supply for San Francisco, and had hired on men to survey the line of a canal from Green Valley to Canyon Creek, right through Giant Gap. They blasted out many a ledge from the cliffs, and drove two large tunnels, but never succeeded in building one continuous trail through this astounding gorge.
And San Francisco never bought Dunn's idea.
Still, remnants are everywhere, narrow terraces often lush with grasses and flowers and moss. At East Tunnel we decided to forge ahead to the Giant Overhang, and so, we retreated east a hundred yards or so and dropped down the steep slopes, following an intricate course I'd hiked several times in the past, but which is easily lost. However, we found the way, and climbed steeply back up to the HOUT, which reappears just about where East Tunnel would have broken back out to the cliff-face. There are especially fine views east into Green Valley here, and a few yards west, the Giant Overhang has truly magnificent views of The Pinnacles. Here one is fully within Giant Gap. Another hundred yards or so west is one of the worst obstacles along the HOUT, the traverse of a broad, water-polished cliff. We stopped there. The cliff is mostly dry after this warm weather, and one could follow the HOUT right through Giant Gap in these conditions.
With some fairly serious rock-climbing here and there.
A Golden Eagle soared by a few hundred feet above us. At the Giant Overhang we admired some moss-gardens where water seeped from wells hidden within Lovers Leap; Waterfall False Buttercup was in full bloom, here. After a good long break we started back to Green Valley. Tom paused to swim in the icy river, while I made for the shade at the great pool at the end of the trail. When Tom approached, he hailed me back across the sunny boulders to see a snake. It was a rather large snake, somewhat resembling a rattler, but a bit more greenish; we could not see its tail. I found a long stick and teased it a little; it coiled upon itself and slithered quickly into its hidden galleries beneath the huge boulders. As it did so, we saw its tail; it was a Gopher Snake.
Gopher Snakes will imitate rattlesnakes, coiling and vibrating their tail; in dry grass, a rattling sound is made. Their markings are similar to those of rattlesnakes.
After a time we started up. The day was quite warm, perhaps in the upper 80s. It is a climb of near 400 feet to the garbage, where we took another long rest, and then we each lashed on a large bag, and started up again.
In the first few steps Tom's endearing enthusiasm broke forth, not for the first time that day, for Giant Gap is a miracle, and so is the rest of the great canyon, and neither Tom nor I know why there should not be a North Fork American National Park, but at any rate, here was Tom again, "This is easy! Russell, this is really easy! I don't know if I have even twenty-five pounds on my back! Oh, well, maybe thirty pounds--but, what a nice trail!"
I laughed and replied that he had taken scarcely ten steps, if that, since we shouldered our packs; we were still refreshed: heart rate, normal; breathing, easy; body, cool.
So up and up and up and up we wound along, stopping at The Anvil, and at a number of other nice places, the Echo Tree, and so on, and with its usual heartless inevitability the trail more or less wrecked us. We sweated, we staggered, and Tom began to mutter all kinds of qualifiers, none at all kind, about the Green Valley Trail.
Finally, a mile or so after one might well have hoped, we reached the top and could rest the good rest.
It was another great day in the North Fork canyon.
It was Tom's first visit to Green Valley. He is more familiar with the upper canyon, between Mumford Bar and the Royal Gorge, usually entering on the Sailor Flat Trail and camping at Big Granite Creek. In that area the American River Canyon is over 3000 feet deep, and since Green Valley is a scant 2000 to 2400 feet deep, Tom was full of optimism and even a little scorn, for the good old Green Valley Trail.
"This is easy," he kept on remarking as we descended, "strenuous, on the way back up, yes--but not 'overly' strenuous, or 'very' strenuous--it is just plain strenuous, without any need for a qualifier."
Tom, you see, is a writer. If a word has a qualifier, needs a qualifier, or doesn't need a qualifier, he will be quick to take note. He is a tall rugged man in the prime of life.
We took the High West Trail and paused to look at the garbage we would be carrying up the hill and all too soon. We contoured over to the Pyramid Ridge, where the forest of Ponderosa Pine with its understory of Canyon Live Oak gives way to ancient manzanita on the sun-scorched ridge. We then struck south along the crest, winding through groves of manzanita, and enjoying ever better views of Giant Gap, until we reached The Pyramid.
Tom had approached Giant Gap from the west on the HOUT last year, and was awed all over again by those plunging cliffs and monumental pinnacles. We decided to follow the trail on down to the Green Valley Blue Gravel hydraulic mine, where a suspension bridge once crossed, connecting to the Green Valley Trail climbing away south from the river, and to the Gold Ring Mine. From trail's end we would boulder-hop down the North Fork and scramble to the HOUT and to the East Tunnel.
A pair of hawks of uncertain species sailed past us, and landed in some trees. Soon some kayakers appeared, who said they'd been (inadvertently) chasing the hawks downstream. Ouzels were zooming up and down the river and chattering their songs. The river was high and cold and clear and very fast, higher than it had been last Sunday. We made it on down to the faint little trail which climbs, in most ridiculous, meandering fashion, to the HOUT, and soon were striding along the sheer cliffs on that impossible threadlike path. In the late 1890s one E.L. Dunn had tried to sell the idea of using the North Fork as *the* principal water supply for San Francisco, and had hired on men to survey the line of a canal from Green Valley to Canyon Creek, right through Giant Gap. They blasted out many a ledge from the cliffs, and drove two large tunnels, but never succeeded in building one continuous trail through this astounding gorge.
And San Francisco never bought Dunn's idea.
Still, remnants are everywhere, narrow terraces often lush with grasses and flowers and moss. At East Tunnel we decided to forge ahead to the Giant Overhang, and so, we retreated east a hundred yards or so and dropped down the steep slopes, following an intricate course I'd hiked several times in the past, but which is easily lost. However, we found the way, and climbed steeply back up to the HOUT, which reappears just about where East Tunnel would have broken back out to the cliff-face. There are especially fine views east into Green Valley here, and a few yards west, the Giant Overhang has truly magnificent views of The Pinnacles. Here one is fully within Giant Gap. Another hundred yards or so west is one of the worst obstacles along the HOUT, the traverse of a broad, water-polished cliff. We stopped there. The cliff is mostly dry after this warm weather, and one could follow the HOUT right through Giant Gap in these conditions.
With some fairly serious rock-climbing here and there.
A Golden Eagle soared by a few hundred feet above us. At the Giant Overhang we admired some moss-gardens where water seeped from wells hidden within Lovers Leap; Waterfall False Buttercup was in full bloom, here. After a good long break we started back to Green Valley. Tom paused to swim in the icy river, while I made for the shade at the great pool at the end of the trail. When Tom approached, he hailed me back across the sunny boulders to see a snake. It was a rather large snake, somewhat resembling a rattler, but a bit more greenish; we could not see its tail. I found a long stick and teased it a little; it coiled upon itself and slithered quickly into its hidden galleries beneath the huge boulders. As it did so, we saw its tail; it was a Gopher Snake.
Gopher Snakes will imitate rattlesnakes, coiling and vibrating their tail; in dry grass, a rattling sound is made. Their markings are similar to those of rattlesnakes.
After a time we started up. The day was quite warm, perhaps in the upper 80s. It is a climb of near 400 feet to the garbage, where we took another long rest, and then we each lashed on a large bag, and started up again.
In the first few steps Tom's endearing enthusiasm broke forth, not for the first time that day, for Giant Gap is a miracle, and so is the rest of the great canyon, and neither Tom nor I know why there should not be a North Fork American National Park, but at any rate, here was Tom again, "This is easy! Russell, this is really easy! I don't know if I have even twenty-five pounds on my back! Oh, well, maybe thirty pounds--but, what a nice trail!"
I laughed and replied that he had taken scarcely ten steps, if that, since we shouldered our packs; we were still refreshed: heart rate, normal; breathing, easy; body, cool.
So up and up and up and up we wound along, stopping at The Anvil, and at a number of other nice places, the Echo Tree, and so on, and with its usual heartless inevitability the trail more or less wrecked us. We sweated, we staggered, and Tom began to mutter all kinds of qualifiers, none at all kind, about the Green Valley Trail.
Finally, a mile or so after one might well have hoped, we reached the top and could rest the good rest.
It was another great day in the North Fork canyon.
Saturday, February 28, 2004
Snow, Flowers, and Waterfalls
Friday I dropped my son at school and left Alta for Gold Run, Garrett Road, and the Paleobotanist Trail. I hoped that an early start would save me from that second snowfall which is typical at these elevations; first, a storm loads up the forest with masses of snow, then, as soon as the sun shines, often, say, the next day, all that tree-snow comes whomping down in a soggy, dripping mess.
An accident seemed to have blocked the eastbound freeway near the Dutch Flat exit, and a long line of cars and trucks was rapidly getting longer.
A few inches of snow covered the ground in that fine forest atop the Bluffs, and the trees dripped, but did not snow-whomp. It was interesting to see the Diggings in snow. There were occasional glimpses of the North Fork canyon to the south and east, fog swirling here and there, and snow near the canyon rim. I hastened along the winding trail towards Canyon Creek. It had come up big, raging in fact, on Wednesday, when the North Fork itself had topped 4000 cubic feet per second at the North Fork Dam (Lake Clementine), below Auburn. I wanted to visit the waterfalls, since I have yet to photograph them when the creek is really big.
In coldish weather an interesting phenomenon may be observed in the Diggings. A little down the Main Diggings Road from its crossing by the Paleobotanist Trail, an old mine shaft plunges a hundred feet or so to meet a long tunnel. The shaft is the historic "49" shaft, and the tunnel has been called "the gravel tunnel." The tunnel was driven in 1874, and follows the bedrock floor of the ancient river channel north. The shaft, tho, seems to be that very one sunk in 1861, on the banks of Potato Ravine, which established the depth to bedrock beneath the channel. At that time the shaft was 250 feet deep. Subsequent mining stripped away 150 feet of gravel, so now it is only 100 feet deep. And it connects to a roughly horizontal tunnel.
The "interesting phenomenon" is that fog rises from the shaft on cold mornings, when the rest of the Diggings is clear. It is as tho--as tho--as tho some tribe of Indian spirits has set up camp deep within the earth, and the smoke of their secret fire escapes up the 49 shaft. Now, fog forms whenever the air falls below the dew point, which point depends upon two variables, temperature and humidity. Given such-and-such a temperature, increasing humidity could drop the air below the dew point; or, given such-and-such a humidity, decreasing temperature could do the same. A few feet below ground, the temperature of the earth is about 57 degrees Fahrenheit. Now, colder air is denser and heavier, warmer air is less-dense and lighter. Fog rises from the 49 shaft when air temperatures at the surface are (how much?) colder than 57 degrees, which is a commonplace there in the winter, since the shaft is really within the huge mining pit below the Bluffs. Cold air sinks into this pit at night, and can't readily escape. Let us say that there is little or no wind and air temperatures in the pit are in the thirties. This is much less than 57 degrees, the aforementioned earth-temperature; hence (somewhat moist) air within the tunnel and shaft is warmed by the 57-degree gravels at depth, and this relatively warm air rises, and, reaching the surface at the top of the shaft, is instantly chilled below the dew point.
I noted a small column of fog rising from the shaft as I hurried along; the Indian spirits were awake; soon I was at the snowy head of the Canyon Creek Trail, and set off towards the waterfalls and the North Fork. I was a little disappointed when I reached that part of the trail where, suddenly, Canyon Creek is directly below, and as I listened to the loud voices of the many cascades and low falls in that area, I realized that, yes, it was big; but not raging big. Perhaps the lower temperatures and snowfall had slowed the runoff.
The snow steadily thinned as I dropped lower. There was a constant dripping from the trees as it melted. The little bridge had a thin layer of almost transparent, wet snow, but thereafter there was hardly any. The creek was indeed bigger than it had been on my previous visit. Some very fine views open up just after crossing the little bridge, and one can see that strange little fall, the Leaper, which rises in an arc before free-falling down a slot-like embayment in the cliff. Now it roared out of its narrow channel and slammed into the wall of the embayment with a loud cracking thunder.
Right beside it is the main waterfall, the first big waterfall as one descends Canyon Creek. There is quite a fine view of it from the trail: I call that place Waterfall View. I have a photograph of this waterfall taken ca. 1875, when the creek was lined with giant sluice boxes, and water from Bear River, the South Yuba, and the North Fork of the North Fork was used in the hydraulic mines of Gold Run and perforce flowed into Canyon Creek. The creek was perpetually big, back then. Thousands of "miners inches" of water were used in the mines, brought by long canals from the higher country. One miners inch is something like seventeen thousand gallons per day.
These "upper falls" were nice and big, but not exceptionally so; I photographed them and hustled down the trail. I should say that at the very instant of dropping my son at school I learned that it was a minimum day; I would have to be back to pick him up at noon, not at 2:30, as I had imagined. So haste was in order.
I had forgotten to bring a watch, but knew from past experience that it takes about thirty-five minutes to reach the little bridge from the Bluffs.
Not raging, but very impressive. More and more waterfalls appeared along the way, in new shapes and louder voices. In places the trail is cut into cliffs, and it is interesting to hear the sounds of the falls reflected from the cliffs as one passes. The Inner Gorge was spectacular and, as usual, somewhat frightening; the trail passes above it on a ledge blasted from a cliff, and one peers a hundred, two hundred feet down into a most remarkable chasm, twisted, narrow beyond belief, rife with hidden waterfalls of great power, and essentially inaccessible.
Gorge Point was passed, with its same Brewer's Rock Cress and Biscuit Root. Suddenly the North Fork canyon is in full view, and the Big Waterfall roars away below, out of sight. Since time was short I took the steep short-cut down. The Big Waterfall, around 120 feet high, was still in the shadow of its awesome gorge. As I neared the viewpoint below the falls, where the trail coming up from the Terraces ends, I noticed many Birdsfoot ferns. These are smallish ferns with narrow leaflets, a ghostly light grey in color, adapted to dry conditions, such as cliffs baked beneath full sun. There is much in the way of varied microclimate along Canyon Creek, and I have identified eleven different species of fern growing there.
Spray billowed out from the falls and chilled me, so I took my photographs and hurried down to the Terraces. The fog and low clouds were thinning and I enjoyed sunshine, and stopped to photograph the narrow trail, all covered in a turf of grasses and sedges and moss, gleaming in the sun, still wet from the storm. At the Terraces I turned onto the Lower Terraces Trail back to the CCT, and was striding along when a voice called out, "Hey Russell!" And there was Ron Gould, a couple hundred feet above me on the main trail.
We continued on down to the river, pausing to photograph one of the larger waterfalls, another one which develops a double path when flows are high, and therefore looks strange and unfamiliar. Then down the last few hundred yards to the last big waterfall, at the river itself, also doubling and even tripling its path, booming, spray rising.
The North Fork was surging along quite rapidly, fairly well bank-full, still over 3000 cfs, as I was to learn later on the Internet. Ron and I took the Low Old Upriver Trail to some great viewpoints, where one can see, first, Lovers Leap, all snowy and still partly hidden in fog, with Bogus Spur and by all rights the HOUT (tho we couldn't see a sign of it) in the middle ground; and then, around a few corners, the Pinnacles and the Eminence came into view. It was great to see the Leap and the Pinnacles so well frosted in snow. We photographed them, and then returned to the last and lowest waterfall, and took more pictures.
All too soon I had to start up the trail. Ron stayed to visit the Big Waterfall at his leisure, but I walked on up and out without a break, and reached the Bluffs just before noon, only a few minutes late. However, the freeway traffic had been detoured onto the back roads, and it took a long time to reach the school in Alta. All was well, however, my son was waiting patiently in the chill shadowed snow in front of the school, and home we went. It had been another wonderful visit to Canyon Creek and the North Fork.
There are some very useful and interesting internet sites I would like to mention.
For those interested in wildflowers, there is
http://elib.cs.berkeley.edu/flowers/
which has many thousands of photographs of California wildflowers. I have contributed several photos to this collaborative web site. It represents the best of the internet, in which not only does the site share its information with us, but can share we with it, in that we can provide photographs and descriptions to it. Note that one can browse wildflower species either by scientific name or common name. To see photographs of Brewer's Rock Cress or of Biscuit Root, for instance, one would click on the letter "B" of the common names list.
A long list of flowers whose common names begin with "B" appears. Click on any one of these, and a page full of photograph thumbnails appears. Click on any one of *these* to see detailed information about where and when that particular picture was taken. From there, one can access quite a number of other sources of information about that one species.
To get up-to-the-minute information about the flow of the North Fork below Auburn, go to
http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/queryF?NFD
This website is automatically updated, what, less than hourly, from the sensors at North Fork Dam. One can choose to view streamflow over longer periods of time if one wishes, and even graph the data.
Finally, for those interested in California history, the Library of Congress has an amazing collection of books online, the text having been scanned and OCR'd, so that it is a *searchable database*. There are many Gold Rush diaries in this collection. Suppose, knowing that Gold Run was once called Cold Springs, one searches for Cold Springs. If any one of the Gold Rush diaries mentions Cold Springs, you will find it, and, moreover, be able to ink directly to that part of that diary. Of course there were many places called Cold Springs in those days, so some caution must be used (and what temperature is the usual cold spring? Yes, of course: 57 degrees).
Go to
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/calbkquery.html
where the main search page is found for this collection. You can search through bibliographic records or the text (of the entire collection) itself. I almost always search the text. You do not need to enclose multiple words in quotes, as when using Google.
An accident seemed to have blocked the eastbound freeway near the Dutch Flat exit, and a long line of cars and trucks was rapidly getting longer.
A few inches of snow covered the ground in that fine forest atop the Bluffs, and the trees dripped, but did not snow-whomp. It was interesting to see the Diggings in snow. There were occasional glimpses of the North Fork canyon to the south and east, fog swirling here and there, and snow near the canyon rim. I hastened along the winding trail towards Canyon Creek. It had come up big, raging in fact, on Wednesday, when the North Fork itself had topped 4000 cubic feet per second at the North Fork Dam (Lake Clementine), below Auburn. I wanted to visit the waterfalls, since I have yet to photograph them when the creek is really big.
In coldish weather an interesting phenomenon may be observed in the Diggings. A little down the Main Diggings Road from its crossing by the Paleobotanist Trail, an old mine shaft plunges a hundred feet or so to meet a long tunnel. The shaft is the historic "49" shaft, and the tunnel has been called "the gravel tunnel." The tunnel was driven in 1874, and follows the bedrock floor of the ancient river channel north. The shaft, tho, seems to be that very one sunk in 1861, on the banks of Potato Ravine, which established the depth to bedrock beneath the channel. At that time the shaft was 250 feet deep. Subsequent mining stripped away 150 feet of gravel, so now it is only 100 feet deep. And it connects to a roughly horizontal tunnel.
The "interesting phenomenon" is that fog rises from the shaft on cold mornings, when the rest of the Diggings is clear. It is as tho--as tho--as tho some tribe of Indian spirits has set up camp deep within the earth, and the smoke of their secret fire escapes up the 49 shaft. Now, fog forms whenever the air falls below the dew point, which point depends upon two variables, temperature and humidity. Given such-and-such a temperature, increasing humidity could drop the air below the dew point; or, given such-and-such a humidity, decreasing temperature could do the same. A few feet below ground, the temperature of the earth is about 57 degrees Fahrenheit. Now, colder air is denser and heavier, warmer air is less-dense and lighter. Fog rises from the 49 shaft when air temperatures at the surface are (how much?) colder than 57 degrees, which is a commonplace there in the winter, since the shaft is really within the huge mining pit below the Bluffs. Cold air sinks into this pit at night, and can't readily escape. Let us say that there is little or no wind and air temperatures in the pit are in the thirties. This is much less than 57 degrees, the aforementioned earth-temperature; hence (somewhat moist) air within the tunnel and shaft is warmed by the 57-degree gravels at depth, and this relatively warm air rises, and, reaching the surface at the top of the shaft, is instantly chilled below the dew point.
I noted a small column of fog rising from the shaft as I hurried along; the Indian spirits were awake; soon I was at the snowy head of the Canyon Creek Trail, and set off towards the waterfalls and the North Fork. I was a little disappointed when I reached that part of the trail where, suddenly, Canyon Creek is directly below, and as I listened to the loud voices of the many cascades and low falls in that area, I realized that, yes, it was big; but not raging big. Perhaps the lower temperatures and snowfall had slowed the runoff.
The snow steadily thinned as I dropped lower. There was a constant dripping from the trees as it melted. The little bridge had a thin layer of almost transparent, wet snow, but thereafter there was hardly any. The creek was indeed bigger than it had been on my previous visit. Some very fine views open up just after crossing the little bridge, and one can see that strange little fall, the Leaper, which rises in an arc before free-falling down a slot-like embayment in the cliff. Now it roared out of its narrow channel and slammed into the wall of the embayment with a loud cracking thunder.
Right beside it is the main waterfall, the first big waterfall as one descends Canyon Creek. There is quite a fine view of it from the trail: I call that place Waterfall View. I have a photograph of this waterfall taken ca. 1875, when the creek was lined with giant sluice boxes, and water from Bear River, the South Yuba, and the North Fork of the North Fork was used in the hydraulic mines of Gold Run and perforce flowed into Canyon Creek. The creek was perpetually big, back then. Thousands of "miners inches" of water were used in the mines, brought by long canals from the higher country. One miners inch is something like seventeen thousand gallons per day.
These "upper falls" were nice and big, but not exceptionally so; I photographed them and hustled down the trail. I should say that at the very instant of dropping my son at school I learned that it was a minimum day; I would have to be back to pick him up at noon, not at 2:30, as I had imagined. So haste was in order.
I had forgotten to bring a watch, but knew from past experience that it takes about thirty-five minutes to reach the little bridge from the Bluffs.
Not raging, but very impressive. More and more waterfalls appeared along the way, in new shapes and louder voices. In places the trail is cut into cliffs, and it is interesting to hear the sounds of the falls reflected from the cliffs as one passes. The Inner Gorge was spectacular and, as usual, somewhat frightening; the trail passes above it on a ledge blasted from a cliff, and one peers a hundred, two hundred feet down into a most remarkable chasm, twisted, narrow beyond belief, rife with hidden waterfalls of great power, and essentially inaccessible.
Gorge Point was passed, with its same Brewer's Rock Cress and Biscuit Root. Suddenly the North Fork canyon is in full view, and the Big Waterfall roars away below, out of sight. Since time was short I took the steep short-cut down. The Big Waterfall, around 120 feet high, was still in the shadow of its awesome gorge. As I neared the viewpoint below the falls, where the trail coming up from the Terraces ends, I noticed many Birdsfoot ferns. These are smallish ferns with narrow leaflets, a ghostly light grey in color, adapted to dry conditions, such as cliffs baked beneath full sun. There is much in the way of varied microclimate along Canyon Creek, and I have identified eleven different species of fern growing there.
Spray billowed out from the falls and chilled me, so I took my photographs and hurried down to the Terraces. The fog and low clouds were thinning and I enjoyed sunshine, and stopped to photograph the narrow trail, all covered in a turf of grasses and sedges and moss, gleaming in the sun, still wet from the storm. At the Terraces I turned onto the Lower Terraces Trail back to the CCT, and was striding along when a voice called out, "Hey Russell!" And there was Ron Gould, a couple hundred feet above me on the main trail.
We continued on down to the river, pausing to photograph one of the larger waterfalls, another one which develops a double path when flows are high, and therefore looks strange and unfamiliar. Then down the last few hundred yards to the last big waterfall, at the river itself, also doubling and even tripling its path, booming, spray rising.
The North Fork was surging along quite rapidly, fairly well bank-full, still over 3000 cfs, as I was to learn later on the Internet. Ron and I took the Low Old Upriver Trail to some great viewpoints, where one can see, first, Lovers Leap, all snowy and still partly hidden in fog, with Bogus Spur and by all rights the HOUT (tho we couldn't see a sign of it) in the middle ground; and then, around a few corners, the Pinnacles and the Eminence came into view. It was great to see the Leap and the Pinnacles so well frosted in snow. We photographed them, and then returned to the last and lowest waterfall, and took more pictures.
All too soon I had to start up the trail. Ron stayed to visit the Big Waterfall at his leisure, but I walked on up and out without a break, and reached the Bluffs just before noon, only a few minutes late. However, the freeway traffic had been detoured onto the back roads, and it took a long time to reach the school in Alta. All was well, however, my son was waiting patiently in the chill shadowed snow in front of the school, and home we went. It had been another wonderful visit to Canyon Creek and the North Fork.
There are some very useful and interesting internet sites I would like to mention.
For those interested in wildflowers, there is
http://elib.cs.berkeley.edu/flowers/
which has many thousands of photographs of California wildflowers. I have contributed several photos to this collaborative web site. It represents the best of the internet, in which not only does the site share its information with us, but can share we with it, in that we can provide photographs and descriptions to it. Note that one can browse wildflower species either by scientific name or common name. To see photographs of Brewer's Rock Cress or of Biscuit Root, for instance, one would click on the letter "B" of the common names list.
A long list of flowers whose common names begin with "B" appears. Click on any one of these, and a page full of photograph thumbnails appears. Click on any one of *these* to see detailed information about where and when that particular picture was taken. From there, one can access quite a number of other sources of information about that one species.
To get up-to-the-minute information about the flow of the North Fork below Auburn, go to
http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/queryF?NFD
This website is automatically updated, what, less than hourly, from the sensors at North Fork Dam. One can choose to view streamflow over longer periods of time if one wishes, and even graph the data.
Finally, for those interested in California history, the Library of Congress has an amazing collection of books online, the text having been scanned and OCR'd, so that it is a *searchable database*. There are many Gold Rush diaries in this collection. Suppose, knowing that Gold Run was once called Cold Springs, one searches for Cold Springs. If any one of the Gold Rush diaries mentions Cold Springs, you will find it, and, moreover, be able to ink directly to that part of that diary. Of course there were many places called Cold Springs in those days, so some caution must be used (and what temperature is the usual cold spring? Yes, of course: 57 degrees).
Go to
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/calbkquery.html
where the main search page is found for this collection. You can search through bibliographic records or the text (of the entire collection) itself. I almost always search the text. You do not need to enclose multiple words in quotes, as when using Google.
Thursday, September 11, 2003
Visit to Giant Gap
Twenty-five years ago I made a series of explorations in and around Giant Gap and Canyon Creek with several friends from Dutch Flat, including Neil Gerjuoy, the amazing guitarist. Yesterday I joined Neil, his friend Cindy, and Ron Gould, for a jaunt to Giant Gap, by way of the Paleobotanist Trail (PBT), Canyon Creek Trail (CCT), and the High Old Upriver Trail (HOUT), this last being the line of the old Giant Gap Survey.
In the late 1890s a scheme was hatched to divert the waters of the North Fork American into an existing mining ditch serving the Green Valley Blue Gravel Mine, and then carry the ditch west through Giant Gap and on and on down the canyon, finally breaking out near Auburn. From there a pipeline would carry the water to San Francisco. Apparently to demonstrate the feasibility of the project, much work was done to eke out a bench cut between Green Valley and Canyon Creek. The bench cut was never finished, but in places it can be used as a trail. Hence the HOUT.
The "secret" road into the Gold Run Diggings being blocked at last, we could not drive to the Canyon Creek Trail, and so we started from BLM lands at the Bluffs. This adds 1.6 miles to the round trip in and out of the great canyon. The Paleobotanist Trail follows a somewhat wildly meandering course through the Diggings, past some rather large pieces of petrified wood, over 50 million years old, and, crossing the Main Diggings Road, follows a spur road east to the CCT.
We soon reached the huge tunnel of the Gold Run Ditch & Mining Co. (1873), which leads from the Diggings on the west over 2000 feet to Canyon Creek on the east. Here the miner's camp had at last been vacated, with the large blue tarp still tied up to the trees, and garbage strewn about. We cut the tarp free and piled all the garbage on it, folded it and rolled it up and used scraps of rope to cinch it up into an ungainly bundle almost four feet long. This we left on the trail above the tunnel and continued south on the CCT, passing the bridge, and lovely Waterfall View, with the side trail to the Overlook of the Blasted Digger, and wound on down the steeps of the CCT to the secret junction with the HOUT.
Neil was duly impressed with the HOUT. The HOUT winds along in and out of ravines and around little spur ridges, on a nearly level line, sometimes blasted right out of little cliffs, where one feels much the mountaineer, to have dared to traverse the airy ledges.
Starting cool, the day had warmed rapidly, and we were eager to reach the river for a swim. What with this eagerness, and that extra eight-tenths of a mile at the beginning of our hike, it seemed right to make no attempt to continue on the HOUT into Giant Gap itself, but rather, to drop down to the river at Big West Spur and then boulder-hop up to the deep pools and steep cliffs of Giant Gap.
We found a huge boulder which provided a kind of cavern of shade, stashed our packs, ripped off our clothes, and dove in. The water was much colder than it had been in Green Valley last Saturday; the clouds and cool nights of recent days must be responsible; and so we swam with a certain amount of screaming and exclamations and were not long in the crystal-clear water.
Lunch followed, and then a foray up into the Gap, swimming across a cliff-bound pool, and exploring upriver until another deep pool barred our way.
All in all we were several hours down at the river, and waited for the sun to lower, before starting the march up and out. Canyon Wrens serenaded us, and the occasional Ouzel flashed past like a little fighter jet, low to the water and hugging every curve. At last, after a third river revel, we made the steep climb up to the HOUT, followed along the cliffs back to the CCT, which had only just lost its afternoon sun, so we made that steep climb in the shade, and eventually, arrived at the tunnel, and lashed on loads of garbage, and slogged slowly up and out and across the Diggings to the Bluffs and our vehicles. It was 7 p.m.; we had started around ten in the morning; altogether, a hike of some eight or nine miles, just to spend a few hours in great and glorious Giant Gap, had been more than worth it. It was a "good one" indeed.
In the late 1890s a scheme was hatched to divert the waters of the North Fork American into an existing mining ditch serving the Green Valley Blue Gravel Mine, and then carry the ditch west through Giant Gap and on and on down the canyon, finally breaking out near Auburn. From there a pipeline would carry the water to San Francisco. Apparently to demonstrate the feasibility of the project, much work was done to eke out a bench cut between Green Valley and Canyon Creek. The bench cut was never finished, but in places it can be used as a trail. Hence the HOUT.
The "secret" road into the Gold Run Diggings being blocked at last, we could not drive to the Canyon Creek Trail, and so we started from BLM lands at the Bluffs. This adds 1.6 miles to the round trip in and out of the great canyon. The Paleobotanist Trail follows a somewhat wildly meandering course through the Diggings, past some rather large pieces of petrified wood, over 50 million years old, and, crossing the Main Diggings Road, follows a spur road east to the CCT.
We soon reached the huge tunnel of the Gold Run Ditch & Mining Co. (1873), which leads from the Diggings on the west over 2000 feet to Canyon Creek on the east. Here the miner's camp had at last been vacated, with the large blue tarp still tied up to the trees, and garbage strewn about. We cut the tarp free and piled all the garbage on it, folded it and rolled it up and used scraps of rope to cinch it up into an ungainly bundle almost four feet long. This we left on the trail above the tunnel and continued south on the CCT, passing the bridge, and lovely Waterfall View, with the side trail to the Overlook of the Blasted Digger, and wound on down the steeps of the CCT to the secret junction with the HOUT.
Neil was duly impressed with the HOUT. The HOUT winds along in and out of ravines and around little spur ridges, on a nearly level line, sometimes blasted right out of little cliffs, where one feels much the mountaineer, to have dared to traverse the airy ledges.
Starting cool, the day had warmed rapidly, and we were eager to reach the river for a swim. What with this eagerness, and that extra eight-tenths of a mile at the beginning of our hike, it seemed right to make no attempt to continue on the HOUT into Giant Gap itself, but rather, to drop down to the river at Big West Spur and then boulder-hop up to the deep pools and steep cliffs of Giant Gap.
We found a huge boulder which provided a kind of cavern of shade, stashed our packs, ripped off our clothes, and dove in. The water was much colder than it had been in Green Valley last Saturday; the clouds and cool nights of recent days must be responsible; and so we swam with a certain amount of screaming and exclamations and were not long in the crystal-clear water.
Lunch followed, and then a foray up into the Gap, swimming across a cliff-bound pool, and exploring upriver until another deep pool barred our way.
All in all we were several hours down at the river, and waited for the sun to lower, before starting the march up and out. Canyon Wrens serenaded us, and the occasional Ouzel flashed past like a little fighter jet, low to the water and hugging every curve. At last, after a third river revel, we made the steep climb up to the HOUT, followed along the cliffs back to the CCT, which had only just lost its afternoon sun, so we made that steep climb in the shade, and eventually, arrived at the tunnel, and lashed on loads of garbage, and slogged slowly up and out and across the Diggings to the Bluffs and our vehicles. It was 7 p.m.; we had started around ten in the morning; altogether, a hike of some eight or nine miles, just to spend a few hours in great and glorious Giant Gap, had been more than worth it. It was a "good one" indeed.
Sunday, September 7, 2003
Visit to Green Valley
Green Valley is near Dutch Flat and Alta on the North Fork American, just where the weak serpentine of the Melones Fault Zone crosses the river, and the canyon widens, the walls recede, and large glacial outwash terraces of multiple ages cloak many slopes. Two thousand people are said to have resided in Green Valley in 1851-52. Saturday, Gay Wiseman, Neil Gerjuoy, his friend Cindy, and I, walked down the old mule trail by which Green Valley was provisioned in the old days. In some places it is worn and eroded into a narrow trench. Mule trains came up from Illinoistown (~Colfax) to many mining camps, such as Little York, Dutch Flat, Cold Springs (now Gold Run), and Green Valley.
Later in the 1850s wagon roads reached Dutch Flat itself, and the pack trains to Green Valley and the other remote or canyon-bound mining camps left from Dutch Flat, Gold Run, and Towle.
Helicopters thundered constantly across the canyon to the south, filling their water buckets at Sugar Pine Reservoir, and then zooming east and south to the Codfish Fire, near Deadwood Ridge. The day was sunny and clear, tho a pall of smoke had lifted out of the canyons near the fire, and drifted slowly across the main North Fork canyon to the east, as the upslope winds increased in strength.
We took the High West Trail and threaded our way down to the very end, below the bluffs of the Green Valley Blue Gravel mine, and near the site of the old suspension bridge, torn out by a flood several decades ago. I have two old photographs showing one incarnation that bridge, ca. 1940. This bridge is mistakenly shown very far upstream to the east, on the USGS 7.5 minute "Dutch Flat" quadrangle.
At the river a fresh strong breeze stirred the trees and ruffled the river and we could no longer hear the helicopters.
After a lunch break, Gay and Cindy swam the huge deep pool at the end of the trail, a spot also notable for its fine view of Lovers Leap, rising 2300` above the river, just to the west. Neil and I went upstream to the bridge site, forded the North Fork, admiring the masses of cemented glacial outwash, and took the trail climbing west to the Gold Ring Mine. We continued right past the old, Depression-era log cabin, following the trail across the meadow, and into Giant Gap Gulch, where the path plunged right down to the river. Somehow I had missed the correct trail, which stays high, so we climbed steep slopes adorned with poison oak to this true trail, and continued west.
The trail passes a number of mining areas which involve patches of glacial outwash. Apparently the glacial outwash in general, and the cemented outwash in particular, was rich with gold, and stamp mills were dragged down here in the olden days to pound it up so it could be run through sluice boxes.
The trail narrowed drastically as it approached the North Fork, and crossed some rather steep slopes, just where one would wish it broadest, but soon enough we were on the sparkling clear stream again, just upriver from the Gate Post, a remarkable column of rock which rises right from the water, where the river leaves the shattered serpentine of Green Valley for the massive metavolcanic rocks of Giant Gap. The faulted contact between the Melones serpentine and the Calaveras Complex metavolcanics is very near the Gate Post, and an especially fine pool is just downstream. The last significant deposits of Green Valley's glacial outwash sediments, including some cemented gravels, on the south bank, are just here, just at the contact. Farther downstream, in Giant Gap, the slopes are too steep to have preserved such sediments. Springs likely associated with the more fractured rock in the fault zone, which zone forms a near-vertical plane crossing the canyon obliquely, are on both sides of the river, that on the south bank still flowing nicely.
Fording the river again, we climbed up to the line of the Giant Gap Survey on the north canyon wall, 150 feet above the river, but did not follow it very far. On the way to the river from the Gold Ring Mine I had looked across and seen two major sections of the Survey, where a narrow bench cut had been blasted from the cliffs a century ago, part of a scheme to divert the waters of the North Fork and deliver those waters to San Francisco. However, these sections of the Survey were on very steep cliffs, and the bench cuts did not look to be properly continuous, in fact, it looked difficult to impossible for someone to really hold the line of the Survey, over there, just upstream from the Gate Post. These sections were the last crossing the serpentine, before the Survey entered the tough Calaveras Complex rock of Giant Gap.
Dropping back to the river, we swam the fine pool below the Gate Post, admired the wildflowers, especially the purple asters, and the fine views of the Pinnacles, to the southwest, and then made the pure scramble up the north bank of the river back to the West Trail Pool. After some more snacking in the shade of a big alder tree, we started a long slow slog up the trail, reaching the top about 7 p.m.
Such was a fine day in Green Valley and at the eastern entrance to Giant Gap.
Later in the 1850s wagon roads reached Dutch Flat itself, and the pack trains to Green Valley and the other remote or canyon-bound mining camps left from Dutch Flat, Gold Run, and Towle.
Helicopters thundered constantly across the canyon to the south, filling their water buckets at Sugar Pine Reservoir, and then zooming east and south to the Codfish Fire, near Deadwood Ridge. The day was sunny and clear, tho a pall of smoke had lifted out of the canyons near the fire, and drifted slowly across the main North Fork canyon to the east, as the upslope winds increased in strength.
We took the High West Trail and threaded our way down to the very end, below the bluffs of the Green Valley Blue Gravel mine, and near the site of the old suspension bridge, torn out by a flood several decades ago. I have two old photographs showing one incarnation that bridge, ca. 1940. This bridge is mistakenly shown very far upstream to the east, on the USGS 7.5 minute "Dutch Flat" quadrangle.
At the river a fresh strong breeze stirred the trees and ruffled the river and we could no longer hear the helicopters.
After a lunch break, Gay and Cindy swam the huge deep pool at the end of the trail, a spot also notable for its fine view of Lovers Leap, rising 2300` above the river, just to the west. Neil and I went upstream to the bridge site, forded the North Fork, admiring the masses of cemented glacial outwash, and took the trail climbing west to the Gold Ring Mine. We continued right past the old, Depression-era log cabin, following the trail across the meadow, and into Giant Gap Gulch, where the path plunged right down to the river. Somehow I had missed the correct trail, which stays high, so we climbed steep slopes adorned with poison oak to this true trail, and continued west.
The trail passes a number of mining areas which involve patches of glacial outwash. Apparently the glacial outwash in general, and the cemented outwash in particular, was rich with gold, and stamp mills were dragged down here in the olden days to pound it up so it could be run through sluice boxes.
The trail narrowed drastically as it approached the North Fork, and crossed some rather steep slopes, just where one would wish it broadest, but soon enough we were on the sparkling clear stream again, just upriver from the Gate Post, a remarkable column of rock which rises right from the water, where the river leaves the shattered serpentine of Green Valley for the massive metavolcanic rocks of Giant Gap. The faulted contact between the Melones serpentine and the Calaveras Complex metavolcanics is very near the Gate Post, and an especially fine pool is just downstream. The last significant deposits of Green Valley's glacial outwash sediments, including some cemented gravels, on the south bank, are just here, just at the contact. Farther downstream, in Giant Gap, the slopes are too steep to have preserved such sediments. Springs likely associated with the more fractured rock in the fault zone, which zone forms a near-vertical plane crossing the canyon obliquely, are on both sides of the river, that on the south bank still flowing nicely.
Fording the river again, we climbed up to the line of the Giant Gap Survey on the north canyon wall, 150 feet above the river, but did not follow it very far. On the way to the river from the Gold Ring Mine I had looked across and seen two major sections of the Survey, where a narrow bench cut had been blasted from the cliffs a century ago, part of a scheme to divert the waters of the North Fork and deliver those waters to San Francisco. However, these sections of the Survey were on very steep cliffs, and the bench cuts did not look to be properly continuous, in fact, it looked difficult to impossible for someone to really hold the line of the Survey, over there, just upstream from the Gate Post. These sections were the last crossing the serpentine, before the Survey entered the tough Calaveras Complex rock of Giant Gap.
Dropping back to the river, we swam the fine pool below the Gate Post, admired the wildflowers, especially the purple asters, and the fine views of the Pinnacles, to the southwest, and then made the pure scramble up the north bank of the river back to the West Trail Pool. After some more snacking in the shade of a big alder tree, we started a long slow slog up the trail, reaching the top about 7 p.m.
Such was a fine day in Green Valley and at the eastern entrance to Giant Gap.
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