Friday Ron Gould and I drove up to Emigrant Gap, out Forest Road 19 past Texas Hill and Burnett Canyon to Sawtooth Ridge, and parked on the edge of the North Fork canyon at an ugly log deck area, where, by all considerations of old maps, i.e., the Waldemar Lindgren Colfax Folio, and topography, i.e., the modern Westville quadrangle, the head of the lost Sawtalian Trail must be. We were in the SW 1/4 of Section 29, T16N, R12E, quite near surveyed elevation 5076'.
Our best efforts to transfer the line of the Sawtalian from Lindgren's map to the Westville quadrangle had suggested that we hew rather to the east, at the very top, than a little west, where years ago Tom Molloy and I discovered what surely seemed to be an old human trail, dropping into a magical grove of Kelloggs Black Oak and ancient Ponderosa Pine. This grove occupies a broad bench or terrace in glacial till, much like what one sees on the south side of the North Fork, along the main Italian Bar Trail, but here, at least, graced by many exotic boulders of granite, dragged down the North Fork canyon from many miles east. The bench is about 300 feet below the rim of the canyon, where we'd parked.
So we hewed to the east. Descending rough steep ground with no hint of an old trail, we reached the more eastern continuation of that same bench, and, bearing west, but giving up elevation southwards towards the river, we scouted back and forth, in search of the Sawtalian.
We left the lovely bench with its magical grove for steep slopes below, without glacial till, cloaked in Canyon Live Oak and some Douglas Fir with a somewhat unusual proportion of Torreya californica, California Nutmeg. All this area had burned in the Helicopter Fire, when nearby Section 31 had been logged, by Sierra Pacific Industries, as I would think. There were stumps scattered all across this steep terrain. We found the going quite tough. Often we spread apart to cover more ground, occasionally getting beyond shouting distance, but always reconvening every once in a while. There was never any good news to report. A game trail or two, but no old human trail.
After a descent of 1500 feet over this difficult ground, Ron was to the east, I was to the west, and tracts of Ceanothus, Deerbrush, began to cover large areas, all having seeded in or stump-sprouted after the Helicopter Fire. These brush groves were close to impassable, so my route, at least, became governed by gaps in the Ceanothus. The best gaps lead me gradually onto a small ridge, where, to my delight, a faint trail appeared, better by far than anything I had seen. I shouted out to Ron and heard a faint reply in the distance, east, and we managed to agree to meet at a flat bench visible a few hundred feet below.
At this bench we had lunch and scouted widely for some sign of the trail. GPS showed that we were near to our plotted route of the Sawtalian, in fact, the ridge I had followed was directly on this plotted route. So that was satisfying. However, the combination of helicopter logging on the bench, and fire-fighting efforts, made it quite difficult to read the terrain. For instance, the firefighters had made many small fire lines, chopping into the ground with their Pulaskis, tools which are like giant hoes and rakes combined. These fire lines looked much like faint trails. So we wandered about and scouted up and down and every which way. Our elevation at this particular bench was 3200'. South and slightly east we could see yet another bench, and I was gratified, on one of my explorations, to see the very "trough trail" I had found last Wednesday, near a ferny ravine, in the NW 1/4 of the SE 1/4 of Section 31. This is on yet another bench, slightly lower than the one we could easily see below us to the southeast.
Reluctant to give up any more elevation, tho, we decided to check out the Ridge Trail, and ended up following it all the way to the top, reaching the Magical Grove on the Upper Bench exactly where the "faint human trail" leading west and south from Point 5076 had always seemed to mysteriously end.
We were satisfied that we had, indeed, found the old Sawtalian Trail. It is much much less well-defined than the Sawbug Trail, a few miles west. This makes sense on several counts. The Sawbug is closer to sources of supplies, for instance, Dutch Flat, or Foresthill. The Sawbug had the benefit of a bridge across the North Fork, at Humbug Bar. And the Sawbug follows an easier grade than the Sawtalian. This all combines to explain why the Sawbug shows often amazingly large dry-laid stone walls, while the Sawtalian has essentially no rock work at all, and, even worse, on the ridge-crest part of its course--the "main" part of the Sawtalian--shows no sign of ever having been a "constructed" trail in any way shape or form.
As Ron remarked, the Sawtalian is kind of like a country road to the Sawbug's highway.
So. A two-thousand-foot climb brought us to Ron's truck around 4:30 p.m. On the way out we stopped at the easternmost, highest sawtooth of Sawtooth Ridge, and crossed ugly bulldozer-ravaged White Fir forest to the south-facing, North Fork side of the ridge, where truly wonderful views are had of the upper canyon. There was Big Valley Bluff, Snow Mountain, and even Tinkers Knob, on the left; and the Tadpole Canyon cliffs, Wildcat Point, Wabena Point, and Lyon and Needle peaks on the right. We could also see Duncan Peak itself, and the north end of the Mildred Ridge, near Picayune Valley.
A trail, routed near the top of these open, south-facing slopes, would provide an alternate to following the Sawtooth Road itself, east and west along the ridge. And such a trail would offer some of the best views in all Placer County.
I saw it remarked, on a rafting web site, that some people think of the North Fork American as the most beautiful river *in the world*. This seems to be carrying the point a little far, but I'm not the one to argue with them. It is beautiful, quite exceptionally so; its canyon is beautiful, beyond any of my words. Wild & Scenic River status is all very nice, but it seems far from enough. I have advocated Wilderness designation for the North Fork American "roadless area" since 1976. This would be a good thing. This would respect the truly exceptional qualities of this great river and great canyon.
But even this would fall short of what really must be done. When, in the year 2004, bulldozers can casually obliterate one of the most historic trails leading into the great canyon--the Big Granite Trail--when egomaniacs can build houses beside Giant Gap and, again, use bulldozers to clear all vegetation below them, for their million-dollar views--these are just a couple of the attacks on our heritage, on the North Fork, which should tell us, beyond any doubt, that the time is already long past when the stewards of our public lands, Tahoe National Forest and the Bureau of Land Management, should be working feverishly, constantly, to acquire the private inholdings in the region surrounding the North Fork.
For it is not just the wild and roadless areas, mainly within the great canyon, which we ought to protect, but regions flanking this wild "core" area--regions like the Gold Run Diggings, Sawtooth Ridge, the North Fork of the North Fork, Lost Camp, Big Valley, Sugar Pine Point, Big and Little Granite creeks, Snow Mountain, Devils Peak, Palisade Creek--just to name a few.
Later we visited Texas Hill, where some old patented mining claims are nestled within TNF lands. Apparently the owner recently convinced TNF that the historic public roads which cross his property should be closed to The Public, and remain open only to him. We walked around, and saw some of the hard-rock gold mining activity near I.T. Coffin's Texas Hill cabin site, and saw the new little cabin and trailer which has so inspired Tahoe National Forest to block our old public roads. We had some amazing views to the west, of Giant Gap, the Pinnacle Ridge, and Lovers Leap, in the sunset hour. We also got all too good a look at a clearcut on very steep ground flanking the East Fork (of the North Fork of the North Fork), in Section 17, T16N R12E.
It was yet another very nice day in the great canyon.
Showing posts with label Sawtooth Ridge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sawtooth Ridge. Show all posts
Saturday, October 9, 2004
Thursday, October 7, 2004
Italian Bar and the Sawtalian Trail
Wednesday morning I dropped off my kids at their schools in Alta and Colfax, and took curvaceous Yankee Jims Road across the North Fork to Foresthill. Turning left, I drove up the Foresthill-Soda Springs Road, past China Wall, to the road left to Humbug Ridge and the head of the Italian Bar Trail. Three miles on this moderately rough road brought me to the trailhead. It was 9:37 a.m.
This area is shown on the USGS 7.5 minute Westville quadrangle.
My objective was to find and follow, if possible, the "Sawtalian" trail, on the north side of the canyon, which left the crest of Sawtooth Ridge at a little over 5000' elevation, and dropped south and west to a crossing of the North Fork at 2300', near Italian Bar. This trail is only depicted on a couple of the old maps in my possession, notably, the ca. 1900 USGS "Colfax Folio" of Waldemar Lindgren. This is a topographic map, made without the benefit of aerial photographs, but is quite interesting in that it shows several trails which have fallen out of use and are, as it were, lost, and forgotten.
Perversely, it omits some important trails which existed at that time, such as "the" Italian Bar Trail (IBT). Lindgren also leaves out much of the Sawtooth Trail itself, which led down the length of Sawtooth Ridge. This Sawtooth Ridge forms a part of the divide between the main North Fork and its principal tributary, the North Fork of the North Fork. Rather than having a flat crest, as do so many of the ridges in middle elevations, it has a succession of knolls and saddles. I attribute this to the glaciers which repeatedly flowed down both canyons, attacking the ridge from either side.
Around ten years ago I published the diary of Isaac Tibbetts Coffin, a gold miner and photographer who lived most of his life in Dutch Flat, where he died, in 1903. Forty years before, he lived in Burnett Canyon, near Texas Hill, quite near the Sawtooth Ridge. From his cabin he could take the Burnett Canyon Trail south to Sawtooth, and continue south on the Sawtalian Trail to the North Fork American. The south-facing slopes of Sawtooth often remain free of snow, in stark contrast to Burnett Canyon. He might have, say, six feet of hard-packed snow on the ground at his cabin in Burnett Canyon, and yet find none at all along the Sawtalian Trail.
In the Sierra, microclimate counts for a lot.
Now, I.T. Coffin used the Sawtooth Trail, and also what I have named the Sawbug Trail, which also drops from Sawtooth Ridge, a few miles west, to Humbug Bar; another "lost" trail. A series of seven explorations over recent years finally succeeded in tracing the line of the Sawbug. The main problems proved to be at either end, both near the river, and near the crest of Sawtooth. The main central reach of the trail was easily followed, if one could only get on the thing.
A maze of bear trails and old old miners' "use" trails had complicated the issue, on the Sawbug.
Yesterday's reconnaissance might be called "Sawtalian IV" since it was the fourth effort to find and follow this lost trail. The first three attempts involved driving out to Sawtooth Ridge to a point just south of the Burnett Canyon Trail, and scouting down the steep slopes just below the rim of the North Fork canyon. A trail was found, which seemed to end in a pleasant grove of Kelloggs Black Oak and Ponderosa Pine.
The discovery of the Sawbug Trail had at the last hinged upon following it up from the river. It was reasonable to hope the same approach would work on the Sawtalian Trail. So I set off down the IBT at 9:37 a.m. I had left my loppers at home, and I almost never hike without loppers. "It is a Forest Service trail," I reasoned, "it will not need lopping; and once I cross the river, I should save my strength for scrambling up and down and every which way, rather than spend it all lopping bear trails which turn out to lead nowhere."
How wise.
Immediately, I mean, in about ten steps, I wished I had my loppers. Deerbrush overhung the trail, small Douglas Fir trees were smothering it altogether in many places, and there was no sign that Tahoe National Forest (TNF) had lifted a finger to maintain the trail in the last twenty years. Someone had lopped a few branches here and there, possibly this May or June, judging by the cuts, which were just beginning to brown and check, but this trail is in rather serious trouble. How many young Douglas Fir should be removed? Only about a thousand. Of these, perhaps a hundred are large enough to need a saw. The rest could be lopped.
Then there are the small Black Oak and Canyon Live Oak which have stump-sprouted from trees TNF cut near the trail, twenty-some years ago. There are some dozens of these often multi-trunked small oaks which need cut.
The trail starts at around 5000' and at first follows a road, though much overgrown. In about 200-250 yards a vehicular closure sign is reached, and another quarter mile brings one to the end of the road, and the beginning of the foot trail proper. A small wooden sign on a large tree reads "Italian Bar Tr."
A stand of heavy timber flanks this uppermost part of the IBT, much Ponderosa (and Jeffrey?) Pine, Douglas Fir, and Sugar Pine, with some White Fir and Incense Cedar. The 1960 Volcano Fire roared through here, and scorch marks are still visible, running thirty feet up the uphill sides of many of the larger trees. There seems to be a lot of soil moisture and groundwater, and Pacific Dogwood makes a common understory tree. There are almost always "perched" water tables associated with the flat-lying strata of andesitic mudflow and rhyolite ash which cap these flat-topped ridges. The "bedrock" beneath these "young volcanics" is here the Shoo Fly Complex, very old, ~400 million years, metasedimentary rocks, sometimes slate, often metasandstone, sometimes chert.
At the beginning of the foot trail proper one drops below the "young volcanics" into the Shoo Fly. However, almost immediately some vaguely sedimentary deposits begin to appear, often associated with terraces or benches on the canyon wall. I interpret these benches as pockets of glacial till, left by the North Fork glacier. Some or all the benches may even be blurred lateral moraines. I looked almost in vain for "exotic" rocks, that is, non-Shoo-Fly-rocks, which would have helped my theory along, showing that the benches were made from rocky debris carried miles down the North Fork. The best exotics, for my purposes, would have been granite boulders. The only exotics I found were boulders of andesite. While I was sure these had indeed been dropped there by the North Fork glacier, it was troubling that directly above, on the rim of the canyon, was a large area of andesitic mudflow, full of just such boulders.
Between the benches the trail steepened. I had fine views (all about to be erased by the growth of thousands of young Douglas Fir) east and up the canyon to Big Valley Bluff and Snow Mountain, even to the Sierra Crest, where Anderson Peak and Tinkers Knob were visible for a while, before I dropped too low.
A motorcycle had descended the trail for the better part of a mile, scoring it deeply in several places, until finally a large fallen tree had blocked further progress. So. Maybe a lack of trail maintenance is not always a bad thing.
Across the canyon I could see parts of Sawtooth Ridge, especially the area scorched by a wildfire, started when a logging helicopter crashed, some years ago. However, the forest cover was too thick for me to see the area across the canyon where I would be looking for the lost Sawtalian Trail. For those of you with access to the Westville quadrangle, immediately south of Willmont Saddle, in Section 31, note a large area of relatively gentle topography, with more widely-spaced contour lines, south and east of the "31" labeling Section 31. This is where I expected to find the Sawtalian. The upper end of the Sawtalian I imagine to be quite close to the surveyed elevation of 5076', south of the Burnett Canyon Trail, on the rim of the North Fork canyon. The Sawtalian's crossing of the river I imagine to be near the "R" or the "I" of the word "AMERICAN" in Section 31.
I base this upon repeated attempts to make the topography of Lindgren's 1900 map, and the Westville quadrangle, agree. I use Adobe Photoshop to copy a patch of a scan of Lindgren's map, and then paste this patch onto my high-res scan of the Westville quadrangle. In Photoshop one can adjust the transparency of the pasted image, so that the underlying Westville quadrangle shows through. Then it remains to scale the pasted, semi-transparent patch of Lindgren's map, until the best fit is obtained between the two. For instance, one can make the two North Fork American's coincide on the south, and make the two Burnett Canyon Trails coincide on the north.
Then it is an easy matter to trace the line of the Sawtalian onto the Westville quadrangle.
I was always in shade on these north-facing slopes while descending the trail. Around the 3200' contour the trail passes a huge Ponderosa Pine on one of the best of all the benches, breaking a little west before plunging south to the Marrs Mine and the river. This Big Pine Bench actually has a little ridge paralleling the main canyon, which maybe just maybe might be a much-blurred moraine crest.
About this elevation one suddenly begins to encounter the odd little California Nutmeg, Torreya californica, with their spiky sharp needles and sharp unpleasant scent. These conifers are in the Yew family.
Dropping towards 400 feet above the river, I began to hear the North Fork, speaking in the muted tones of Fall. I noticed a parallel trail line above me and scrambled up for a look. Strangely, it was broader than the main trail, and had what the main trail mainly lacked, dry-laid stone retaining walls. However, it soon seemed to end.
Later I decided it may have been made to facilitate the skidding of equipment down to the Marrs Mine.
Dropping back down to the main trail, I hit an old human trail running along level, more faintly to the west, but quite broad and plain to the east. It was about 300 feet above the river. Since I needed to go down the canyon nearly half a mile in any case, I followed the faint trail west. It soon degenerated into what seemed to be multiple strands of bear trails, but these would then recombine and once again I felt sure it was an old human trail.
After a time, tho, I lost the thing, probably by staying low when it climbed high. I followed a steep bear trail down, noting its recent use, the soft soils torn up and heaved into heaps by the great weight of the bear, before, to my surprise, I met still another faint human trail. This angled gently down to the river and, perhaps unsurprisingly, put me exactly where I wanted to be, at the imagined, the purported, crossing of the river on the Sawtalian Trail.
The river itself was in shadow, but just across and above the cliffs, to the north, the sun shone brightly.
After a brief rest, I photographed a low waterfall a little ways downstream, where the river enters an inner gorge of polished Shoo Fly strata. The waterfall, four or five feet high, spoke rather loudly. The rocks were striped and potholed and oddly sculptured. A very pretty place.
It was easy to cross the river, and I began looking for some sign of the Sawtalian. The January 1997 flood event had carved the banks back. Just downstream, cliffs dropped to the river; just upstream, cliffs dropped to the river. I was in the only possible place to climb up and out of the gorge "easily." This meant that whatever trail I might find would, at the least, also be a game trail.
I saw a faint line and scrambled up. With some imagination it could be thought of as an old human trail. It climbed to the west, but first I followed it down and east, and immediately came to a certain ravine, critical to the route of the Sawtalian. Lindgren showed the Sawtalian breaking west down low, and crossing to the west side of this very ravine.
So I turned back west on my little shred of a path and made an easy climb to about 100 feet above the waterfall area.
The relatively east slopes indicated on the Westville quadrangle were all around me. I began zig-zagging up and east. Open forest alternated with curious meadowy areas dominated by a kind of bunch grass. Unfortunately, the helicopter logging which had started the fire some years ago, had involved these very slopes. Slash covered the ground in places. There were many stumps and fallen trees and trees they had cut but left to rot.
All this was well within the North Fork American Wild & Scenic River "corridor." I believe that most of this logging if not all occurred on Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI) lands in Section 31, an odd-numbered "railroad" section. Taking a guess, the logging took place around 1990, or a few years later.
The logging slash and fallen trees tended to obscure anything in the way of old human trails, but abundant bear trails led around and over the obstacles, so I continued zig-zagging back and forth while slowly climbing and making east. I reached the first, westerly branch of the "critical ravine," and found water flowing, in fact, there was a gigantic patch of gigantic Giant Chain Ferns all along the ravine, acres of ferns, in full sun, I can't say I've ever seen so many in one place. This species of fern *only* grows where there is year-around water at the surface.
I had my choice among many bear trails crossing the World of Ferns, and chose one of the shorter crossings, partly on a fallen tree. Scouting up and to the east, zigging and zagging back and forth, I saw nothing to hang my hat on. So far, no Sawtalian.
I came to the eastern branch of the ravine. While this too had water and ferns, it was dominated by great masses of California Grape. They spread across the floor of the ravine, and climbed every tree near the ravine, completely encasing many of the smaller trees. I called this the World of Grapes. Again the bears led the way across. Climbing the far side, I found more of the same kind of terrain: open sunny bunchgrass meadows, intertwined with open forest stands of Canyon Live Oak and Ponderosa Pine. I suspect that the meadows and the springs alike are associated with deposits of glacial till, like the benches I had seen along the Italian Bar Trail. Closer to the river itself, these sedimentary deposits are glacial outwash. The best way to tell outwash from till is that outwash is stratified, it is layered; till is not. But to tell if till is till or not, one must see a cross-section of the deposit. Roadcuts make good cross-sections, but no roads were present here.
I am really just relying on instinct when I say that the bunchgrass meadows and springs are related to deposits of glacial till.
At any rate, zigzagging and climbing and making east, I hit a smaller ravine, with its own small patch of chain ferns, mixed with blackberry vines and grapes. As I tried a likely bear trail into this area, and began to get a little tangled up in vines and a little scratched by thorns, I suddenly noticed I was on the line of a trail-like depression in the ground. Just the sort of thing which might develop by leading strings of mules across soft soils over the course of a few decades.
Since I was already about 400 feet or so above the river, and had the 2700-foot climb ahead of me, back to the car, and since the thorns were a nuisance, I turned back west and followed my shallow groove.
It led to a very easy crossing of the World of Grapes, higher than I had crossed it, and continued down and west on a very gentle line. I am almost sure that it is, in fact, the Sawtalian Trail. However, it became hard to follow. Logging slash and fallen trees forced me off its line, but I found it again, easily enough, at first. I even found some rock-work along the thing. Then I seemed to lose it. In a way, it was because the terrain was too open, to gentle, too easy. If topography does not force one particular trail line, stock and hikers may well wander a little, and the trail becomes less well-defined.
Perhaps that was the case. Following it down and west, I crossed the World of Ferns, again more easily than I had on the way in, and higher, too, and then, just when I figured I had lost the trail altogether, I came to a fine figure of a pear tree, near some hard-rock mining prospects, and a possible collapsed tunnel.
This was somewhat encouraging. If one were to live year-around down by Italian Bar, one would be up there in the bunchgrass meadows, and the springs, where the sun shines, for, even this early in the fall, the river itself gets little to no sun, and the southside, north-facing slopes, about none at all. It seems to me that if there is a pear tree, there is likely a cabin site. I didn't see one, but I didn't look.
Soon thereafter I hit a little old mining ditch and followed it west, into yet another ravine. Scouting further west yet, I found nothing, so I retreated east, and reached the place where I had first climbed up from the river on a faint old human trail. This trail made an especially easy crossing of the Critical Ravine, and an easy descent the last few yards to the North Fork, which easy route I had missed earlier.
At the river, I rested, ate lunch, and then followed along upstream to the Marrs Mine, with its stamp mill, tunnels, rock-crusher, and shafts. There is also a nasty pile of garbage near the stamp mill, several tarps disintegrating into tiny shreds of plastic, some aluminum chairs, a blanket, etc. etc. Looks like about four to six backpack loads.
Before climbing up and out of the river, I saw that, on the north side, a faint trail led up to a patch of forest in a deposit of glacial outwash. I crossed over and explored up there for fifteen minutes or so, finding several old human trails, all in active use by bears. Both here and up above in the bunchgrass meadows area I saw signs of mining, not on a large scale, but gullies from ground-sluicing, piles of boulders, and small mining ditches here and there.
Finally it was time to start up the Italian Bar Trail. Along the way I paused to examine the east-bearing side trail roughly 400 feet above the river, and followed it about a quarter-mile, before it began to climb. Its junction with the main IBT is marked with unusual blazes, on two Douglas Fir trees, in the form of a cross. Another cross blaze is found a little ways along this trail, to the east.
Retreating, there was nothing to do but slog on up and up and up. I more fully appreciated how steep the IBT is in many places, how few the switchbacks. I saw two old "small i" blazes of the sort made by TNF rangers in the olden days, on the downhill sides of large trees beside the trail. At about 4:30 p.m. I reached the car, pretty well soaked with sweat.
All in all it was a very nice day in the North Fork canyon, and although I cannot say with certainty that I found any part of the Sawtalian Trail, I did find several old human trail segments on the north side of the river, which make a good fit with what is depicted in Waldermar Lindgren's 1900-era topographic map.
More exploration is needed.
In the Big Picture, there once was a rich complex of trails threading all through Tahoe National Forest, many dating back to the Gold Rush. Gradually, roads penetrated the region, and more and more of the trails fell out of use. After World War Two many more roads were constructed, and logging took places in areas which had been pristine.
Thus over time, official TNF maps have shown fewer and fewer trails, and more and more roads. I believe that, in some areas, we should turn the clock back.
Sawtooth Ridge lies between two very wild canyons, the main North Fork, and the North Fork of the North Fork. Clearcuts have marred parts of the ridge, and a road has replaced much of the old Sawtooth Trail. Clearcuts heal over time, and over time a road degenerates into a trail, perfectly well-suited for equestrians and mountain bikes.
Various spurs trails lead away into the canyons on either side. Considering how rare our wildlands have become, I believe that very much of Sawtooth Ridge should be closed to motor vehicles, surely everything west of Helester Point, or possibly everything west of the Sawtalian Trail. The Sawbug Trail, Sawtalian Trail, Government Springs Trail, Rawhide Mine Trail, and still other trails which have lapsed into complete disuse and obscurity, should be re-opened, for hikers to enjoy new and varied perspectives, new routes in and out of the wild canyons.
We really should aim for the next ridge and canyon north to be included in the mix: Blue Canyon, and the "Lost Camp" ridge dividing it from the North Fork of the North Fork, are also very wild and beautiful. There once was a trail descending the length of the Lost Camp Ridge, to the Rawhide Mine. This should be re-opened for hikers. There should be a vehicular closure at Lost Camp itself. Every effort should be made for TNF to acquire the private inholdings in this region, beginning with Lost Camp, the Rawhide Mine, and the Sawtooth Ridge.
This area is shown on the USGS 7.5 minute Westville quadrangle.
My objective was to find and follow, if possible, the "Sawtalian" trail, on the north side of the canyon, which left the crest of Sawtooth Ridge at a little over 5000' elevation, and dropped south and west to a crossing of the North Fork at 2300', near Italian Bar. This trail is only depicted on a couple of the old maps in my possession, notably, the ca. 1900 USGS "Colfax Folio" of Waldemar Lindgren. This is a topographic map, made without the benefit of aerial photographs, but is quite interesting in that it shows several trails which have fallen out of use and are, as it were, lost, and forgotten.
Perversely, it omits some important trails which existed at that time, such as "the" Italian Bar Trail (IBT). Lindgren also leaves out much of the Sawtooth Trail itself, which led down the length of Sawtooth Ridge. This Sawtooth Ridge forms a part of the divide between the main North Fork and its principal tributary, the North Fork of the North Fork. Rather than having a flat crest, as do so many of the ridges in middle elevations, it has a succession of knolls and saddles. I attribute this to the glaciers which repeatedly flowed down both canyons, attacking the ridge from either side.
Around ten years ago I published the diary of Isaac Tibbetts Coffin, a gold miner and photographer who lived most of his life in Dutch Flat, where he died, in 1903. Forty years before, he lived in Burnett Canyon, near Texas Hill, quite near the Sawtooth Ridge. From his cabin he could take the Burnett Canyon Trail south to Sawtooth, and continue south on the Sawtalian Trail to the North Fork American. The south-facing slopes of Sawtooth often remain free of snow, in stark contrast to Burnett Canyon. He might have, say, six feet of hard-packed snow on the ground at his cabin in Burnett Canyon, and yet find none at all along the Sawtalian Trail.
In the Sierra, microclimate counts for a lot.
Now, I.T. Coffin used the Sawtooth Trail, and also what I have named the Sawbug Trail, which also drops from Sawtooth Ridge, a few miles west, to Humbug Bar; another "lost" trail. A series of seven explorations over recent years finally succeeded in tracing the line of the Sawbug. The main problems proved to be at either end, both near the river, and near the crest of Sawtooth. The main central reach of the trail was easily followed, if one could only get on the thing.
A maze of bear trails and old old miners' "use" trails had complicated the issue, on the Sawbug.
Yesterday's reconnaissance might be called "Sawtalian IV" since it was the fourth effort to find and follow this lost trail. The first three attempts involved driving out to Sawtooth Ridge to a point just south of the Burnett Canyon Trail, and scouting down the steep slopes just below the rim of the North Fork canyon. A trail was found, which seemed to end in a pleasant grove of Kelloggs Black Oak and Ponderosa Pine.
The discovery of the Sawbug Trail had at the last hinged upon following it up from the river. It was reasonable to hope the same approach would work on the Sawtalian Trail. So I set off down the IBT at 9:37 a.m. I had left my loppers at home, and I almost never hike without loppers. "It is a Forest Service trail," I reasoned, "it will not need lopping; and once I cross the river, I should save my strength for scrambling up and down and every which way, rather than spend it all lopping bear trails which turn out to lead nowhere."
How wise.
Immediately, I mean, in about ten steps, I wished I had my loppers. Deerbrush overhung the trail, small Douglas Fir trees were smothering it altogether in many places, and there was no sign that Tahoe National Forest (TNF) had lifted a finger to maintain the trail in the last twenty years. Someone had lopped a few branches here and there, possibly this May or June, judging by the cuts, which were just beginning to brown and check, but this trail is in rather serious trouble. How many young Douglas Fir should be removed? Only about a thousand. Of these, perhaps a hundred are large enough to need a saw. The rest could be lopped.
Then there are the small Black Oak and Canyon Live Oak which have stump-sprouted from trees TNF cut near the trail, twenty-some years ago. There are some dozens of these often multi-trunked small oaks which need cut.
The trail starts at around 5000' and at first follows a road, though much overgrown. In about 200-250 yards a vehicular closure sign is reached, and another quarter mile brings one to the end of the road, and the beginning of the foot trail proper. A small wooden sign on a large tree reads "Italian Bar Tr."
A stand of heavy timber flanks this uppermost part of the IBT, much Ponderosa (and Jeffrey?) Pine, Douglas Fir, and Sugar Pine, with some White Fir and Incense Cedar. The 1960 Volcano Fire roared through here, and scorch marks are still visible, running thirty feet up the uphill sides of many of the larger trees. There seems to be a lot of soil moisture and groundwater, and Pacific Dogwood makes a common understory tree. There are almost always "perched" water tables associated with the flat-lying strata of andesitic mudflow and rhyolite ash which cap these flat-topped ridges. The "bedrock" beneath these "young volcanics" is here the Shoo Fly Complex, very old, ~400 million years, metasedimentary rocks, sometimes slate, often metasandstone, sometimes chert.
At the beginning of the foot trail proper one drops below the "young volcanics" into the Shoo Fly. However, almost immediately some vaguely sedimentary deposits begin to appear, often associated with terraces or benches on the canyon wall. I interpret these benches as pockets of glacial till, left by the North Fork glacier. Some or all the benches may even be blurred lateral moraines. I looked almost in vain for "exotic" rocks, that is, non-Shoo-Fly-rocks, which would have helped my theory along, showing that the benches were made from rocky debris carried miles down the North Fork. The best exotics, for my purposes, would have been granite boulders. The only exotics I found were boulders of andesite. While I was sure these had indeed been dropped there by the North Fork glacier, it was troubling that directly above, on the rim of the canyon, was a large area of andesitic mudflow, full of just such boulders.
Between the benches the trail steepened. I had fine views (all about to be erased by the growth of thousands of young Douglas Fir) east and up the canyon to Big Valley Bluff and Snow Mountain, even to the Sierra Crest, where Anderson Peak and Tinkers Knob were visible for a while, before I dropped too low.
A motorcycle had descended the trail for the better part of a mile, scoring it deeply in several places, until finally a large fallen tree had blocked further progress. So. Maybe a lack of trail maintenance is not always a bad thing.
Across the canyon I could see parts of Sawtooth Ridge, especially the area scorched by a wildfire, started when a logging helicopter crashed, some years ago. However, the forest cover was too thick for me to see the area across the canyon where I would be looking for the lost Sawtalian Trail. For those of you with access to the Westville quadrangle, immediately south of Willmont Saddle, in Section 31, note a large area of relatively gentle topography, with more widely-spaced contour lines, south and east of the "31" labeling Section 31. This is where I expected to find the Sawtalian. The upper end of the Sawtalian I imagine to be quite close to the surveyed elevation of 5076', south of the Burnett Canyon Trail, on the rim of the North Fork canyon. The Sawtalian's crossing of the river I imagine to be near the "R" or the "I" of the word "AMERICAN" in Section 31.
I base this upon repeated attempts to make the topography of Lindgren's 1900 map, and the Westville quadrangle, agree. I use Adobe Photoshop to copy a patch of a scan of Lindgren's map, and then paste this patch onto my high-res scan of the Westville quadrangle. In Photoshop one can adjust the transparency of the pasted image, so that the underlying Westville quadrangle shows through. Then it remains to scale the pasted, semi-transparent patch of Lindgren's map, until the best fit is obtained between the two. For instance, one can make the two North Fork American's coincide on the south, and make the two Burnett Canyon Trails coincide on the north.
Then it is an easy matter to trace the line of the Sawtalian onto the Westville quadrangle.
I was always in shade on these north-facing slopes while descending the trail. Around the 3200' contour the trail passes a huge Ponderosa Pine on one of the best of all the benches, breaking a little west before plunging south to the Marrs Mine and the river. This Big Pine Bench actually has a little ridge paralleling the main canyon, which maybe just maybe might be a much-blurred moraine crest.
About this elevation one suddenly begins to encounter the odd little California Nutmeg, Torreya californica, with their spiky sharp needles and sharp unpleasant scent. These conifers are in the Yew family.
Dropping towards 400 feet above the river, I began to hear the North Fork, speaking in the muted tones of Fall. I noticed a parallel trail line above me and scrambled up for a look. Strangely, it was broader than the main trail, and had what the main trail mainly lacked, dry-laid stone retaining walls. However, it soon seemed to end.
Later I decided it may have been made to facilitate the skidding of equipment down to the Marrs Mine.
Dropping back down to the main trail, I hit an old human trail running along level, more faintly to the west, but quite broad and plain to the east. It was about 300 feet above the river. Since I needed to go down the canyon nearly half a mile in any case, I followed the faint trail west. It soon degenerated into what seemed to be multiple strands of bear trails, but these would then recombine and once again I felt sure it was an old human trail.
After a time, tho, I lost the thing, probably by staying low when it climbed high. I followed a steep bear trail down, noting its recent use, the soft soils torn up and heaved into heaps by the great weight of the bear, before, to my surprise, I met still another faint human trail. This angled gently down to the river and, perhaps unsurprisingly, put me exactly where I wanted to be, at the imagined, the purported, crossing of the river on the Sawtalian Trail.
The river itself was in shadow, but just across and above the cliffs, to the north, the sun shone brightly.
After a brief rest, I photographed a low waterfall a little ways downstream, where the river enters an inner gorge of polished Shoo Fly strata. The waterfall, four or five feet high, spoke rather loudly. The rocks were striped and potholed and oddly sculptured. A very pretty place.
It was easy to cross the river, and I began looking for some sign of the Sawtalian. The January 1997 flood event had carved the banks back. Just downstream, cliffs dropped to the river; just upstream, cliffs dropped to the river. I was in the only possible place to climb up and out of the gorge "easily." This meant that whatever trail I might find would, at the least, also be a game trail.
I saw a faint line and scrambled up. With some imagination it could be thought of as an old human trail. It climbed to the west, but first I followed it down and east, and immediately came to a certain ravine, critical to the route of the Sawtalian. Lindgren showed the Sawtalian breaking west down low, and crossing to the west side of this very ravine.
So I turned back west on my little shred of a path and made an easy climb to about 100 feet above the waterfall area.
The relatively east slopes indicated on the Westville quadrangle were all around me. I began zig-zagging up and east. Open forest alternated with curious meadowy areas dominated by a kind of bunch grass. Unfortunately, the helicopter logging which had started the fire some years ago, had involved these very slopes. Slash covered the ground in places. There were many stumps and fallen trees and trees they had cut but left to rot.
All this was well within the North Fork American Wild & Scenic River "corridor." I believe that most of this logging if not all occurred on Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI) lands in Section 31, an odd-numbered "railroad" section. Taking a guess, the logging took place around 1990, or a few years later.
The logging slash and fallen trees tended to obscure anything in the way of old human trails, but abundant bear trails led around and over the obstacles, so I continued zig-zagging back and forth while slowly climbing and making east. I reached the first, westerly branch of the "critical ravine," and found water flowing, in fact, there was a gigantic patch of gigantic Giant Chain Ferns all along the ravine, acres of ferns, in full sun, I can't say I've ever seen so many in one place. This species of fern *only* grows where there is year-around water at the surface.
I had my choice among many bear trails crossing the World of Ferns, and chose one of the shorter crossings, partly on a fallen tree. Scouting up and to the east, zigging and zagging back and forth, I saw nothing to hang my hat on. So far, no Sawtalian.
I came to the eastern branch of the ravine. While this too had water and ferns, it was dominated by great masses of California Grape. They spread across the floor of the ravine, and climbed every tree near the ravine, completely encasing many of the smaller trees. I called this the World of Grapes. Again the bears led the way across. Climbing the far side, I found more of the same kind of terrain: open sunny bunchgrass meadows, intertwined with open forest stands of Canyon Live Oak and Ponderosa Pine. I suspect that the meadows and the springs alike are associated with deposits of glacial till, like the benches I had seen along the Italian Bar Trail. Closer to the river itself, these sedimentary deposits are glacial outwash. The best way to tell outwash from till is that outwash is stratified, it is layered; till is not. But to tell if till is till or not, one must see a cross-section of the deposit. Roadcuts make good cross-sections, but no roads were present here.
I am really just relying on instinct when I say that the bunchgrass meadows and springs are related to deposits of glacial till.
At any rate, zigzagging and climbing and making east, I hit a smaller ravine, with its own small patch of chain ferns, mixed with blackberry vines and grapes. As I tried a likely bear trail into this area, and began to get a little tangled up in vines and a little scratched by thorns, I suddenly noticed I was on the line of a trail-like depression in the ground. Just the sort of thing which might develop by leading strings of mules across soft soils over the course of a few decades.
Since I was already about 400 feet or so above the river, and had the 2700-foot climb ahead of me, back to the car, and since the thorns were a nuisance, I turned back west and followed my shallow groove.
It led to a very easy crossing of the World of Grapes, higher than I had crossed it, and continued down and west on a very gentle line. I am almost sure that it is, in fact, the Sawtalian Trail. However, it became hard to follow. Logging slash and fallen trees forced me off its line, but I found it again, easily enough, at first. I even found some rock-work along the thing. Then I seemed to lose it. In a way, it was because the terrain was too open, to gentle, too easy. If topography does not force one particular trail line, stock and hikers may well wander a little, and the trail becomes less well-defined.
Perhaps that was the case. Following it down and west, I crossed the World of Ferns, again more easily than I had on the way in, and higher, too, and then, just when I figured I had lost the trail altogether, I came to a fine figure of a pear tree, near some hard-rock mining prospects, and a possible collapsed tunnel.
This was somewhat encouraging. If one were to live year-around down by Italian Bar, one would be up there in the bunchgrass meadows, and the springs, where the sun shines, for, even this early in the fall, the river itself gets little to no sun, and the southside, north-facing slopes, about none at all. It seems to me that if there is a pear tree, there is likely a cabin site. I didn't see one, but I didn't look.
Soon thereafter I hit a little old mining ditch and followed it west, into yet another ravine. Scouting further west yet, I found nothing, so I retreated east, and reached the place where I had first climbed up from the river on a faint old human trail. This trail made an especially easy crossing of the Critical Ravine, and an easy descent the last few yards to the North Fork, which easy route I had missed earlier.
At the river, I rested, ate lunch, and then followed along upstream to the Marrs Mine, with its stamp mill, tunnels, rock-crusher, and shafts. There is also a nasty pile of garbage near the stamp mill, several tarps disintegrating into tiny shreds of plastic, some aluminum chairs, a blanket, etc. etc. Looks like about four to six backpack loads.
Before climbing up and out of the river, I saw that, on the north side, a faint trail led up to a patch of forest in a deposit of glacial outwash. I crossed over and explored up there for fifteen minutes or so, finding several old human trails, all in active use by bears. Both here and up above in the bunchgrass meadows area I saw signs of mining, not on a large scale, but gullies from ground-sluicing, piles of boulders, and small mining ditches here and there.
Finally it was time to start up the Italian Bar Trail. Along the way I paused to examine the east-bearing side trail roughly 400 feet above the river, and followed it about a quarter-mile, before it began to climb. Its junction with the main IBT is marked with unusual blazes, on two Douglas Fir trees, in the form of a cross. Another cross blaze is found a little ways along this trail, to the east.
Retreating, there was nothing to do but slog on up and up and up. I more fully appreciated how steep the IBT is in many places, how few the switchbacks. I saw two old "small i" blazes of the sort made by TNF rangers in the olden days, on the downhill sides of large trees beside the trail. At about 4:30 p.m. I reached the car, pretty well soaked with sweat.
All in all it was a very nice day in the North Fork canyon, and although I cannot say with certainty that I found any part of the Sawtalian Trail, I did find several old human trail segments on the north side of the river, which make a good fit with what is depicted in Waldermar Lindgren's 1900-era topographic map.
More exploration is needed.
In the Big Picture, there once was a rich complex of trails threading all through Tahoe National Forest, many dating back to the Gold Rush. Gradually, roads penetrated the region, and more and more of the trails fell out of use. After World War Two many more roads were constructed, and logging took places in areas which had been pristine.
Thus over time, official TNF maps have shown fewer and fewer trails, and more and more roads. I believe that, in some areas, we should turn the clock back.
Sawtooth Ridge lies between two very wild canyons, the main North Fork, and the North Fork of the North Fork. Clearcuts have marred parts of the ridge, and a road has replaced much of the old Sawtooth Trail. Clearcuts heal over time, and over time a road degenerates into a trail, perfectly well-suited for equestrians and mountain bikes.
Various spurs trails lead away into the canyons on either side. Considering how rare our wildlands have become, I believe that very much of Sawtooth Ridge should be closed to motor vehicles, surely everything west of Helester Point, or possibly everything west of the Sawtalian Trail. The Sawbug Trail, Sawtalian Trail, Government Springs Trail, Rawhide Mine Trail, and still other trails which have lapsed into complete disuse and obscurity, should be re-opened, for hikers to enjoy new and varied perspectives, new routes in and out of the wild canyons.
We really should aim for the next ridge and canyon north to be included in the mix: Blue Canyon, and the "Lost Camp" ridge dividing it from the North Fork of the North Fork, are also very wild and beautiful. There once was a trail descending the length of the Lost Camp Ridge, to the Rawhide Mine. This should be re-opened for hikers. There should be a vehicular closure at Lost Camp itself. Every effort should be made for TNF to acquire the private inholdings in this region, beginning with Lost Camp, the Rawhide Mine, and the Sawtooth Ridge.
Monday, August 9, 2004
The Seven Sawbugs of Doom
Sunday morning Tom Molloy, Catherine O'Riley and I drove up to Emigrant Gap, out Forest Road 19 to Texas Hill, and then on up Burnett Canyon to Sawtooth Ridge. We drove the Sawtooth Road down the ridge to the southwest, the North Fork to our left, the North Fork of the North Fork to our right. We passed the steep SPI clearcuts in Section 35, just west of Helester Point, and at last reached the False Pass, a deep notch below the 3800-foot contour, climbing onto the minor knoll or tooth to the west, and parking at the True Pass, at about 4000' elevation.
It took about two hours to reach the True Pass from Dutch Flat. Immediately west of the True Pass is Tooth 4210, as may be seen on the USGS 7.5 minute Westville quadrangle.
We were determined to close the gap on the historic Sawbug Trail. It only remained to stroll merrily down the wide trail, bolstered by dry-laid stone walls, to, presumably, the Bear Bed Mine, where Ron and Catherine and I had lost the Sawbug last Wednesday. The task seemed so insignificant we were concerned to imagine what we would do with the rest of our day; drive out to Big Valley Bluff? Visit Burnett Canyon?
We gradually became ready, as the noon hour neared, and the sky was blue, the temperature, warming to hot, and as if in presage of what would befall us, I immediately seized upon a faint trail line leading through heavy brush from the road, and declared it to be The Trail; so we fought our way through it, and found it was actually not at all The Trail.
It was at least near. A short scramble put us on track, and there were the dry-laid stone walls, there was the wide trail bed we had walked so little of last Wednesday. So now, down to the Bear Bed! We lopped through the usual types of obstructions met on the upper Sawbug, mainly Canyon Live Oak branches, and some few spiky Torreya branches; an occasional Deerbrush, and one patch of manzanita. The trail began to make switchbacks, but its overall trend was down and to the west--perfect. We found some remarkable views all the way up the North Fork to Snow Mountain and even Tinkers Knob, on the crest. There was little to no doubt as to the line of the trail.
A long descending traverse west led us to a terrace fronting a collapsed tunnel. Immediately below, another terrace held some heavy bits of equipment of some sort. We were hot and sweaty after much lopping, and rested in the shade on the Upper Terrace. We would later call it the Upper Mine, for, as it transpired, there was a series of tunnels leading almost straight down the canyon wall, bearing only slightly to the east, and we developed names for each tunnel in turn.
Let us say there were five tunnels. From top to bottom, then, we had Upper Mine, then the Winch Terrace (not a tunnel site--a fragmented gigantic winch with hundreds of feet of cable embedded amidst various and sundry massive chunks of iron, axles, wheels, many spilled down the steep slopes, etc. etc.)--and then the Big Oak Mine, where the broad opening of the tunnel was framed by a truly ancient and enormous Canyon Live Oak, and an unusually massive wheelbarrow, all of dark iron, lay nearby; then what I thought of as Shaft and Stope, a tunnel which led quickly to a shaft opening just below the Big Oak Mine--but I believe we also called this the Fallen Tree Tunnel--then another tunnel, perhaps we never gave it a name--and then at last the Bear Bed Mine.
So. Almost right away we established that the Bear Bed was about 300 feet in elevation below the Upper Mine, and slightly to the east. I had dropped down slightly west from the Upper Mine, hit the Sawbug west and below the Bear Bed, and followed it up to that tunnel.
So, it only remained to connect the Bear Bed to the Upper Mine with a trail.
We scouted high and low and side to side. We dropped down to the Bear Bed, followed the Sawbug down and west to a certain spur ridge, and looked high and low for a switchback which may have carried the Sawbug higher onto the spur. Numerous game trails confused the issue, as usual, but we satisfied ourselves that the Sawbug did indeed make straight for the Bear Bed.
We followed the most proper continuation of the line of the Sawbug, up and to the east, past the Bear Bed, just as Ron and Catherine and I had, last Wednesday, and found a plausible trail line which, however, soon leveled out and then even dropped, only to essentially end in a clump of close-set Torreya.
Torreya californica is a conifer in the Yew family, a naked-seed gymnosperm, and rather than having cones bearing many naked seeds, it has single seeds, which resemble large green olives. Many of these somewhat scrubby and stunted Torreya, which have stump-sprouted again and again following wildfires, were carrying heavy crops of these giant green seeds.
Several times we ended up back at the Upper Mine, resting in the shade of the terrace, and discussing the problem. We were so darn close, a few hundred feet on a horizontal, and a couple few hundred in elevation. The miners must have had their own trail linking the many tunnels. Find the miners' trail, and let it count as the True Sawbug.
So. We had already often followed a certain switchback just below the Upper Mine, using it to gain the Winch Terrace, which trail, all in all, was the most plausible continuation of the Upper Sawbug. We spent quite a bit more time on this trail, and did discover its possible continuation, in a series of switchbacks which wore off roughly half of the elevation down to the Bear Bed.
But we never could connect it through.
Smoke had filtered into the canyon. Had one of the Calaveras fires flared up strongly? They had filled the North Fork with smoke two days before. We began to smell the smoke. The day was now hot, quite hot, and I for one had had quite enough of these steep slopes, with their slippery Canyon Live Oak leaves, and the constant slipping and stumbling which could attend even a very short climb.
We made our way up to the Upper Mine, frustrated, disconsolate; it was almost impossible, given how throughly we had scouted the length and the breadth and the very depth of these ragged slopes, impossible to have missed the trail. The most rational explanation I could find was that, since the Sawbug pre-dated the mines by several decades (the Sawbug was in use at least as early as 1863, as evidenced by the Diary of Isaac Tibbetts Coffin, of Dutch Flat; and the mines looked to date from as late as the 1920s, probably no earlier than 1900)--since the Sawbug was older, the debris from the mines may have slid down the steep slopes, and completely buried the line of the trail.
This seemed reasonable enough.
However, the uncertainty of it all weighed heavily. Could the Sawbug have leveled out past the Bear Bed Mine, which I GPSed at about 3600' elevation, and made for the False Pass, at 3720+ feet? So that the False Pass is in fact the True Pass, and the well-defined trail dropping in switchbacks to the Upper Mine, was a trail to the mine and nothing more? It cannot be entirely discounted.
So. The mystery continues.
We found the going rather tough, going back up to the Sawtooth Road and the Land Rover, but to was nice to drive along with the windows down, and gradually recover from our exertions. I was streaked with blood as usual, wet with sweat, little branches and leaves caught in clothes and hair. We all lamented our failure and kept on going over the same ground, in our minds, and in conversation, that we had criss-crossed on foot for hours.
I spotted a chunk of plastic trim on the road, and we snagged it, speculating it may have been stripped from Ron's truck, a few weeks ago.
Climbing east out of the False Pass Which Still Could Maybe Be the True Pass, we suddenly met Ron himself, who had on the spur of the moment decided to drive out there to see for himself. The piece of plastic was indeed from his rear bumper. After a brief chat--we learned that the smoke was from a fire near the Stevens Trail, down by Colfax--we went our separate ways.
By the way, the Sawtooth Road can absolutely eat a vehicle. The brush will scratch your paint. I can't recommend it to anyone, not much west of Helester Point, anyway.
It could be that Ron found the trail, where we failed to find it; he has an almost mystical sense for old trails.
I would like the benefit of cool weather, the next time I have a go at the old Sawbug.
Maybe the eighth time is the charm!
It took about two hours to reach the True Pass from Dutch Flat. Immediately west of the True Pass is Tooth 4210, as may be seen on the USGS 7.5 minute Westville quadrangle.
We were determined to close the gap on the historic Sawbug Trail. It only remained to stroll merrily down the wide trail, bolstered by dry-laid stone walls, to, presumably, the Bear Bed Mine, where Ron and Catherine and I had lost the Sawbug last Wednesday. The task seemed so insignificant we were concerned to imagine what we would do with the rest of our day; drive out to Big Valley Bluff? Visit Burnett Canyon?
We gradually became ready, as the noon hour neared, and the sky was blue, the temperature, warming to hot, and as if in presage of what would befall us, I immediately seized upon a faint trail line leading through heavy brush from the road, and declared it to be The Trail; so we fought our way through it, and found it was actually not at all The Trail.
It was at least near. A short scramble put us on track, and there were the dry-laid stone walls, there was the wide trail bed we had walked so little of last Wednesday. So now, down to the Bear Bed! We lopped through the usual types of obstructions met on the upper Sawbug, mainly Canyon Live Oak branches, and some few spiky Torreya branches; an occasional Deerbrush, and one patch of manzanita. The trail began to make switchbacks, but its overall trend was down and to the west--perfect. We found some remarkable views all the way up the North Fork to Snow Mountain and even Tinkers Knob, on the crest. There was little to no doubt as to the line of the trail.
A long descending traverse west led us to a terrace fronting a collapsed tunnel. Immediately below, another terrace held some heavy bits of equipment of some sort. We were hot and sweaty after much lopping, and rested in the shade on the Upper Terrace. We would later call it the Upper Mine, for, as it transpired, there was a series of tunnels leading almost straight down the canyon wall, bearing only slightly to the east, and we developed names for each tunnel in turn.
Let us say there were five tunnels. From top to bottom, then, we had Upper Mine, then the Winch Terrace (not a tunnel site--a fragmented gigantic winch with hundreds of feet of cable embedded amidst various and sundry massive chunks of iron, axles, wheels, many spilled down the steep slopes, etc. etc.)--and then the Big Oak Mine, where the broad opening of the tunnel was framed by a truly ancient and enormous Canyon Live Oak, and an unusually massive wheelbarrow, all of dark iron, lay nearby; then what I thought of as Shaft and Stope, a tunnel which led quickly to a shaft opening just below the Big Oak Mine--but I believe we also called this the Fallen Tree Tunnel--then another tunnel, perhaps we never gave it a name--and then at last the Bear Bed Mine.
So. Almost right away we established that the Bear Bed was about 300 feet in elevation below the Upper Mine, and slightly to the east. I had dropped down slightly west from the Upper Mine, hit the Sawbug west and below the Bear Bed, and followed it up to that tunnel.
So, it only remained to connect the Bear Bed to the Upper Mine with a trail.
We scouted high and low and side to side. We dropped down to the Bear Bed, followed the Sawbug down and west to a certain spur ridge, and looked high and low for a switchback which may have carried the Sawbug higher onto the spur. Numerous game trails confused the issue, as usual, but we satisfied ourselves that the Sawbug did indeed make straight for the Bear Bed.
We followed the most proper continuation of the line of the Sawbug, up and to the east, past the Bear Bed, just as Ron and Catherine and I had, last Wednesday, and found a plausible trail line which, however, soon leveled out and then even dropped, only to essentially end in a clump of close-set Torreya.
Torreya californica is a conifer in the Yew family, a naked-seed gymnosperm, and rather than having cones bearing many naked seeds, it has single seeds, which resemble large green olives. Many of these somewhat scrubby and stunted Torreya, which have stump-sprouted again and again following wildfires, were carrying heavy crops of these giant green seeds.
Several times we ended up back at the Upper Mine, resting in the shade of the terrace, and discussing the problem. We were so darn close, a few hundred feet on a horizontal, and a couple few hundred in elevation. The miners must have had their own trail linking the many tunnels. Find the miners' trail, and let it count as the True Sawbug.
So. We had already often followed a certain switchback just below the Upper Mine, using it to gain the Winch Terrace, which trail, all in all, was the most plausible continuation of the Upper Sawbug. We spent quite a bit more time on this trail, and did discover its possible continuation, in a series of switchbacks which wore off roughly half of the elevation down to the Bear Bed.
But we never could connect it through.
Smoke had filtered into the canyon. Had one of the Calaveras fires flared up strongly? They had filled the North Fork with smoke two days before. We began to smell the smoke. The day was now hot, quite hot, and I for one had had quite enough of these steep slopes, with their slippery Canyon Live Oak leaves, and the constant slipping and stumbling which could attend even a very short climb.
We made our way up to the Upper Mine, frustrated, disconsolate; it was almost impossible, given how throughly we had scouted the length and the breadth and the very depth of these ragged slopes, impossible to have missed the trail. The most rational explanation I could find was that, since the Sawbug pre-dated the mines by several decades (the Sawbug was in use at least as early as 1863, as evidenced by the Diary of Isaac Tibbetts Coffin, of Dutch Flat; and the mines looked to date from as late as the 1920s, probably no earlier than 1900)--since the Sawbug was older, the debris from the mines may have slid down the steep slopes, and completely buried the line of the trail.
This seemed reasonable enough.
However, the uncertainty of it all weighed heavily. Could the Sawbug have leveled out past the Bear Bed Mine, which I GPSed at about 3600' elevation, and made for the False Pass, at 3720+ feet? So that the False Pass is in fact the True Pass, and the well-defined trail dropping in switchbacks to the Upper Mine, was a trail to the mine and nothing more? It cannot be entirely discounted.
So. The mystery continues.
We found the going rather tough, going back up to the Sawtooth Road and the Land Rover, but to was nice to drive along with the windows down, and gradually recover from our exertions. I was streaked with blood as usual, wet with sweat, little branches and leaves caught in clothes and hair. We all lamented our failure and kept on going over the same ground, in our minds, and in conversation, that we had criss-crossed on foot for hours.
I spotted a chunk of plastic trim on the road, and we snagged it, speculating it may have been stripped from Ron's truck, a few weeks ago.
Climbing east out of the False Pass Which Still Could Maybe Be the True Pass, we suddenly met Ron himself, who had on the spur of the moment decided to drive out there to see for himself. The piece of plastic was indeed from his rear bumper. After a brief chat--we learned that the smoke was from a fire near the Stevens Trail, down by Colfax--we went our separate ways.
By the way, the Sawtooth Road can absolutely eat a vehicle. The brush will scratch your paint. I can't recommend it to anyone, not much west of Helester Point, anyway.
It could be that Ron found the trail, where we failed to find it; he has an almost mystical sense for old trails.
I would like the benefit of cool weather, the next time I have a go at the old Sawbug.
Maybe the eighth time is the charm!
Thursday, August 5, 2004
The Mystery of the Sawbug, VI
Sawbug VII now looms on the horizon, as the Sixth Expedition failed to discover the line of the old trail from Humbug Bar to the crest of Sawtooth Ridge. The unusually cool August weather inspired Ron and Catherine and I to meet at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, to drive to Iron Point and the Euchre Bar Trail, pausing to leave one vehicle down at the gate on the rough road to the Rawhide Mine.
For we would follow the Sawbug up to the ridge crest, or failing that, just bushwhack up to the crest, and then walk the Sawtooth Road west to the Rawhide Mine Trail, drop down to the mine, and then, crossing the North Fork of the North Fork and Blue Canyon on the bridges there, climb up the Rawhide road to the aforementioned gate.
It would make a loop of about ten miles, with total elevation gain of about 3000 feet.
We started down the Euchre Bar Trail at 9:00 a.m. sharp, and reached the bridge at 9:30. After a rest, the long march up to Humbug Canyon was followed by an immediate ford of the river, and the short climb to the bridge site at Humbug Bar. Another rest, with the same biting quasi-horse-flies pestering us, for the passage across the canyon to the south-facing north slopes had bumped up the temperature instantly, and the siren song of sweat brought the hungry flies from near and far. It was nearing 11:00 a.m. when we shouldered our packs and started up the Sawbug.
There was the crucial switchback we had missed, two weeks ago; there, and there, the nasty patches of half-dead deerbrush and manzanita and fallen pines which so effectively hid the trail, but then, fairly soon and low on the line of the old trail, we were above the worst of it, on shadier slopes with much less brush, and the long climbing traverse to the northeast began.
Following The Plan we did little lopping, saving our strength for the unexplored upper half of the trail. Although occasionally this part of the Sawbug degenerates to the appearance of a game trail, it is punctuated by impressive dry-laid retaining walls, some all of six feet high, defining a trailbed four feet wide. Both Ron and I had our GPS units turned on for the duration, but mine often went into my pocket to free my hands for lopping, and when I returned home and transferred the track record to my digital version of the Westville 7.5 minute quadrangle, my track record proved to be fragmentary, made of many short tracks, interrupted by gaps where satellite coverage had been lost.
We crossed the main ravine along the line of the trail, and soon thereafter entered Terra Incognita, as we climbed around a spur ridge which springs away south from the knoll marked 4210 on the crest of Sawtooth, now somewhat less then a thousand feet above us.
The trail was marked in many places by old machete cuts, but as I recall, once we passed the spur ridge, there was not much in the way of dry-laid stone walls to reassure us as to the "true" course of the trail. We maintained a continuous climbing traverse, and after a time, reached an old gold mine, a tunnel driven into the solid rock. This was interesting in that it contained the single largest bear bed I have ever seen, where masses of Canyon Live Oak leaves had spilled into the tunnel from the slopes above, and been hollowed deeply by the bear, making a large bowl.
GPS put us at about 3500' elevation.
From the mine, the trail seemed somewhat fainter, and yet offered a climbing traverse of the same sort as we had seen all the way along. I saw more machete cuts. But after a time we felt we had lost the darn thing, and scouted across the steep slopes. I interpreted a certain ridge, dimly seen to the east, as the spur falling from the far side of The Pass, that certain low spot on the Sawtooth Crest, below the 3800' contour, where the Sawbug had been found and explored from the top, down, twice, in 2002 and 2003, seeming to end at yet another hard-rock mining prospect.
Since the USGS topographic map of 1900 shows a sweeping switchback almost directly below The Pass, and since we were well up towards 3700' in elevation, I was drawn to the east, towards the dimly-seen spur ridge. Ron and Catherine scouted a little farther west, out of sight and often out of hearing as well. The steep slopes were quite difficult to traverse. Occasional game trails led us here or there, but then, again and again, we were forced into scrambles directly up the steeps. I veered back west to Join Ron and Catherine. We were huffing and puffing and sweating like mad. GPS put us nearing 4000' in elevation; above the level of The Pass. But if that were so--then we must be well west of The Pass--we rested and thought it over.
In a few minutes we were ready to go. We had lost the line of the Sawbug, were too high, and too tired to retreat west and south and down, and the slopes to steep and nasty to contour east. The only sensible course was to scramble on up to the Sawtooth Road wherever gaps in the brush might permit. A few steps brought a beguiling terrace into view, above me. I pointed it out to Catherine. Ron had ranged farther east, and we heard indistinct exclamations, and as I climbed to the terrace, so did Ron, a hundred feet away, and we simultaneously realized we had found the good old Sawbug.
Having found it, we could scarcely believe we had ever lost it. For it was broad and well-defined and was often bolstered by dry-laid stone walls. However we had lost the line of the Sawbug--a switchback had been passed, perhaps--it had, somehow, climbed more steeply than we had.
There was no question of following it back *down*, we were too far gone for that. I recorded a waypoint, noting that we were near to 4000' in elevation, and we followed the Sawbug *up*. Almost immediately, it fed us onto the Sawtooth Road, but, far west of The Pass. I recorded another waypoint, and we hung a sharp left and started walking west towards the Rawhide Trail.
The upshot of all this is that the Sawbug does not climb to the pass-below-the-3800'-contour, but to the next pass west, between Knoll 4210 on the west, and a smaller knoll about a quarter-mile to the east, a little above 4120' in elevation.
A fine breeze stirred along the Sawtooth crest, and a mile and a half brought us to the top of the Rawhide. It was around 5:00 p.m. when we started down, through the dense tangle of manzanita Ron and I had lopped through a few weeks ago, and onto the easier north slopes of Sawtooth.
We had noted minor inconsistencies between the line of the Rawhide Trail, on the map, and the actual line of the trail, on the ground, while exploring it a few weeks ago. But now, as we followed it down, we realized that it departed rather drastically from the map, a long series of switchbacks taking the place of a direct descending traverse. The loppers came back into play, although we had already passed the more sensible limits of exertion. We passed an upper tunnel, and then dropped all the way below the main mine portal (not on the trail itself) without realizing it. We were too tired to climb back up and visit the interesting portal area, and just followed the trail on down to the mine road, and the road, down to the river, at about 2150' elevation.
Another rest, and then it was over the gate, over the bridges--the caretaker was not in residence--and past the houses, and up and up and up the rough road to the gate, and Ron's truck, at about 2900' elevation. It was around 6:30 p.m. Another great day in the great canyon.
It looks as tho Sawbug Seven will require a drive out to Sawtooth Ridge from Emigrant Gap, to the New Pass. From there the trail could be followed down, and we should need to go no farther than the Bear Bed Mine to finish the job of discovering the line of one of the North Fork canyon's historic trails.
For we would follow the Sawbug up to the ridge crest, or failing that, just bushwhack up to the crest, and then walk the Sawtooth Road west to the Rawhide Mine Trail, drop down to the mine, and then, crossing the North Fork of the North Fork and Blue Canyon on the bridges there, climb up the Rawhide road to the aforementioned gate.
It would make a loop of about ten miles, with total elevation gain of about 3000 feet.
We started down the Euchre Bar Trail at 9:00 a.m. sharp, and reached the bridge at 9:30. After a rest, the long march up to Humbug Canyon was followed by an immediate ford of the river, and the short climb to the bridge site at Humbug Bar. Another rest, with the same biting quasi-horse-flies pestering us, for the passage across the canyon to the south-facing north slopes had bumped up the temperature instantly, and the siren song of sweat brought the hungry flies from near and far. It was nearing 11:00 a.m. when we shouldered our packs and started up the Sawbug.
There was the crucial switchback we had missed, two weeks ago; there, and there, the nasty patches of half-dead deerbrush and manzanita and fallen pines which so effectively hid the trail, but then, fairly soon and low on the line of the old trail, we were above the worst of it, on shadier slopes with much less brush, and the long climbing traverse to the northeast began.
Following The Plan we did little lopping, saving our strength for the unexplored upper half of the trail. Although occasionally this part of the Sawbug degenerates to the appearance of a game trail, it is punctuated by impressive dry-laid retaining walls, some all of six feet high, defining a trailbed four feet wide. Both Ron and I had our GPS units turned on for the duration, but mine often went into my pocket to free my hands for lopping, and when I returned home and transferred the track record to my digital version of the Westville 7.5 minute quadrangle, my track record proved to be fragmentary, made of many short tracks, interrupted by gaps where satellite coverage had been lost.
We crossed the main ravine along the line of the trail, and soon thereafter entered Terra Incognita, as we climbed around a spur ridge which springs away south from the knoll marked 4210 on the crest of Sawtooth, now somewhat less then a thousand feet above us.
The trail was marked in many places by old machete cuts, but as I recall, once we passed the spur ridge, there was not much in the way of dry-laid stone walls to reassure us as to the "true" course of the trail. We maintained a continuous climbing traverse, and after a time, reached an old gold mine, a tunnel driven into the solid rock. This was interesting in that it contained the single largest bear bed I have ever seen, where masses of Canyon Live Oak leaves had spilled into the tunnel from the slopes above, and been hollowed deeply by the bear, making a large bowl.
GPS put us at about 3500' elevation.
From the mine, the trail seemed somewhat fainter, and yet offered a climbing traverse of the same sort as we had seen all the way along. I saw more machete cuts. But after a time we felt we had lost the darn thing, and scouted across the steep slopes. I interpreted a certain ridge, dimly seen to the east, as the spur falling from the far side of The Pass, that certain low spot on the Sawtooth Crest, below the 3800' contour, where the Sawbug had been found and explored from the top, down, twice, in 2002 and 2003, seeming to end at yet another hard-rock mining prospect.
Since the USGS topographic map of 1900 shows a sweeping switchback almost directly below The Pass, and since we were well up towards 3700' in elevation, I was drawn to the east, towards the dimly-seen spur ridge. Ron and Catherine scouted a little farther west, out of sight and often out of hearing as well. The steep slopes were quite difficult to traverse. Occasional game trails led us here or there, but then, again and again, we were forced into scrambles directly up the steeps. I veered back west to Join Ron and Catherine. We were huffing and puffing and sweating like mad. GPS put us nearing 4000' in elevation; above the level of The Pass. But if that were so--then we must be well west of The Pass--we rested and thought it over.
In a few minutes we were ready to go. We had lost the line of the Sawbug, were too high, and too tired to retreat west and south and down, and the slopes to steep and nasty to contour east. The only sensible course was to scramble on up to the Sawtooth Road wherever gaps in the brush might permit. A few steps brought a beguiling terrace into view, above me. I pointed it out to Catherine. Ron had ranged farther east, and we heard indistinct exclamations, and as I climbed to the terrace, so did Ron, a hundred feet away, and we simultaneously realized we had found the good old Sawbug.
Having found it, we could scarcely believe we had ever lost it. For it was broad and well-defined and was often bolstered by dry-laid stone walls. However we had lost the line of the Sawbug--a switchback had been passed, perhaps--it had, somehow, climbed more steeply than we had.
There was no question of following it back *down*, we were too far gone for that. I recorded a waypoint, noting that we were near to 4000' in elevation, and we followed the Sawbug *up*. Almost immediately, it fed us onto the Sawtooth Road, but, far west of The Pass. I recorded another waypoint, and we hung a sharp left and started walking west towards the Rawhide Trail.
The upshot of all this is that the Sawbug does not climb to the pass-below-the-3800'-contour, but to the next pass west, between Knoll 4210 on the west, and a smaller knoll about a quarter-mile to the east, a little above 4120' in elevation.
A fine breeze stirred along the Sawtooth crest, and a mile and a half brought us to the top of the Rawhide. It was around 5:00 p.m. when we started down, through the dense tangle of manzanita Ron and I had lopped through a few weeks ago, and onto the easier north slopes of Sawtooth.
We had noted minor inconsistencies between the line of the Rawhide Trail, on the map, and the actual line of the trail, on the ground, while exploring it a few weeks ago. But now, as we followed it down, we realized that it departed rather drastically from the map, a long series of switchbacks taking the place of a direct descending traverse. The loppers came back into play, although we had already passed the more sensible limits of exertion. We passed an upper tunnel, and then dropped all the way below the main mine portal (not on the trail itself) without realizing it. We were too tired to climb back up and visit the interesting portal area, and just followed the trail on down to the mine road, and the road, down to the river, at about 2150' elevation.
Another rest, and then it was over the gate, over the bridges--the caretaker was not in residence--and past the houses, and up and up and up the rough road to the gate, and Ron's truck, at about 2900' elevation. It was around 6:30 p.m. Another great day in the great canyon.
It looks as tho Sawbug Seven will require a drive out to Sawtooth Ridge from Emigrant Gap, to the New Pass. From there the trail could be followed down, and we should need to go no farther than the Bear Bed Mine to finish the job of discovering the line of one of the North Fork canyon's historic trails.
Thursday, July 22, 2004
In Search of the Sawbug
There are some really great trails in the North Fork canyon, many quite old. Some are abandoned and no longer appear on modern maps, not Tahoe National Forest maps, nor on the USGS 7.5 minute topographic maps, which are the most detailed maps readily available.
Old maps often show these now-abandoned trails, and for many years I have pored over these antique maps, studying them inch by inch with a magnifying glass, and transferring the lines of trails to our modern 7.5 minute quads. I have also visited map archives at the USGS headquarters in Sacramento, and studied the surveyor's notes which accompany some of them.
For instance, in 1866, in the Dutch Flat area, the government surveys focused upon laying out the section lines, dividing each "township" into a grid of thirty-six sections, each section a mile square. This was the primary goal, and the positions of roads and trails were often only partially recorded, where they happened to cross some section line. The surveyor's notes often contain more information about these roads and trails.
One of the more interesting of the old maps is the USGS Colfax Folio (from the "Geological Atlas of the United States", ca. 1900), the first good topographic map published of this general area. Contours are at an interval of 100 feet, with bold contours every 500 feet, of elevation. This map is notable, among other things, for showing trails from Sawtooth Ridge down to the North Fork, which do not appear on any other map I have seen. East of Helester Point, a trail is shown dropping away south from a pass on Sawtooth, to Italian Bar. West of Helester Point, another trail is shown dropping from a pass, south and west to Humbug Bar, where a bridge existed. Since this trail connects Sawtooth Ridge to Humbug Bar, I've dubbed it the "Sawbug" trail.
From the pass, the trail can be followed for a little ways, before a maze of game trails obscures its course. If one just forges ahead in what should be the right direction, a human trail reappears, which leads to a hard-rock prospect on one of the many quartz veins in the area. From there, the trail again fades away. I searched that area a couple of years ago with Tom Molloy, and then again last year with Ron Gould.
The upper part of the Sawbug had disappeared so completely that it seemed the next step must be to go to Humbug Bar and try to follow it up from there. Last year I joined Steve Hunter and others for a visit to Humbug Canyon, and while they visited old mines, I tried and failed to locate the Sawbug, beginning at the bridge site, finding instead an old wagon road on the north side of the river, and another wagon road which climbed up the canyon wall, in much the direction one would want to see on the Sawbug, but, sadly, too far east.
Yesterday Jerry Rein, Ron Gould, Catherine O'Riley and I met Steve Hunter and friends in Colfax for another visit to Humbug Canyon. Steve knows one of the owners of the Dorer Ranch, near the base of Humbug Canyon, and obtained a key to the gate, up high on the canyon rim off Elliott Ranch Road. We drove out there and down the road, pausing at the ranch to greet the caretaker, Danny, and his friend, Grant. The ranch is located on a meadowy terrace of glacial outwash sediments. It is an amazing, albeit somewhat ramshackle, place. After a time we made our way down to the river, a short distance away. A lovely deep pool is just downstream from the confluence of Humbug Creek, and we all swam, for the day was waxing hot, hotter, hottest.
The river was a comfortable 64 degrees, as a fisherman among us determined, and we jumped and dove from the polished bosses of rock beside the pool.
Soon, tho, our sub-group packed up, forded the river, and climbed to the bridge site, in search of the Sawbug.
Our search lacked a little in method. Howsoever, some widespread wandering up and down and back and forth eventually revealed a human trail, winding through a dense thicket of young Douglas Fir. I lopped a line through, where bears had often stomped, but soon enough we lost the thing, and wandered east, up the canyon, some scouting high, others low.
I found a plausible human trail amidst a regular maze of very well-trodden game trails, and called the others up. We followed along well enough for a ways, and then our trail again blended into the generality of game trails, in a forest of Canyon Live Oak, Ponderosa Pine, and Douglas Fir. I scouted high while the others took shelter beneath some trees, and found yet another supposed human trail, and, walking back west, and then east, and then up and down and every which way, established that a certain combination of the most heavily-trodden game trails, which combination might be interpreted as lightly-used human trails from long ago, led to a hard rock prospect with some terraces bolstered by dry-laid stone walls, littered with chunks of quartz.
I went back and retrieved the others, and we walked to this "prospect terrace." As we neared it, Ron split away and scouted higher, thank goodness, for soon he called down to us that he had found an even broader trail, and I hurried up to see.
Ron had found "it." The Sawbug. Finally, another piece of the puzzle.
It was past noon and sweltering, blazing hot. A climb of perhaps 100 feet brought me to Ron's trail, where a gigantic Canyon Live Oak and Douglas Fir were clasped in a strange embrace. The trail was broader than most we had explored that day, and was in just the right position, following just the right course, ascending to the east and north, to be the Sawbug.
We followed it up and east, passing some springs, and began to see dry-laid stone walls bolstering the trail. In a sunny, grassy opening, we could look across the North Fork canyon into Humbug Canyon and see the meadow and Dorer Ranch. We were perhaps 400 feet or so above the river.
Retreating down and west, we followed the Sawbug past the Trees of the Embrace, and became if possible even more convinced that this was indeed IT, the one and only Sawbug. Its course was gentle but inexorably down and to the west, drawing a bead on Humbug Bar. However, upon entering an especially brushy, overgrown area, we lost it, and, already scratched, tired, dripping with sweat, we set the problem aside for another day, and made our way back to Jerry and Catherine.
From there, a blundering descent was made to the northside wagon road, which we followed up towards the Cavern Mine, where the Steve Hunter party might be found. This mine is one of many in the area, has a stamp mill near the portal, and a slightly flooded tunnel, with ore-cart track still in place, leading perhaps a hundred yards into the cool depths of Sawtooth Ridge, to a sort of narrow cavern with side tunnels branching away, and a great, indefinitely high, stoped-out area above, with some relict timbering spanning a narrow kind of chasm. The mine was probably one of fifteen claims (the Adeline, I find, from old maps) owned and worked by the American Eagle Mine.
We met Steve Hunter et. al. on the wagon road; they were on their way back to Humbug Bar. We continued east to the mine, explored the cavern, and then swam in a great, great, deep pool below the mine.
As shadows began to lengthen we picked our way downstream along the river, over water-polished masses of almost-vertical Shoo Fly Complex strata, with unusual laminations, intercalations of limy sediments bordering upon being outright limestone. These were in close association with the ubiquitous quartz veins, and probably account for the white dripstone deposits within the Cavern.
After a time we were able to make a short climb to the American Eagle Trail on the south side of the river, and followed it back to Humbug Canyon, where another round of swimming cooled us in preparation for the final short sharp ascent to Catherine's trusty Land Rover. We left the Dorer Ranch at about 7:00 p.m., and made it back to Colfax a little after nine.
Such was another great day on the North Fork. It was especially notable on these two counts:
1. We found the long-lost Sawbug Trail.
2. Catherine O'Riley actually went swimming in the North Fork!
Old maps often show these now-abandoned trails, and for many years I have pored over these antique maps, studying them inch by inch with a magnifying glass, and transferring the lines of trails to our modern 7.5 minute quads. I have also visited map archives at the USGS headquarters in Sacramento, and studied the surveyor's notes which accompany some of them.
For instance, in 1866, in the Dutch Flat area, the government surveys focused upon laying out the section lines, dividing each "township" into a grid of thirty-six sections, each section a mile square. This was the primary goal, and the positions of roads and trails were often only partially recorded, where they happened to cross some section line. The surveyor's notes often contain more information about these roads and trails.
One of the more interesting of the old maps is the USGS Colfax Folio (from the "Geological Atlas of the United States", ca. 1900), the first good topographic map published of this general area. Contours are at an interval of 100 feet, with bold contours every 500 feet, of elevation. This map is notable, among other things, for showing trails from Sawtooth Ridge down to the North Fork, which do not appear on any other map I have seen. East of Helester Point, a trail is shown dropping away south from a pass on Sawtooth, to Italian Bar. West of Helester Point, another trail is shown dropping from a pass, south and west to Humbug Bar, where a bridge existed. Since this trail connects Sawtooth Ridge to Humbug Bar, I've dubbed it the "Sawbug" trail.
From the pass, the trail can be followed for a little ways, before a maze of game trails obscures its course. If one just forges ahead in what should be the right direction, a human trail reappears, which leads to a hard-rock prospect on one of the many quartz veins in the area. From there, the trail again fades away. I searched that area a couple of years ago with Tom Molloy, and then again last year with Ron Gould.
The upper part of the Sawbug had disappeared so completely that it seemed the next step must be to go to Humbug Bar and try to follow it up from there. Last year I joined Steve Hunter and others for a visit to Humbug Canyon, and while they visited old mines, I tried and failed to locate the Sawbug, beginning at the bridge site, finding instead an old wagon road on the north side of the river, and another wagon road which climbed up the canyon wall, in much the direction one would want to see on the Sawbug, but, sadly, too far east.
Yesterday Jerry Rein, Ron Gould, Catherine O'Riley and I met Steve Hunter and friends in Colfax for another visit to Humbug Canyon. Steve knows one of the owners of the Dorer Ranch, near the base of Humbug Canyon, and obtained a key to the gate, up high on the canyon rim off Elliott Ranch Road. We drove out there and down the road, pausing at the ranch to greet the caretaker, Danny, and his friend, Grant. The ranch is located on a meadowy terrace of glacial outwash sediments. It is an amazing, albeit somewhat ramshackle, place. After a time we made our way down to the river, a short distance away. A lovely deep pool is just downstream from the confluence of Humbug Creek, and we all swam, for the day was waxing hot, hotter, hottest.
The river was a comfortable 64 degrees, as a fisherman among us determined, and we jumped and dove from the polished bosses of rock beside the pool.
Soon, tho, our sub-group packed up, forded the river, and climbed to the bridge site, in search of the Sawbug.
Our search lacked a little in method. Howsoever, some widespread wandering up and down and back and forth eventually revealed a human trail, winding through a dense thicket of young Douglas Fir. I lopped a line through, where bears had often stomped, but soon enough we lost the thing, and wandered east, up the canyon, some scouting high, others low.
I found a plausible human trail amidst a regular maze of very well-trodden game trails, and called the others up. We followed along well enough for a ways, and then our trail again blended into the generality of game trails, in a forest of Canyon Live Oak, Ponderosa Pine, and Douglas Fir. I scouted high while the others took shelter beneath some trees, and found yet another supposed human trail, and, walking back west, and then east, and then up and down and every which way, established that a certain combination of the most heavily-trodden game trails, which combination might be interpreted as lightly-used human trails from long ago, led to a hard rock prospect with some terraces bolstered by dry-laid stone walls, littered with chunks of quartz.
I went back and retrieved the others, and we walked to this "prospect terrace." As we neared it, Ron split away and scouted higher, thank goodness, for soon he called down to us that he had found an even broader trail, and I hurried up to see.
Ron had found "it." The Sawbug. Finally, another piece of the puzzle.
It was past noon and sweltering, blazing hot. A climb of perhaps 100 feet brought me to Ron's trail, where a gigantic Canyon Live Oak and Douglas Fir were clasped in a strange embrace. The trail was broader than most we had explored that day, and was in just the right position, following just the right course, ascending to the east and north, to be the Sawbug.
We followed it up and east, passing some springs, and began to see dry-laid stone walls bolstering the trail. In a sunny, grassy opening, we could look across the North Fork canyon into Humbug Canyon and see the meadow and Dorer Ranch. We were perhaps 400 feet or so above the river.
Retreating down and west, we followed the Sawbug past the Trees of the Embrace, and became if possible even more convinced that this was indeed IT, the one and only Sawbug. Its course was gentle but inexorably down and to the west, drawing a bead on Humbug Bar. However, upon entering an especially brushy, overgrown area, we lost it, and, already scratched, tired, dripping with sweat, we set the problem aside for another day, and made our way back to Jerry and Catherine.
From there, a blundering descent was made to the northside wagon road, which we followed up towards the Cavern Mine, where the Steve Hunter party might be found. This mine is one of many in the area, has a stamp mill near the portal, and a slightly flooded tunnel, with ore-cart track still in place, leading perhaps a hundred yards into the cool depths of Sawtooth Ridge, to a sort of narrow cavern with side tunnels branching away, and a great, indefinitely high, stoped-out area above, with some relict timbering spanning a narrow kind of chasm. The mine was probably one of fifteen claims (the Adeline, I find, from old maps) owned and worked by the American Eagle Mine.
We met Steve Hunter et. al. on the wagon road; they were on their way back to Humbug Bar. We continued east to the mine, explored the cavern, and then swam in a great, great, deep pool below the mine.
As shadows began to lengthen we picked our way downstream along the river, over water-polished masses of almost-vertical Shoo Fly Complex strata, with unusual laminations, intercalations of limy sediments bordering upon being outright limestone. These were in close association with the ubiquitous quartz veins, and probably account for the white dripstone deposits within the Cavern.
After a time we were able to make a short climb to the American Eagle Trail on the south side of the river, and followed it back to Humbug Canyon, where another round of swimming cooled us in preparation for the final short sharp ascent to Catherine's trusty Land Rover. We left the Dorer Ranch at about 7:00 p.m., and made it back to Colfax a little after nine.
Such was another great day on the North Fork. It was especially notable on these two counts:
1. We found the long-lost Sawbug Trail.
2. Catherine O'Riley actually went swimming in the North Fork!
Tuesday, October 14, 2003
Sawtooth Ridge
It being Columbus Day, Ron Gould and I decided to Discover America, at least, that part of it comprising Sawtooth Ridge, which divides the main North Fork American on the south, from the North Fork of the North Fork (NFNFAR), on the north. The crest of this ridge ripples high and low in a succession of peaks and passes. On some old maps it is named Texas Ridge, and I.T. Coffin, a Dutch Flat gold miner and photographer who once live at Burnett Canyon and Texas Hill, calls it the "Camel Humpbacked Ridge" in his 1863 diary. Also living at Burnett Canyon at that time was one E.B. "Tex" Smithwick and his wife; I have suspected, never knowing for sure, that Tex Smithwick himself might have lent his nickname to Texas Hill, Texas Diggings, and Texas Ridge.
Howsoever, Sawtooth Ridge trends roughly east and west, running higher on the east, the summits verging upon 5500', and lower on the west, the very last knoll just clearing 4000' in elevation. The slopes on the North Fork side are south-facing and sunny, much more rocky and open and given to brush and Canyon Live Oak, while on the north-facing, north side of the ridge, there is more in the way of coniferous forest. In the olden days a trail led along the ridge crest, avoiding the very summits where possible, and just nicking the passes. Several trails dropped away from this main trail south into the vastness of the North Fork canyon--to Mumford Bar, Italian Bar, and Humbug Bar--, and others dropped away north into the narrower confines of the North Fork of the North Fork, to China Bar and the Rawhide Mine.
Only the Mumford Bar and Rawhide trails show on our modern USGS 7.5 minute Westville quadrangle.
A Tahoe National Forest lookout tower once stood at Helester Point, 4930', midway along the length of the ridge. Gradually roads penetrated west along Sawtooth Ridge, probably reaching Helester Point by the early 1900s. From there, a jeep trail of likely more recent vintage continues west down the ridge. The checkerboard pattern of land ownership, dating back to President Lincoln's land grants to the Central Pacific Railroad, are much in force in that area. Around 1985 a corporate takeover attempt scared Southern Pacific (the successor of the CPRR) into selling its vast land holdings in Tahoe National Forest. A lumber company, Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI), ended up with the most of these lands.
The steep north slopes of Sawtooth, then, already networked by logging roads and skid trails to the utter obliteration of the China Bar Trail, have in recent years been the target of SPI clearcuts. Some of these are highly visible from the scenic overlook called Iron Point, or from the line of the railroad near Blue Canyon, and from many places. They are on extremely steep slopes. SPI used herbicides to kill the natural groves of Kelloggs Black Oak and Canyon Live Oak interspersed with the Ponderosa Pine and Douglas Fir timber on these slopes, and replanted to a pure coniferous stand. I don't like this industrial approach to timber "management." I believe that Tahoe National Forest ought to be trying to purchase these SPI lands on Sawtooth Ridge, along with the Siller Brothers property at Lost Camp, and other SPI lands along the Lost Camp Ridge.
Whether it is clearcutting or ordinary, selective-harvest tractor-logging, old foot trails tend to be obliterated by timber harvests. Again and again I see every vestige of some historic trail erased, hidden forever under a welter of skid trails and log decks. Nobody looks out after these trails, which once comprised a vast network. One might well think that in this day and age, Tahoe National Forest and CDF would declare, "Enough is enough! More than half of the old trails are ruined, but no more! Harvest your timber, yes, but leave the trails intact!" One would be wrong.
But I digress.
Ron and I drove up I-80 to Emigrant Gap and caught Forest Road 19 out to Texas Hill, continuing east up Burnett Canyon, past the old Towle sawmill site, past the tiny thread of I.T. Coffin's old mining ditch, first below, then above the road, until almost insensibly we reached Sawtooth Ridge, and the road curved to the west, around the head of Burnett Canyon.
We passed the obliterated beginning of the Burnett Canyon Trail, and swung around the headwaters of Wilmont Ravine, where I.T. Coffin's oft-drunken partner, Tommy Williams, once washed a 20-ounce gold nugget out of the creek. We reached one of Sawtooth's passes near here, where old maps show a trail descending to Italian Bar, almost, as it were, the direct continuation of the Burnett Canyon Trail. I.T. Coffin used this Italian Bar trail from time to time. The top has been erased by logging, but Ron and I picked it up within a couple hundred yards of the pass, and followed it down into a mixed grove of large Ponderosa Pine and Kelloggs Black Oak, where the slopes eased a bit. We saw no very clear continuation, and since we were really more concerned with the trail down to Humbug Bar, another "lost" trail, we climbed back up to the pass and drove west.
Within a maze of logging roads on very steep slopes, where the roadcuts sometimes rise thirty feet high--apparently we can afford to just throw away topsoil and subsoil alike, in order to harvest timber--we bumped along in Ron's trusty old Toyota 4WD pickup, looking for one certain left turn which would put us on the old jeep trail west of Helester Point. We took a guess and found ourselves bucking up and over high waterbars within one of the major SPI clearcuts in Section 35, T16N R11E. Then we plunged down into a swale, and although still within SPI land, we had reached an area so lightly timbered that it had suffered relatively little.
At a certain point a large oak blocked the narrow road, but we managed to pull it aside, and continued west to one of the most pronounced passes on Sawtooth Ridge. We were now on TNF land, in the very northeast part of Section 3, T15N R11E; it was so nice to see an unlogged part of the ridge. Here the ~1900 Colfax Folio topographic map shows a trail dropping down to the North Fork at Humbug Bar, where a bridge once spanned the river. We parked and Ron immediately spotted old blazes on some oaks, and then another on a large pine just above us. The oak blazes were just where the Humbug Trail (I also call it the Sawbug Trail, because it runs from Sawtooth Ridge down to Humbug Bar) forks away from the equally-old Sawtooth Ridge Trail. Further explorations showed that we had stumbled upon a section of the original Sawtooth Trail which is now distinct from the road--for this old road, or jeep trail, had been, in many areas, cut directly into the line of the original trail.
Tom Molloy and I had found the upper end of the Sawbug Trail last fall, but had lost the line of the thing as it dropped away south and west into the steeps of the North Fork canyon. Ron and I worked hard on clearing fallen Knobcone Pine trunks and other obstacles from the well-defined uppermost section of the trail. These Knobcones are fire-adapted pines, members of the Closed-Cone group of the genus Pinus. The gigantic Volcano Fire of ~1960 had swept across the Foresthill Divide, down through Humbug Canyon, and right across the North Fork and up onto Sawtooth Ridge. These pines had seeded in thickly after the fire, and fought one another for sun, and those which lost the battle had died and fallen across the trail, in dozens. So Ron and I had our work cut out for us.
Eventually, we left the snarled mass of dead Knobcones for a more open forest of scattered large Ponderosa Pines, Kelloggs Black Oak, and Canyon Live Oak. A deep layer of leaves and pine needles covered the ground. Bears and other game had often used the old human trail above us, but here, on gentle slopes, in an open forest, the paths of animals were not tightly constrained, and soon we had really nothing to go by--not a blaze, not a suspiciously well-defined game trail, not anything.
We zigged and zagged down past some old prospect pits, with chunks of quartz lying about. The gold-bearing quartz veins here are allied to those worked so heavily down below us in the North Fork canyon, as for instance at the Dorer Mine, the Central Mine, the American Eagle Mine, the Gem Mine, etc. etc. A trail appeared, and we followed it west to one of the larger prospect pits, where it seems to end.
Once again a variety of factors conspired to make it seem more reasonable to search out the line of the Sawbug from Humbug Bar going up, rather than from Sawtooth down. The slopes where the trail disappeared were steep, and only getting steeper, below us. Then again, this last portion of "the trail" might well have had only to do with the mining prospects, not the Sawbug itself. The Sawbug itself may have dropped away into the great canyon a smidgin to the east, and then passed to the west far below us.
So, we retreated up to the truck and explored the vicinity of the pass. I followed the faint trace of the Sawtooth Trail up moderately steep slopes to the west, and had the satisfaction of finding another ancient blaze, on a huge Sugar Pine, and just above, a well-defined section of the trail itself. I eventually rejoined the road, and saw a large oak down.
Regrouping, we drove west, but were soon stopped by the large fallen oak. There was no pulling this aside. So we walked another half-mile along the meandering little road, and found some more very old blazes along the way, showing that here at least the road had been cut right into the line of the original trail.
The sun was lowering, and we retreated to the truck and started back out.
Sawtooth Ridge is interesting from the standpoint of geomorphology, and the evolution of the landscape of the North Fork. Its geology is part of this story.
Especially here in the Northern Sierra, the major canyons are young, freshly-incised, and steep-walled. A long series of volcanic eruptions, commencing around thirty million years ago, had buried the Ancestral Sierra beneath a plateau composed of rhyolite ash below, and andesitic mudflows above. Finally, and apparently very locally, basaltic lavas flowed down minor valleys eroded into this plateau. These youngest of the volcanics date from as much as seven to as little as three million years in age, and we may place the beginning of the incision of the North Fork canyon to the time of these youngest flows. One tiny remnant of basalt caps one of the knolls along Sawtooth Ridge, just east of Helester Point. Suppose it is "five million years old." Then the North Fork canyon is also five million years old, and here it has cut down nearly three thousand feet in that five million years.
The idea here is that the basalt atop Sawtooth was following the lowest, deepest valley available at the time, say, five million years ago. Which is as much as to say that the North Fork canyon did not exist at that time. The Sawtooth basalt followed and filled some minor valley in the plateau.
The generalized volcanic plateau sloped to the southwest. It was thickest near the crest, and thinned westward. The Sierra began to tilt up en masse several million years ago and this uplift increased the gradient of the plateau, sloping down to the southwest. Almost simultaneously the climate cooled and a long series of glaciations began. The steepened gradient and the glaciations combined to make for rapid downward incision of the new canyons. As they deepened, they widened. And we are at just that stage in the deepening and widening, which continues to this day, in which the main ridges between the canyons still hold remnants of the volcanic plateau.
Hence the flat-topped ridges of the middle elevations of the Northern Sierra.
But Sawtooth Ridge is not flat-topped. It does have some few tiny vestiges of the volcanic plateau on some of its knolls. Other knolls are "bedrock" of the Subjacent Series, here, metasediments of the Shoo Fly Complex, all the way to the top, for instance, Helester Point is a bedrock knoll.
We can ascribe this peak-and-pass topography to the near proximity of two canyons, the main North Fork and the North Fork of the North Fork. In their deepening and widening they have managed to erode intervening Sawtooth Ridge below the level of the plateau. In a sense Sawtooth offers a preview of what the more common flat-topped ridges will look like in another million years or so.
However, the extent to which glaciation may have figured into all this is not well known. It is clear that the very last "Tioga" ice extended well down Fulda Canyon, down the main North Fork of the North Fork, down the East Fork of the North Fork of the North Fork, and down the North Fork itself. But exactly how far? This remains to be established. My own guess is that the Tioga-age North Fork glacier, which melted back up the canyon some 12,000 years ago, came down at least to Mumford Bar. And I guess that Fulda and NFNFAR ice came down at least to the Gorge of Many Gorges, just upstream from the China Bar Trail.
On Sawtooth Ridge itself, right up along the crest, are minor bodies of much older glacial till. These till bodies--the largest being just west of Helester Point--show that during one of the earlier episodes of glaciation, perhaps Tahoe I or Tahoe II (ca. 130,000 and 65,000 years before the present, respectively), ice in both the main North Fork and in the NFNFAR came up at least as high as Sawtooth's low passes, and likely right over the top of everything, all peaks, all knolls. In fact, the passes are places where, as the ice began to recede and its surface lowered in elevation, ice probably flowed right through, probably from the main North Fork into the NFNFAR.
I have found patches of old till almost all the way down Sawtooth Ridge, to a point directly above Humbug Bar, and all of 2000' above the North Fork. It is almost impossible to avoid the conclusion that glacial ice reached down the North Fork to Euchre Bar and perhaps even Green Valley itself, these places being a scant two to three miles down the canyon from the last till on Sawtooth's crest.
On the other hand, temperate-latitude glaciers such as these are well known to have steeply-plunging termini. It is within the range of possibility that the ice never reached Euchre Bar itself. This is another open question which begs serious study.
Together with these visibly old till bodies on Sawtooth--visibly-old, because of the redness of the fine silts, and the punky rottenness of some of the boulders--there are other signs of glaciation along the ridge crest: planed-off patches of Shoo Fly slates, not bearing any striae, but on the other hand, such flat surfaces are not to be expected in this region of near-vertical strata of rather friable, easily-splitting rock.
As we drove back out, we took the higher, older road, much the nicer route by the way, and no longer blocked by a huge pine log, as Terry Davis and I had found it several years ago. Ron and I stopped at Helester Point and enjoyed the views, up to Snow Mountain, Tinkers Knob, Lyon and Needle peaks, and Little Bald Mountain. Some rocky crags on the verge of the North Fork canyon, just east of Tadpole Canyon, caught our eye; they look like they would offer some especially fine views. They are near, but above, the eastern terminus of the old Iowa Hill Canal, the line of which we could see, faintly, up near the Beacroft Trail.
We could also see more to the north, to Bowman Mountain, Grouse Ridge, and the Black Buttes.
All along Sawtooth Ridge one is treated to views into either the North Fork or the NFNFAR, and we would sometimes stop and scan the terrain with binoculars and sort out which canyon was which: there lies Fulda; there is where the NFNFAR drops in waterfalls into the Gorge of Many Gorges; there is Texas Canyon; there are the cliffs of the Railroad Tracks in Space Mine; and so on.
After reaching Texas Hill, we drove out past some rather major hard-rock diggings with large piles of angular quartz, presumably unprocessed ore, in search of still other hard-rock workings, where I.T. Coffin had one of his two cabins, and where he would use the blacksmith shop to "put steel" into crowbars and other mining tools. However, I misremembered the roads, and we missed these other diggings, and found ourselves instead on a road which drops into lower Burnett Canyon. So we gave it up and hit the homeward trail.
Such was a day in a wild and beautiful area, much scarred by logging, and most notoriously and terribly scarred by recent clearcuts. I would like to see this area treated much more gently; I would like to see We the People purchase the private inholdings; I would like to see timber harvests done in the snow, so that the land underneath is left untouched, not churned up into a miasma of sickening skid trails and roads. I would like to see the NFNFAR get Wild & Scenic River designation. There are limits, or there should be limits, on which areas are suitable for timber harvests. To my way of thinking these limits have already long been exceeded on much of Sawtooth Ridge and, for that matter, over across the NFNFAR on the Lost Camp Ridge.
There are limits, or there should be limits, on the proliferation of roads. To my way of thinking there are already far too many roads.
So, looking towards the future, I can imagine a Sawtooth Ridge in which much less timber is harvested, and many roads are closed. Let Helester Point be the most-westerly part of the ridge open to vehicular use, and let the jeep trail to the west lapse back into a foot trail. Not an OHV trail, a foot trail, a foot and equestrian and mountain bike trail, let's say. Let the timber harvests continue in selected areas on the higher parts of the north side of Sawtooth, but none at all on the south, North Fork side. But for God's sake, let the timber harvests take place only in the snow, or using such methods as do not tear up the slopes. And have a care for the old trails.
Howsoever, Sawtooth Ridge trends roughly east and west, running higher on the east, the summits verging upon 5500', and lower on the west, the very last knoll just clearing 4000' in elevation. The slopes on the North Fork side are south-facing and sunny, much more rocky and open and given to brush and Canyon Live Oak, while on the north-facing, north side of the ridge, there is more in the way of coniferous forest. In the olden days a trail led along the ridge crest, avoiding the very summits where possible, and just nicking the passes. Several trails dropped away from this main trail south into the vastness of the North Fork canyon--to Mumford Bar, Italian Bar, and Humbug Bar--, and others dropped away north into the narrower confines of the North Fork of the North Fork, to China Bar and the Rawhide Mine.
Only the Mumford Bar and Rawhide trails show on our modern USGS 7.5 minute Westville quadrangle.
A Tahoe National Forest lookout tower once stood at Helester Point, 4930', midway along the length of the ridge. Gradually roads penetrated west along Sawtooth Ridge, probably reaching Helester Point by the early 1900s. From there, a jeep trail of likely more recent vintage continues west down the ridge. The checkerboard pattern of land ownership, dating back to President Lincoln's land grants to the Central Pacific Railroad, are much in force in that area. Around 1985 a corporate takeover attempt scared Southern Pacific (the successor of the CPRR) into selling its vast land holdings in Tahoe National Forest. A lumber company, Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI), ended up with the most of these lands.
The steep north slopes of Sawtooth, then, already networked by logging roads and skid trails to the utter obliteration of the China Bar Trail, have in recent years been the target of SPI clearcuts. Some of these are highly visible from the scenic overlook called Iron Point, or from the line of the railroad near Blue Canyon, and from many places. They are on extremely steep slopes. SPI used herbicides to kill the natural groves of Kelloggs Black Oak and Canyon Live Oak interspersed with the Ponderosa Pine and Douglas Fir timber on these slopes, and replanted to a pure coniferous stand. I don't like this industrial approach to timber "management." I believe that Tahoe National Forest ought to be trying to purchase these SPI lands on Sawtooth Ridge, along with the Siller Brothers property at Lost Camp, and other SPI lands along the Lost Camp Ridge.
Whether it is clearcutting or ordinary, selective-harvest tractor-logging, old foot trails tend to be obliterated by timber harvests. Again and again I see every vestige of some historic trail erased, hidden forever under a welter of skid trails and log decks. Nobody looks out after these trails, which once comprised a vast network. One might well think that in this day and age, Tahoe National Forest and CDF would declare, "Enough is enough! More than half of the old trails are ruined, but no more! Harvest your timber, yes, but leave the trails intact!" One would be wrong.
But I digress.
Ron and I drove up I-80 to Emigrant Gap and caught Forest Road 19 out to Texas Hill, continuing east up Burnett Canyon, past the old Towle sawmill site, past the tiny thread of I.T. Coffin's old mining ditch, first below, then above the road, until almost insensibly we reached Sawtooth Ridge, and the road curved to the west, around the head of Burnett Canyon.
We passed the obliterated beginning of the Burnett Canyon Trail, and swung around the headwaters of Wilmont Ravine, where I.T. Coffin's oft-drunken partner, Tommy Williams, once washed a 20-ounce gold nugget out of the creek. We reached one of Sawtooth's passes near here, where old maps show a trail descending to Italian Bar, almost, as it were, the direct continuation of the Burnett Canyon Trail. I.T. Coffin used this Italian Bar trail from time to time. The top has been erased by logging, but Ron and I picked it up within a couple hundred yards of the pass, and followed it down into a mixed grove of large Ponderosa Pine and Kelloggs Black Oak, where the slopes eased a bit. We saw no very clear continuation, and since we were really more concerned with the trail down to Humbug Bar, another "lost" trail, we climbed back up to the pass and drove west.
Within a maze of logging roads on very steep slopes, where the roadcuts sometimes rise thirty feet high--apparently we can afford to just throw away topsoil and subsoil alike, in order to harvest timber--we bumped along in Ron's trusty old Toyota 4WD pickup, looking for one certain left turn which would put us on the old jeep trail west of Helester Point. We took a guess and found ourselves bucking up and over high waterbars within one of the major SPI clearcuts in Section 35, T16N R11E. Then we plunged down into a swale, and although still within SPI land, we had reached an area so lightly timbered that it had suffered relatively little.
At a certain point a large oak blocked the narrow road, but we managed to pull it aside, and continued west to one of the most pronounced passes on Sawtooth Ridge. We were now on TNF land, in the very northeast part of Section 3, T15N R11E; it was so nice to see an unlogged part of the ridge. Here the ~1900 Colfax Folio topographic map shows a trail dropping down to the North Fork at Humbug Bar, where a bridge once spanned the river. We parked and Ron immediately spotted old blazes on some oaks, and then another on a large pine just above us. The oak blazes were just where the Humbug Trail (I also call it the Sawbug Trail, because it runs from Sawtooth Ridge down to Humbug Bar) forks away from the equally-old Sawtooth Ridge Trail. Further explorations showed that we had stumbled upon a section of the original Sawtooth Trail which is now distinct from the road--for this old road, or jeep trail, had been, in many areas, cut directly into the line of the original trail.
Tom Molloy and I had found the upper end of the Sawbug Trail last fall, but had lost the line of the thing as it dropped away south and west into the steeps of the North Fork canyon. Ron and I worked hard on clearing fallen Knobcone Pine trunks and other obstacles from the well-defined uppermost section of the trail. These Knobcones are fire-adapted pines, members of the Closed-Cone group of the genus Pinus. The gigantic Volcano Fire of ~1960 had swept across the Foresthill Divide, down through Humbug Canyon, and right across the North Fork and up onto Sawtooth Ridge. These pines had seeded in thickly after the fire, and fought one another for sun, and those which lost the battle had died and fallen across the trail, in dozens. So Ron and I had our work cut out for us.
Eventually, we left the snarled mass of dead Knobcones for a more open forest of scattered large Ponderosa Pines, Kelloggs Black Oak, and Canyon Live Oak. A deep layer of leaves and pine needles covered the ground. Bears and other game had often used the old human trail above us, but here, on gentle slopes, in an open forest, the paths of animals were not tightly constrained, and soon we had really nothing to go by--not a blaze, not a suspiciously well-defined game trail, not anything.
We zigged and zagged down past some old prospect pits, with chunks of quartz lying about. The gold-bearing quartz veins here are allied to those worked so heavily down below us in the North Fork canyon, as for instance at the Dorer Mine, the Central Mine, the American Eagle Mine, the Gem Mine, etc. etc. A trail appeared, and we followed it west to one of the larger prospect pits, where it seems to end.
Once again a variety of factors conspired to make it seem more reasonable to search out the line of the Sawbug from Humbug Bar going up, rather than from Sawtooth down. The slopes where the trail disappeared were steep, and only getting steeper, below us. Then again, this last portion of "the trail" might well have had only to do with the mining prospects, not the Sawbug itself. The Sawbug itself may have dropped away into the great canyon a smidgin to the east, and then passed to the west far below us.
So, we retreated up to the truck and explored the vicinity of the pass. I followed the faint trace of the Sawtooth Trail up moderately steep slopes to the west, and had the satisfaction of finding another ancient blaze, on a huge Sugar Pine, and just above, a well-defined section of the trail itself. I eventually rejoined the road, and saw a large oak down.
Regrouping, we drove west, but were soon stopped by the large fallen oak. There was no pulling this aside. So we walked another half-mile along the meandering little road, and found some more very old blazes along the way, showing that here at least the road had been cut right into the line of the original trail.
The sun was lowering, and we retreated to the truck and started back out.
Sawtooth Ridge is interesting from the standpoint of geomorphology, and the evolution of the landscape of the North Fork. Its geology is part of this story.
Especially here in the Northern Sierra, the major canyons are young, freshly-incised, and steep-walled. A long series of volcanic eruptions, commencing around thirty million years ago, had buried the Ancestral Sierra beneath a plateau composed of rhyolite ash below, and andesitic mudflows above. Finally, and apparently very locally, basaltic lavas flowed down minor valleys eroded into this plateau. These youngest of the volcanics date from as much as seven to as little as three million years in age, and we may place the beginning of the incision of the North Fork canyon to the time of these youngest flows. One tiny remnant of basalt caps one of the knolls along Sawtooth Ridge, just east of Helester Point. Suppose it is "five million years old." Then the North Fork canyon is also five million years old, and here it has cut down nearly three thousand feet in that five million years.
The idea here is that the basalt atop Sawtooth was following the lowest, deepest valley available at the time, say, five million years ago. Which is as much as to say that the North Fork canyon did not exist at that time. The Sawtooth basalt followed and filled some minor valley in the plateau.
The generalized volcanic plateau sloped to the southwest. It was thickest near the crest, and thinned westward. The Sierra began to tilt up en masse several million years ago and this uplift increased the gradient of the plateau, sloping down to the southwest. Almost simultaneously the climate cooled and a long series of glaciations began. The steepened gradient and the glaciations combined to make for rapid downward incision of the new canyons. As they deepened, they widened. And we are at just that stage in the deepening and widening, which continues to this day, in which the main ridges between the canyons still hold remnants of the volcanic plateau.
Hence the flat-topped ridges of the middle elevations of the Northern Sierra.
But Sawtooth Ridge is not flat-topped. It does have some few tiny vestiges of the volcanic plateau on some of its knolls. Other knolls are "bedrock" of the Subjacent Series, here, metasediments of the Shoo Fly Complex, all the way to the top, for instance, Helester Point is a bedrock knoll.
We can ascribe this peak-and-pass topography to the near proximity of two canyons, the main North Fork and the North Fork of the North Fork. In their deepening and widening they have managed to erode intervening Sawtooth Ridge below the level of the plateau. In a sense Sawtooth offers a preview of what the more common flat-topped ridges will look like in another million years or so.
However, the extent to which glaciation may have figured into all this is not well known. It is clear that the very last "Tioga" ice extended well down Fulda Canyon, down the main North Fork of the North Fork, down the East Fork of the North Fork of the North Fork, and down the North Fork itself. But exactly how far? This remains to be established. My own guess is that the Tioga-age North Fork glacier, which melted back up the canyon some 12,000 years ago, came down at least to Mumford Bar. And I guess that Fulda and NFNFAR ice came down at least to the Gorge of Many Gorges, just upstream from the China Bar Trail.
On Sawtooth Ridge itself, right up along the crest, are minor bodies of much older glacial till. These till bodies--the largest being just west of Helester Point--show that during one of the earlier episodes of glaciation, perhaps Tahoe I or Tahoe II (ca. 130,000 and 65,000 years before the present, respectively), ice in both the main North Fork and in the NFNFAR came up at least as high as Sawtooth's low passes, and likely right over the top of everything, all peaks, all knolls. In fact, the passes are places where, as the ice began to recede and its surface lowered in elevation, ice probably flowed right through, probably from the main North Fork into the NFNFAR.
I have found patches of old till almost all the way down Sawtooth Ridge, to a point directly above Humbug Bar, and all of 2000' above the North Fork. It is almost impossible to avoid the conclusion that glacial ice reached down the North Fork to Euchre Bar and perhaps even Green Valley itself, these places being a scant two to three miles down the canyon from the last till on Sawtooth's crest.
On the other hand, temperate-latitude glaciers such as these are well known to have steeply-plunging termini. It is within the range of possibility that the ice never reached Euchre Bar itself. This is another open question which begs serious study.
Together with these visibly old till bodies on Sawtooth--visibly-old, because of the redness of the fine silts, and the punky rottenness of some of the boulders--there are other signs of glaciation along the ridge crest: planed-off patches of Shoo Fly slates, not bearing any striae, but on the other hand, such flat surfaces are not to be expected in this region of near-vertical strata of rather friable, easily-splitting rock.
As we drove back out, we took the higher, older road, much the nicer route by the way, and no longer blocked by a huge pine log, as Terry Davis and I had found it several years ago. Ron and I stopped at Helester Point and enjoyed the views, up to Snow Mountain, Tinkers Knob, Lyon and Needle peaks, and Little Bald Mountain. Some rocky crags on the verge of the North Fork canyon, just east of Tadpole Canyon, caught our eye; they look like they would offer some especially fine views. They are near, but above, the eastern terminus of the old Iowa Hill Canal, the line of which we could see, faintly, up near the Beacroft Trail.
We could also see more to the north, to Bowman Mountain, Grouse Ridge, and the Black Buttes.
All along Sawtooth Ridge one is treated to views into either the North Fork or the NFNFAR, and we would sometimes stop and scan the terrain with binoculars and sort out which canyon was which: there lies Fulda; there is where the NFNFAR drops in waterfalls into the Gorge of Many Gorges; there is Texas Canyon; there are the cliffs of the Railroad Tracks in Space Mine; and so on.
After reaching Texas Hill, we drove out past some rather major hard-rock diggings with large piles of angular quartz, presumably unprocessed ore, in search of still other hard-rock workings, where I.T. Coffin had one of his two cabins, and where he would use the blacksmith shop to "put steel" into crowbars and other mining tools. However, I misremembered the roads, and we missed these other diggings, and found ourselves instead on a road which drops into lower Burnett Canyon. So we gave it up and hit the homeward trail.
Such was a day in a wild and beautiful area, much scarred by logging, and most notoriously and terribly scarred by recent clearcuts. I would like to see this area treated much more gently; I would like to see We the People purchase the private inholdings; I would like to see timber harvests done in the snow, so that the land underneath is left untouched, not churned up into a miasma of sickening skid trails and roads. I would like to see the NFNFAR get Wild & Scenic River designation. There are limits, or there should be limits, on which areas are suitable for timber harvests. To my way of thinking these limits have already long been exceeded on much of Sawtooth Ridge and, for that matter, over across the NFNFAR on the Lost Camp Ridge.
There are limits, or there should be limits, on the proliferation of roads. To my way of thinking there are already far too many roads.
So, looking towards the future, I can imagine a Sawtooth Ridge in which much less timber is harvested, and many roads are closed. Let Helester Point be the most-westerly part of the ridge open to vehicular use, and let the jeep trail to the west lapse back into a foot trail. Not an OHV trail, a foot trail, a foot and equestrian and mountain bike trail, let's say. Let the timber harvests continue in selected areas on the higher parts of the north side of Sawtooth, but none at all on the south, North Fork side. But for God's sake, let the timber harvests take place only in the snow, or using such methods as do not tear up the slopes. And have a care for the old trails.
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