[written May 11, 2007]
I was surprised, Wednesday morning, by a thump on my lonely, lost-in-the-woods door, and gave an inarticulate shout of welcome, whereupon Ron Gould stepped in and asked if I was ready to go to the Iowa Hill Canal that very instant.
Of course I was ready!
In a few minutes I had thrown together one of my embarrassing sandwiches, filled a water bottle, and packed my little pack, with camera, binoculars, and something warm to wear, and off we went. We met Catherine "Canyon" O'Riley in Colfax and were soon embarked upon the tortuous windings of the Iowa Hill Road; for it was required to cross the American River Canyon. After an eternity we turned left on the Foresthill Road and drove upcountry another ten miles or so, to the Beacroft Trail.
Ron and Catherine were aware that, scarcely a week ago, Steve Hunter and I had somehow done what no five people together could ever have done, that we had achieved the impossible, that we had blundered slowly through that vast green Ocean of Brush, to the very end of the Canal. There, a distant and obscure ravine plunged into the dizzy blue depths of the North Fork. A 100-foot waterfall sprang from serried cliffs above. Ron and Catherine had personally confronted the Ocean of Brush, in years past, and must see for themselves if this were not one of Russell's tall tales, one of his myths of derring-do, and high old-fashioned romance.
These easternmost two miles of the Canal appear as a Tahoe National Forest system trail, on the map of 1947. And most interesting is the spur trail shown, east of Tadpole Canyon, leading down into the North Fork. From the overall look of things, neither trail has been maintained since 1947. It is not exactly easy, nor is it safe, to hike the Canal. There are rockslides on cliffs, where no trail exists. There is an often-difficult creek crossing, at Tadpole Canyon. But this old Canal Trail is surely one of the most scenic of all trails. We made our way slowly east, crossing Tadpole with a short hop, and took a break at the point where we guessed the spur trail forked away north.
Here a few stout firs and a Sugar Pine mark the intersection of a faint ridge with the Canal. It actually looks quite as though an old trail drops steeply past these trees. But the path instantly enters thick Huckleberry Oak, and is lost to sight. Ron and I had been convinced, on previous occasions, that this must be "the spur trail." A White Fir, just below the Canal, bears healed-over scars which might be blazes. I walked below this scarred fir and turned to face uphill, to face the Canal, to face the blazes. Once again I realized that, with enough imagination, a "small i" Forest Service blaze could exist. What had been notches through the bark had healed over until the new wood actually swelled out from the main mass of the trunk. Ron had always doubted this contorted excrescence could be a blaze.
The excrescence contains a rounded boss of woody tissue. Suddenly I saw what I'd always missed before: centered upon the rounded boss was an arrow, pointing to the right, or west, along the Canal, pointing to the Beacroft Pass and, eventually, Civilization.
With the arrow in play, there was about no question that this was indeed the spur trail depicted on the 1947 TNF map. I explored a little ways down, and found the trail continuing beneath the brush. It would not be easy to follow this trail. One would have to use patience and instinct, and be willing to lose the trail altogether from time to time, and just keep to the faint ridge, knowing it would reappear.
So, this was very nice. We had found the Old Spur Trail. But the Ocean of Brush beckoned. We left the shade of the spur-trail-trees and followed the outside-the-berm trail east into the many-flowered, sunny, silent Ocean.
The tremendous views were duly enjoyed. Somewhere ahead, Steve and I had dropped into the bed of the Canal, and had lopped the natural corridor a gnat's hair wider. Once we reached that spot we'd have easy going. Hence, with so much excess energy, it behooved us to pioneer an earlier, a simpler, and a better descent into the Canal. We began the fight.
Unfortunately, this turned into a lesson we had already learned all too well: the Ocean of Brush fights back; it fights hard; and it never gives up. In half an hour we reached the spot, about a hundred yards east, where Steve and I had entered the Canal. Here, then, would be the "easy going" I had bragged about.
Mysteriously, there was hardly a sign that anyone had ever set foot there, much less lopped a thousand branches. We advanced slowly. It took forever to cross the Ocean and enter the shelter of the firs to the east, where immediately one reaches a big rock outcrop, and the Canal becomes a bench cut again, and one enjoys really incredible views of cliffs and waterfalls and snow peaks.
A grouse could be heard booming, in the forest above us.
From here, I declared, it would be easy going; the fir forest kept the brush down.
But somehow I had forgotten that an outlier of the Ocean had invaded that fir forest, so the going was not very easy at all. We persisted, and entered the forest shade eventually, squishing over a few tiny patches of snow along the Canal, and at last , there it was, the End. The Beginning, in one sense. The little creek, the waterfall. Catherine was surprised this creek had no name. I suggested Tad-York, since it is midway between Tadpole Canyon and New York Canyon. Ron thought York-Pole might be good. Neither is euphonious.
After a good long rest we began the tramp out. The sun neared the horizon as we neared the Beacroft Pass. We were very glad to shed our packs and sit in the comfort of Ron's truck. It's good he was driving, for I was little better than a zombie, possessed by a haze of dreams, of cliffs and canyons, roaring waterfalls, and silent, grasping, many-armed and many-flowered Oceans.
It was another great day in the great canyon.
Friday, May 11, 2007
Friday, May 4, 2007
The Upper Iowa Hill Canal
Years passed, and finally the day had arrived when I could show Steve Hunter, connoisseur of local canyons and old trails, the remarkable, the amazing, upper section of the Iowa Hill Canal.
In this part of the Sierra, where miners swarmed the hills and the canyons for decades, in search of the golden metal, there are many mining ditches, some miles long, some many miles long, all constructed to bring water to the mines, to the diggings, to this or that fabulous trove which would send one back home to the States a rich man—home at long last!—to live like a lord, within the encircling glow of a faithful and a grateful family.
Such a man would, someday, command quite a large tombstone, in the old cemetery on the hill.
Never mind that in reality, one worked and worked, one dug and dug and sweated and sweated and banged one's hands bloody, and the few rich strikes accomplished little more than to keep the anxious bill collectors at a respectful distance. One's credit was reestablished at the general store, and some spanking fine mules would amble, heavily laden with supplies, to one's remote camp, and the other miners would see those mules, and say, that Jones, he's onto something good!
If a mining ditch aimed high, aimed to stand head and shoulders above the general case, above the pitiful and impotent streams of the commoner sort, well, that ditch would be called a Canal. Thus the Placer County Canal, which served the mines at Dutch Flat, or the Iowa Hill Canal, which served the mines at Iowa Hill.
Ditch or canal, the thing had an alpha, an omega, a beginning, an end. Ditch or canal, end and beginning alike could become blurred: there might be tributary ditches, there might be distributary ditches, multiple beginnings and multiple endings; and such was the Iowa Hill Canal.
Today, after so long, I finally reached the Alpha of the Iowa Hill Canal. Or is it the Omega? It is where the Canal begins, yes, but this Canal was never finished, this Canal was pushed higher and higher, farther and farther east, commanding more and more tributary streams, gathering more and more water.
Then the money ran out, and work stopped. The Iowa Hill Canal was projected to begin high within the great canyon of the North Fork of the American River, at Old Soda Springs. It would have leeched the life blood of the North Fork itself, and all its southern tributaries: Wabena Canyon, Wildcat Canyon, Sailor Canyon, New York Canyon, all would have fed the monstrous ditch. Excuse me, the monstrous Canal.
I met Steve at Colfax and we drove his wonderfully underpowered, gas-scorning little Suzuki Samurai across the North Fork at Mineral Bar, climbing through tortured curves to Iowa Hill, and far beyond, to the Foresthill-Soda Springs Road, passing China Wall (a spot along this same Iowa Hill Canal), passing Mumford Bar Trail, passing the road to Deadwood, passing the site of Secret House, and after quite a long time, we parked at the Beacroft Trail, which drops 2800' to the rowdy, spring-high North Fork.
This ancient trail begins in a low gap in the Foresthill Divide and makes short steep work of its descent to the river. A rough little road continues north from the parking area to the trailhead proper. There is a complex of roads and trail and ditches in the area. The Secret Canyon Ditch converges upon the trailhead from the south, and appears to end. It took me a while to realize that just there it entered a short tunnel, which has since collapsed.
The topographic map shows the Beacroft Trail crossing the Iowa Hill Canal a little ways below the pass, to the north, just within the North Fork canyon. Following the trail, one reaches the north end of the collapsed tunnel, and behold! An old mining ditch, and a large one at that.
But this is just the continuation of the Secret Canyon Ditch, which was itself but a feeder to the Iowa Hill Canal. Continuing down the Beacroft, the trail steepens, and in a little ways one crosses a flat bench cut. This is the Canal, which at this point flowed through a wooden flume.
Strangely, if one follows the bench cut east, it soon ends altogether, in heavy timber. With sharp eyes one can barely discern yet another ditch, well above and to the east. This too is the Canal, which, as I eventually realized, makes a sudden drop of about a hundred feet in elevation at this point. This sudden change in grade may have been prompted by the steep cliffs farther east, in Tadpole Canyon; that is, when faced with these cliffs, and the inevitable blasting required to eke out a bench cut upon which to stand a wooden flume, the builders may have found that some great advantage accrued from the higher line, probably, by avoiding some one pernicious cliff.
So one can struggle up from the bench cut to the upper line of the Canal, where briefly it assumes the character of an unusually large ditch, six feet deep, five feet broad at the base, eight or ten feet across at the berm. Following this large ditch east, one soon reaches another bench cut, indicating that once again, a wooden flume had been built.
Ah, it took quite a few visits to this area to sort all these things out. Eventually, I discovered the Chinese Road.
The Chinese Road begins back in the Beacroft Pass, climbs slowly through the fir woods, and then drops slowly to the exact point where the upper, eastern line of the Canal changes from ditch to flume. I call it the Chinese Road simply because it is very likely that most of the work of building the Canal, back around 1873, was performed by Chinese immigrants. The Chinese Road owes its existence to the need to bring lumber to the beginning of a long flume section.
The flume section continues east into, and then back out, of cliff-bound Tadpole Canyon, a north-flowing tributary of the North Fork. After the Canal gets free of the Tadpole cliffs, it reverts to ditch-form again, and sweeps east into the main North Fork canyon, and into an absolute ocean of heavy brush. All the usual suspects are present in abundance: Huckleberry Oak, Bush Chinquapin, Green Manzanita, etc. etc. And further progress east on the Canal is over. I call this area the Big Brush.
Steve was suitably impressed by the Canal. Old Tahoe National Forest (TNF) maps (1947, 1962, 1966) show this section of the Canal, east of the Beacroft, as a foot trail. Like so many other historic trails, TNF abandoned this trail. It often narrows to a precarious thread, crossing some rockslide on a cliff. It is definitely not for everyone.
But the views are extraordinary. Directly across the North Fork, Big Valley Bluff rises 3500 feet from the river, in ragged cliffs. Sugar Pine Point, Cherry Point, Snow Mountain, Devil Peak, and even some of the Yuba peaks, like Red Mountain, Basin Peak, and Castle Peak, are all visible from the Canal. To the west, one sees away down the canyon to Moody Ridge, near Dutch Flat.
Quite a number of waterfalls are seen. There are waterfalls within Tadpole Canyon, and one sees a few of these. But once one gets out into the Big Brush, one begins to see various more distant waterfalls, such as the 200-footer at the base of Big Valley canyon, and the 200-footer up in Big Granite Canyon, and the waterfalls which adorn Sugar Pine Point.
This is indeed Placer County's Yosemite.
One can often hear the North Fork itself, although 3000 feet above it, and, strangely, one can hear the beautiful Big Valley Falls, a distinct roar, louder and more focused than the generalized murmur of the North Fork.
Steve and I made short work of crossing Tadpole Canyon and entering the Big Brush. The sky was clear, the sun was bright, and a cool breeze kept us comfortable. Here was the insurmountable obstacle I had chattered about, that infinite tangle of muscular branches which forced even bears to somehow scramble over the tops of the gnarled shrubs, rather than on the good earth itself. The line of the Canal led almost due east through the Big Brush, and entered a sparse grove of fir about a quarter-mile away.
There, one could hope, the brush would abate.
We had approached the Big Brush only rarely on the berm of the Canal, sometimes in its bed, at other times on a faint old trail just outside the berm. This faint trail seems to be continuous, from the end of the flume section bench cut to the Big Brush, but is itself, often, most horribly blocked by brush. There are signs that it maintains its outside-the-berm alignment into the Big Brush, but since one can usually not even see the ground, this is conjecture.
I climbed onto a sturdy bush on the berm, its limbs hardened by decades of heavy snow, and looked up the Canal, into that vast and gnarled sunny ocean. Once again I saw that the very bed of the Canal makes a faint and narrow gap, an almost imperceptible corridor, with here and there a patch of snow gleaming through the chaparral. Ron Gould and Catherine O'Riley and I had given this quasi-corridor a try. It was an impending disaster of interlacing branches. It was no kind of corridor for humans. A fox would love the thing. A mouse would stroll along with the greatest of ease. A bear would have problems. A deer would not even try. A human would merely ask for trouble. Lots of trouble.
But I mentioned the almost-invisible corridor to Steve, and, always sensible, he said, "Maybe we should give it a try." Steve was intrigued by the fact that no one had managed to follow the Canal east to its end, that is, its beginning, for a long, long time. For decades, maybe many decades.
So we lowered ourselves down to the bed of the Canal, clinging to slender and strong Huckleberry Oak branches, and with one pair of loppers, began making our way.
There was no walking. There was only lop and lop and lop and lop, and then throw aside the cuttings, which would reveal still more branches, so, lop and lop and lop and lop, and one yard was gained.
Then repeat.
Rarely, we saw signs that bears had shouldered through, and often they had climbed above the Canal bed on the uphill side, and we could take advantage of a few yards of relatively easy going.
In an hour or so we had made half the distance to the sparse grove of fir trees to the east. We rested. A worse-than-usual tangle of manzanita and the like blocked the Canal ahead. It was prudent to stop, to give up, to call it a day. My lopping count was up over five hundred branches, and my arms and shoulders were screaming. My pants were torn, my arms were bloody. I pulled myself up to the berm, a minor feat of gymnastics, climbed a bush, and gazed ahead.
Just beyond the knotted tangle which had brought us to a stop, the "corridor" seemed to open somewhat, and a number of small snow patches, up to fifty feet long, could be seen in the bed of the Canal. I reported to Steve, who calmly opined, "Maybe we should go a little further; after all, the trees are closer than they were."
We left our packs behind and attacked the tangle. By inches we made ten feet, and entered upon the most open section yet. Suddenly we could take five paces at a time without any lopping. Suddenly the bear trail became better-defined, and would always climb to the inside of the Canal to avoid bad brush tangles. Suddenly there were little snowfields where we could just walk along like real humans, without dodging a single shrub. No crouching, no intricate sidling motions, just plain walking.
It was a miracle.
We reached the trees, and at their fringes passed some White Fir in the bed of the Canal, where so many bears had shouldered past, for so many years, that they had stripped all the side branches away on one side, for five or six feet from the ground.
At last we had easy going. Soon a certain rock outcrop was reached, which I had often noted when scanning, with binoculars, the line of the Canal from Big Valley Bluff, across the canyon. Here the ditch ends and a bench cut resumed. At a certain promontory we found an old flume timber, almost intact, studded with twenty-penny square nails, and really incredible views of the Big Valley big waterfall, and the Big Granite Canyon falls, and we could even see parts of the Big Granite Trail, where it makes begins its final approach to the North Fork, from a few hundred feet above. Snow-spangled Snow Mountain; the wind-wavering little waterfall on Sugar Pine Point; the rarely-seen waterfalls on the west side of Big Valley, well back from the river ... the view was truly exceptional. Our hard work had earned us something very very good.
It remained to follow the last quarter-mile of the Canal east, to an unnamed ravine below some notable cliffs. We had a little trouble rounding the view-outcrop, as the bench-cut was not continuous, and some minor rock climbing-scrambling was needed, but soon enough the Canal assumed ditch-form again, and in the shelter of the fir forest, there was much much much less brush, and we had reasonably easy going, comparatively easy going, to the very end, or very beginning, I should say, of the never-completed Iowa Hill Canal.
A small creek rushed in cascades beside steep cliffs, and just upstream, dashed over a 100-foot waterfall in clouds of glowing spray, towards which we climbed, over rough slates of the Shoo Fly Complex, and enjoyed mystical views of the falls, looking almost directly up into the early-afternoon sun.
We were exhilarated with our success in performing the impossible, in actually crossing that green ocean of chaparral. Slowly we worked our way back along the Canal, here on the berm, there, in the bed, and sometimes on some faint little bear trail above the bed. It was nearing four o'clock when we reached the Suzuki Samurai. Steve, thoughtful as always, had packed a couple of cold Hamm's, which we savored in the shade of a fir tree, while munching some stale pretzels. Then followed the long mesmerizing drive down the Divide, through lonely Iowa Hill, and back across the North Fork to I-80, and Civilization.
It was another great day in the North Fork.
In this part of the Sierra, where miners swarmed the hills and the canyons for decades, in search of the golden metal, there are many mining ditches, some miles long, some many miles long, all constructed to bring water to the mines, to the diggings, to this or that fabulous trove which would send one back home to the States a rich man—home at long last!—to live like a lord, within the encircling glow of a faithful and a grateful family.
Such a man would, someday, command quite a large tombstone, in the old cemetery on the hill.
Never mind that in reality, one worked and worked, one dug and dug and sweated and sweated and banged one's hands bloody, and the few rich strikes accomplished little more than to keep the anxious bill collectors at a respectful distance. One's credit was reestablished at the general store, and some spanking fine mules would amble, heavily laden with supplies, to one's remote camp, and the other miners would see those mules, and say, that Jones, he's onto something good!
If a mining ditch aimed high, aimed to stand head and shoulders above the general case, above the pitiful and impotent streams of the commoner sort, well, that ditch would be called a Canal. Thus the Placer County Canal, which served the mines at Dutch Flat, or the Iowa Hill Canal, which served the mines at Iowa Hill.
Ditch or canal, the thing had an alpha, an omega, a beginning, an end. Ditch or canal, end and beginning alike could become blurred: there might be tributary ditches, there might be distributary ditches, multiple beginnings and multiple endings; and such was the Iowa Hill Canal.
Today, after so long, I finally reached the Alpha of the Iowa Hill Canal. Or is it the Omega? It is where the Canal begins, yes, but this Canal was never finished, this Canal was pushed higher and higher, farther and farther east, commanding more and more tributary streams, gathering more and more water.
Then the money ran out, and work stopped. The Iowa Hill Canal was projected to begin high within the great canyon of the North Fork of the American River, at Old Soda Springs. It would have leeched the life blood of the North Fork itself, and all its southern tributaries: Wabena Canyon, Wildcat Canyon, Sailor Canyon, New York Canyon, all would have fed the monstrous ditch. Excuse me, the monstrous Canal.
I met Steve at Colfax and we drove his wonderfully underpowered, gas-scorning little Suzuki Samurai across the North Fork at Mineral Bar, climbing through tortured curves to Iowa Hill, and far beyond, to the Foresthill-Soda Springs Road, passing China Wall (a spot along this same Iowa Hill Canal), passing Mumford Bar Trail, passing the road to Deadwood, passing the site of Secret House, and after quite a long time, we parked at the Beacroft Trail, which drops 2800' to the rowdy, spring-high North Fork.
This ancient trail begins in a low gap in the Foresthill Divide and makes short steep work of its descent to the river. A rough little road continues north from the parking area to the trailhead proper. There is a complex of roads and trail and ditches in the area. The Secret Canyon Ditch converges upon the trailhead from the south, and appears to end. It took me a while to realize that just there it entered a short tunnel, which has since collapsed.
The topographic map shows the Beacroft Trail crossing the Iowa Hill Canal a little ways below the pass, to the north, just within the North Fork canyon. Following the trail, one reaches the north end of the collapsed tunnel, and behold! An old mining ditch, and a large one at that.
But this is just the continuation of the Secret Canyon Ditch, which was itself but a feeder to the Iowa Hill Canal. Continuing down the Beacroft, the trail steepens, and in a little ways one crosses a flat bench cut. This is the Canal, which at this point flowed through a wooden flume.
Strangely, if one follows the bench cut east, it soon ends altogether, in heavy timber. With sharp eyes one can barely discern yet another ditch, well above and to the east. This too is the Canal, which, as I eventually realized, makes a sudden drop of about a hundred feet in elevation at this point. This sudden change in grade may have been prompted by the steep cliffs farther east, in Tadpole Canyon; that is, when faced with these cliffs, and the inevitable blasting required to eke out a bench cut upon which to stand a wooden flume, the builders may have found that some great advantage accrued from the higher line, probably, by avoiding some one pernicious cliff.
So one can struggle up from the bench cut to the upper line of the Canal, where briefly it assumes the character of an unusually large ditch, six feet deep, five feet broad at the base, eight or ten feet across at the berm. Following this large ditch east, one soon reaches another bench cut, indicating that once again, a wooden flume had been built.
Ah, it took quite a few visits to this area to sort all these things out. Eventually, I discovered the Chinese Road.
The Chinese Road begins back in the Beacroft Pass, climbs slowly through the fir woods, and then drops slowly to the exact point where the upper, eastern line of the Canal changes from ditch to flume. I call it the Chinese Road simply because it is very likely that most of the work of building the Canal, back around 1873, was performed by Chinese immigrants. The Chinese Road owes its existence to the need to bring lumber to the beginning of a long flume section.
The flume section continues east into, and then back out, of cliff-bound Tadpole Canyon, a north-flowing tributary of the North Fork. After the Canal gets free of the Tadpole cliffs, it reverts to ditch-form again, and sweeps east into the main North Fork canyon, and into an absolute ocean of heavy brush. All the usual suspects are present in abundance: Huckleberry Oak, Bush Chinquapin, Green Manzanita, etc. etc. And further progress east on the Canal is over. I call this area the Big Brush.
Steve was suitably impressed by the Canal. Old Tahoe National Forest (TNF) maps (1947, 1962, 1966) show this section of the Canal, east of the Beacroft, as a foot trail. Like so many other historic trails, TNF abandoned this trail. It often narrows to a precarious thread, crossing some rockslide on a cliff. It is definitely not for everyone.
But the views are extraordinary. Directly across the North Fork, Big Valley Bluff rises 3500 feet from the river, in ragged cliffs. Sugar Pine Point, Cherry Point, Snow Mountain, Devil Peak, and even some of the Yuba peaks, like Red Mountain, Basin Peak, and Castle Peak, are all visible from the Canal. To the west, one sees away down the canyon to Moody Ridge, near Dutch Flat.
Quite a number of waterfalls are seen. There are waterfalls within Tadpole Canyon, and one sees a few of these. But once one gets out into the Big Brush, one begins to see various more distant waterfalls, such as the 200-footer at the base of Big Valley canyon, and the 200-footer up in Big Granite Canyon, and the waterfalls which adorn Sugar Pine Point.
This is indeed Placer County's Yosemite.
One can often hear the North Fork itself, although 3000 feet above it, and, strangely, one can hear the beautiful Big Valley Falls, a distinct roar, louder and more focused than the generalized murmur of the North Fork.
Steve and I made short work of crossing Tadpole Canyon and entering the Big Brush. The sky was clear, the sun was bright, and a cool breeze kept us comfortable. Here was the insurmountable obstacle I had chattered about, that infinite tangle of muscular branches which forced even bears to somehow scramble over the tops of the gnarled shrubs, rather than on the good earth itself. The line of the Canal led almost due east through the Big Brush, and entered a sparse grove of fir about a quarter-mile away.
There, one could hope, the brush would abate.
We had approached the Big Brush only rarely on the berm of the Canal, sometimes in its bed, at other times on a faint old trail just outside the berm. This faint trail seems to be continuous, from the end of the flume section bench cut to the Big Brush, but is itself, often, most horribly blocked by brush. There are signs that it maintains its outside-the-berm alignment into the Big Brush, but since one can usually not even see the ground, this is conjecture.
I climbed onto a sturdy bush on the berm, its limbs hardened by decades of heavy snow, and looked up the Canal, into that vast and gnarled sunny ocean. Once again I saw that the very bed of the Canal makes a faint and narrow gap, an almost imperceptible corridor, with here and there a patch of snow gleaming through the chaparral. Ron Gould and Catherine O'Riley and I had given this quasi-corridor a try. It was an impending disaster of interlacing branches. It was no kind of corridor for humans. A fox would love the thing. A mouse would stroll along with the greatest of ease. A bear would have problems. A deer would not even try. A human would merely ask for trouble. Lots of trouble.
But I mentioned the almost-invisible corridor to Steve, and, always sensible, he said, "Maybe we should give it a try." Steve was intrigued by the fact that no one had managed to follow the Canal east to its end, that is, its beginning, for a long, long time. For decades, maybe many decades.
So we lowered ourselves down to the bed of the Canal, clinging to slender and strong Huckleberry Oak branches, and with one pair of loppers, began making our way.
There was no walking. There was only lop and lop and lop and lop, and then throw aside the cuttings, which would reveal still more branches, so, lop and lop and lop and lop, and one yard was gained.
Then repeat.
Rarely, we saw signs that bears had shouldered through, and often they had climbed above the Canal bed on the uphill side, and we could take advantage of a few yards of relatively easy going.
In an hour or so we had made half the distance to the sparse grove of fir trees to the east. We rested. A worse-than-usual tangle of manzanita and the like blocked the Canal ahead. It was prudent to stop, to give up, to call it a day. My lopping count was up over five hundred branches, and my arms and shoulders were screaming. My pants were torn, my arms were bloody. I pulled myself up to the berm, a minor feat of gymnastics, climbed a bush, and gazed ahead.
Just beyond the knotted tangle which had brought us to a stop, the "corridor" seemed to open somewhat, and a number of small snow patches, up to fifty feet long, could be seen in the bed of the Canal. I reported to Steve, who calmly opined, "Maybe we should go a little further; after all, the trees are closer than they were."
We left our packs behind and attacked the tangle. By inches we made ten feet, and entered upon the most open section yet. Suddenly we could take five paces at a time without any lopping. Suddenly the bear trail became better-defined, and would always climb to the inside of the Canal to avoid bad brush tangles. Suddenly there were little snowfields where we could just walk along like real humans, without dodging a single shrub. No crouching, no intricate sidling motions, just plain walking.
It was a miracle.
We reached the trees, and at their fringes passed some White Fir in the bed of the Canal, where so many bears had shouldered past, for so many years, that they had stripped all the side branches away on one side, for five or six feet from the ground.
At last we had easy going. Soon a certain rock outcrop was reached, which I had often noted when scanning, with binoculars, the line of the Canal from Big Valley Bluff, across the canyon. Here the ditch ends and a bench cut resumed. At a certain promontory we found an old flume timber, almost intact, studded with twenty-penny square nails, and really incredible views of the Big Valley big waterfall, and the Big Granite Canyon falls, and we could even see parts of the Big Granite Trail, where it makes begins its final approach to the North Fork, from a few hundred feet above. Snow-spangled Snow Mountain; the wind-wavering little waterfall on Sugar Pine Point; the rarely-seen waterfalls on the west side of Big Valley, well back from the river ... the view was truly exceptional. Our hard work had earned us something very very good.
It remained to follow the last quarter-mile of the Canal east, to an unnamed ravine below some notable cliffs. We had a little trouble rounding the view-outcrop, as the bench-cut was not continuous, and some minor rock climbing-scrambling was needed, but soon enough the Canal assumed ditch-form again, and in the shelter of the fir forest, there was much much much less brush, and we had reasonably easy going, comparatively easy going, to the very end, or very beginning, I should say, of the never-completed Iowa Hill Canal.
A small creek rushed in cascades beside steep cliffs, and just upstream, dashed over a 100-foot waterfall in clouds of glowing spray, towards which we climbed, over rough slates of the Shoo Fly Complex, and enjoyed mystical views of the falls, looking almost directly up into the early-afternoon sun.
We were exhilarated with our success in performing the impossible, in actually crossing that green ocean of chaparral. Slowly we worked our way back along the Canal, here on the berm, there, in the bed, and sometimes on some faint little bear trail above the bed. It was nearing four o'clock when we reached the Suzuki Samurai. Steve, thoughtful as always, had packed a couple of cold Hamm's, which we savored in the shade of a fir tree, while munching some stale pretzels. Then followed the long mesmerizing drive down the Divide, through lonely Iowa Hill, and back across the North Fork to I-80, and Civilization.
It was another great day in the North Fork.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
The Amazing Anne DeBusk
[written April 22, 2007]
This afternoon I had the pleasure of spending a few hours with Anne DeBusk. She and her husband Lee had often hiked the North Fork high country, had carved their names into the trunks of ancient aspens, and it was by that strange chance I had met them. I saw those names, and Googled them, and found them to live scarcely a crow's mile away, in that merest dot of a town, Alta.
So I called, and visited, and listened to many a story of Snow Mountain, and the Royal Gorge, and the Lost Emigrant Mine, which last Lee's family had owned for several decades. This gold mine stands high on the ridge dividing Wabena Canyon from Wildcat Canyon, a ridge which falls away in sheer cliffs full three thousand feet to the North Fork. I heard of Lee's walk, as a seventeen-year-old, from Weimar to Ely, Nevada; and from Weimar, to Oregon. I had hoped to interview him at length, and record these extraordinary memories for posterity.
But Lee died last year, about this time. And Anne began sorting through his piles of books and papers. For decades he had told her of a certain green box, full of letters from his service in the Army, during the Korean War. They had searched and searched, and they gave the thing up for lost. Only a few days ago, Anne finally found the box. It was blue. I heard she wanted me to see the old letters, and thus it followed that today I drove up to her old old house amid a pounding shower of sleet. Her living room had the same old many-pointed mule deer and bear heads staring down from all sides, the same glass cases full of chert and obsidian spear points, the same odd assortment of cute knicknacks which seemed equally out of keeping with the spirit of either Lee or Anne.
On her coffee table was a stack of photo albums. I slowly leafed through them, while listening to a panorama of her life and times, a constant commentary often diverging widely from the particular page in view. She was raised in a lumber camp, up towards Chester and Portola, where the Sierra insensibly merge into Mt. Lassen and the Cascades. She was the only child in the camp. How exciting it had been to listen to the radio dramas! The thudding footsteps, the creaking doors! In those days there were few enough people in the Sierra, so it was natural for people from Portola to know people in Auburn. In fact, when it was time for high school, she moved to Auburn. She did not meet Lee, at first; a long time would pass, even though they shared fifty friends, before they met, and fell in love.
Lee's brother, Wilbur, died fighting, in the Korean War, and what little was left of Wilbur was laid to rest in Colfax. Anne attributed Lee's survival of that same war to his expertise at driving. Lee's father died young, his mother was very sick, and it was left to Lee, the eldest of several children, to be the man of the house, although only a boy in years. These responsibilities meant Lee could not finish high school. When he was eleven years old he was already driving the family truck up to the Lost Emigrant Mine, fifty miles from Auburn. He drove vehicles of every stripe: bulldozers, big trucks, cars, little trucks, mules, wagons, whatever, Lee knew how to drive it.
Hence when his infantry company was on the move in the bitterly cold Korean winter, all packed into a huge truck, and the driver was shot dead, the word went out, could anyone drive this rig? Lee could, of course. It turned out he could drive anything and everything, and for that reason alone he was not one those sent to take Hill 2115, etc., from the Chinese, inch by bloody inch.
I saw many photos of their camping trips to Snow Mountain. I told Anne that there was, so regrettably I will always think, a house, now, at Huntley Mill Lake. The deep-pocketed owner had actually paved the road in from the railroad tracks, a distance of several miles. This triggered a memory.
"Do you know the creek which flows out of Huntley Mill Lake, and flows down into Big Granite Canyon?" she inquired, and I responded in the affirmative; Tom McGuire and I had followed that very creek for quite a distance, last May, during our expedition to the huge waterfalls in Big Ganite Canyon.
"Well, one time, Lee and I were camping near the lake, and I walked down the creek a ways. It was all waterfalls, all twisty and turny, and not much water, it being the hunting season, and we were up there after deer, as usual.
"So I was following the little creek down, well, you know, little, at that time of the year, in the fall, and I found these pools which were just swarming with huge trout! I mean, these trout were eighteen, twenty inches long!
"So I took off most of my clothes and jumped right into this pool, ... ."
I interrupted. "You jumped into the pool?" This seemed a bit strange.
"Yes, I jumped right into the pool, and it was soooo cold! And I caught quite a few of those trout, and threw them up on the bank, and finally when it got too cold I climbed out, and, ... ."
I had to interrupt again. "OK, hold it right there, Anne. Are you trying to tell me ... do you want me to believe ... that you stripped naked ... ."
"Not naked, I still had some things on!" Anne replied, mock-primly.
"OK, not quite naked, you jumped into the pool, and you caught those giant trout by hand?"
"Well, yes, of course, I didn't have any gear with me, and it's not that hard; you see, you reach under a rock, and if you feel a trout, you don't grab it all at once, you stroke it a little, and that calms it down, and *then* you grab it!"
Well. Anne is an amazing woman. Later she showed me the old blue trunk stuffed full of letters, and photo negatives, from Lee's time in the Korean War. Most were addressed to his mother. There were hundreds. He was a terrible speller, was Lee DeBusk, but a great writer of letters. I could not take the time to even begin sampling these hundreds of letters, and I was worried about disturbing their original ordering. In the stacks I did find a receipt from a Foresthill gas station, from 1948. The gas station's telephone number was simply F-50.
Before I left I had a crack at repairing Anne's old record player, but failed. We made plans for another get-together after she has sorted through more of her archives. Perhaps then I will take a look at that infinitude of letters. There is a body of material, somewhere, Anne tells me, about the Lost Emigrant Mine. I hope to see that.
Such was an afternoon with Anne DeBusk, a fellow lover of the North Fork. One of the many stories I heard was about a visit she made to Helester Point, up on Sawtooth Ridge. She had led some friends from the Bay Area in there, a long long dusty drive. From the Point they could see mile after mile up the North Fork, to Snow Mountain. Her friends were exclaiming about the beauty of the great canyon, the infinite wildness of the view; and Anne said, yes, yes, this is wonderful, but just you go up to Snow Mountain, and camp out, and you will know you have been touched by God Himself! And she tried to explain how, when the sun was about to set, and the sky flamed into gold, and you were leaning against some giant old pine, away up on Snow Mountain, well, there was really nothing better in this world.
She's so right.
This afternoon I had the pleasure of spending a few hours with Anne DeBusk. She and her husband Lee had often hiked the North Fork high country, had carved their names into the trunks of ancient aspens, and it was by that strange chance I had met them. I saw those names, and Googled them, and found them to live scarcely a crow's mile away, in that merest dot of a town, Alta.
So I called, and visited, and listened to many a story of Snow Mountain, and the Royal Gorge, and the Lost Emigrant Mine, which last Lee's family had owned for several decades. This gold mine stands high on the ridge dividing Wabena Canyon from Wildcat Canyon, a ridge which falls away in sheer cliffs full three thousand feet to the North Fork. I heard of Lee's walk, as a seventeen-year-old, from Weimar to Ely, Nevada; and from Weimar, to Oregon. I had hoped to interview him at length, and record these extraordinary memories for posterity.
But Lee died last year, about this time. And Anne began sorting through his piles of books and papers. For decades he had told her of a certain green box, full of letters from his service in the Army, during the Korean War. They had searched and searched, and they gave the thing up for lost. Only a few days ago, Anne finally found the box. It was blue. I heard she wanted me to see the old letters, and thus it followed that today I drove up to her old old house amid a pounding shower of sleet. Her living room had the same old many-pointed mule deer and bear heads staring down from all sides, the same glass cases full of chert and obsidian spear points, the same odd assortment of cute knicknacks which seemed equally out of keeping with the spirit of either Lee or Anne.
On her coffee table was a stack of photo albums. I slowly leafed through them, while listening to a panorama of her life and times, a constant commentary often diverging widely from the particular page in view. She was raised in a lumber camp, up towards Chester and Portola, where the Sierra insensibly merge into Mt. Lassen and the Cascades. She was the only child in the camp. How exciting it had been to listen to the radio dramas! The thudding footsteps, the creaking doors! In those days there were few enough people in the Sierra, so it was natural for people from Portola to know people in Auburn. In fact, when it was time for high school, she moved to Auburn. She did not meet Lee, at first; a long time would pass, even though they shared fifty friends, before they met, and fell in love.
Lee's brother, Wilbur, died fighting, in the Korean War, and what little was left of Wilbur was laid to rest in Colfax. Anne attributed Lee's survival of that same war to his expertise at driving. Lee's father died young, his mother was very sick, and it was left to Lee, the eldest of several children, to be the man of the house, although only a boy in years. These responsibilities meant Lee could not finish high school. When he was eleven years old he was already driving the family truck up to the Lost Emigrant Mine, fifty miles from Auburn. He drove vehicles of every stripe: bulldozers, big trucks, cars, little trucks, mules, wagons, whatever, Lee knew how to drive it.
Hence when his infantry company was on the move in the bitterly cold Korean winter, all packed into a huge truck, and the driver was shot dead, the word went out, could anyone drive this rig? Lee could, of course. It turned out he could drive anything and everything, and for that reason alone he was not one those sent to take Hill 2115, etc., from the Chinese, inch by bloody inch.
I saw many photos of their camping trips to Snow Mountain. I told Anne that there was, so regrettably I will always think, a house, now, at Huntley Mill Lake. The deep-pocketed owner had actually paved the road in from the railroad tracks, a distance of several miles. This triggered a memory.
"Do you know the creek which flows out of Huntley Mill Lake, and flows down into Big Granite Canyon?" she inquired, and I responded in the affirmative; Tom McGuire and I had followed that very creek for quite a distance, last May, during our expedition to the huge waterfalls in Big Ganite Canyon.
"Well, one time, Lee and I were camping near the lake, and I walked down the creek a ways. It was all waterfalls, all twisty and turny, and not much water, it being the hunting season, and we were up there after deer, as usual.
"So I was following the little creek down, well, you know, little, at that time of the year, in the fall, and I found these pools which were just swarming with huge trout! I mean, these trout were eighteen, twenty inches long!
"So I took off most of my clothes and jumped right into this pool, ... ."
I interrupted. "You jumped into the pool?" This seemed a bit strange.
"Yes, I jumped right into the pool, and it was soooo cold! And I caught quite a few of those trout, and threw them up on the bank, and finally when it got too cold I climbed out, and, ... ."
I had to interrupt again. "OK, hold it right there, Anne. Are you trying to tell me ... do you want me to believe ... that you stripped naked ... ."
"Not naked, I still had some things on!" Anne replied, mock-primly.
"OK, not quite naked, you jumped into the pool, and you caught those giant trout by hand?"
"Well, yes, of course, I didn't have any gear with me, and it's not that hard; you see, you reach under a rock, and if you feel a trout, you don't grab it all at once, you stroke it a little, and that calms it down, and *then* you grab it!"
Well. Anne is an amazing woman. Later she showed me the old blue trunk stuffed full of letters, and photo negatives, from Lee's time in the Korean War. Most were addressed to his mother. There were hundreds. He was a terrible speller, was Lee DeBusk, but a great writer of letters. I could not take the time to even begin sampling these hundreds of letters, and I was worried about disturbing their original ordering. In the stacks I did find a receipt from a Foresthill gas station, from 1948. The gas station's telephone number was simply F-50.
Before I left I had a crack at repairing Anne's old record player, but failed. We made plans for another get-together after she has sorted through more of her archives. Perhaps then I will take a look at that infinitude of letters. There is a body of material, somewhere, Anne tells me, about the Lost Emigrant Mine. I hope to see that.
Such was an afternoon with Anne DeBusk, a fellow lover of the North Fork. One of the many stories I heard was about a visit she made to Helester Point, up on Sawtooth Ridge. She had led some friends from the Bay Area in there, a long long dusty drive. From the Point they could see mile after mile up the North Fork, to Snow Mountain. Her friends were exclaiming about the beauty of the great canyon, the infinite wildness of the view; and Anne said, yes, yes, this is wonderful, but just you go up to Snow Mountain, and camp out, and you will know you have been touched by God Himself! And she tried to explain how, when the sun was about to set, and the sky flamed into gold, and you were leaning against some giant old pine, away up on Snow Mountain, well, there was really nothing better in this world.
She's so right.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Visit to Gold Run
[written April 18, 2007]
Wednesday morning I met Ron and Chris Lane, and Gordon Hinkle of Congressman John Doolittle's office, for a tour of the Gold Run Diggings and the Canyon Creek Trail.
Ron has developed quite an interest in this area; he sees that an irreplaceable resource hangs, so precariously, in the balance, that one of the most beautiful trails in the Sierra is "For Sale," that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has had a mandate to purchase critical parcels there, since the creation of the North Fork of the American Wild & Scenic River, in 1978, but that nothing has been purchased; Ron saw these things, and decided to do something positive. So, in a variety of ways, he has worked to bring Gold Run and the Canyon Creek Trail to the attention of the movers and shakers, the decision-makers, the responsible officials, and really, anyone who could help secure this incredibly beautiful and historic area for We the People and our posterity.
I deeply appreciate Ron's efforts.
For my own part, letters about Gold Run to my representatives, mainly to Senators Feinstein and Boxer, have fallen into the typical abyss. The Gold Run situation is complicated by mercury contamination, which derives from its use in the sluice boxes of the hydraulic mines; for mercury amalgamates with fine gold, trapping it. A single large sluice box, of a thousand feet in length, would be "charged" with an entire ton of mercury, and every day another hundred pounds would be poured in, to replace what inevitably washed out of the box with the tailings. This finely-divided atomic mercury made its way down Canyon Creek into the North Fork of the American, down the North Fork to the Sacramento, down the Sacramento to the San Francisco Bay, and on into the ocean. But a large fraction settled out before ever reaching the Pacific. It remains in our waters to this day, and one should not eat very many fish caught in the Bay, for one would poison oneself with mercury.
If it were not for the mercury at Gold Run, the 800 acres of old mining ground now for sale, embracing two miles of Canyon Creek, would have long since been sold. Offers have been made. It is mercury, and a bit of sheer luck, which have averted disaster.
At any rate, under cloudy skies, with the icy remnants of Tuesday evening's violent thunderstorms and ensuing snow lightly frosting the forest, we set out to give Gordon a tour.
We parked at the Gold Run end of things, near one of the gates barring access to the 800 acres, and walked down into the Diggings. We visited Stewart's Pond, where ducks and swallows were happily going about their business, and then continued south on the Main Diggings Road, to the obscure old road leading east to the Canyon Creek Trail.
Gordon is a fellow lover of history, and we talked a little World War Two, and a little Ancient Rome, but mainly we talked Gold Run, and hydraulic mining, and rich strikes, dark tunnels, drift mines, the Chinese, the Anti-Chinese (I was pleased to be able to inform Gordon of one curiosity of California history, stemming from the Constitutional Convention of 1879: the enactment of an official State holiday, "Anti-Chinese Day"), and many such things--sluice boxes, mining ditches, monitors, and the "State of California versus the Gold Run Ditch & Mining Company" (1881).
It was a gorgeous day, with flat-bottomed fair-weather cumulus clouds at first seeming to disperse and admit the glad sun, but too soon they coalesced and darkened, and our five-mile ramble ended under a light snowfall. The usual early-season flowers had arisen along the old trail, species of Larkspur and Poppy, Biscuit-root, Virgin's Bower, and some lovely liliaceous flowers whose name escapes me at this moment..
We dropped down the good old trail past Gorge Point to The Rockslide, where we decided it might be better not to descend all the way to the river, but rather, retreat up to the Old Wagon Road, climb to the Indiana Hill Ditch, and follow the ditch around into the Secret World, exiting the World to the north by the Wagon Wheel Tunnel, thence into the great 400-feet-deep pit of the Gold Run Ditch & Mining Company, and *thence* on the Main Diggings Road to Stewart's Pond and our vehicles.
All this came off without a hitch, and we stopped briefly for lunch at a sunny and propitious spot on the old mining ditch, high above Canyon Creek, with a bit of a view into Giant Gap. The clouds soon cast us into cold cold shade, so we picked ourselves up and kept a-walking.
It was a very nice day, and Gordon seemed to appreciate the beauty of the area, and its history.
Ron and Chris kindly drove me home, where the sleety, hail-like "snow" increased, and they hurried away to the lower elevations.
Such was a very nice day, rambling around the old gold mines and into the wilds of Canyon Creek. We even took Gordon out to the politically-incorrect Blasted Digger, that lightning-struck pine on the rocky ridge east of Canyon Creek, that wondrous spot which offers awesome views into Giant Gap, and even beyond, to the freshly snow-dusted mountains around the head of the North Fork of the North Fork.
Wednesday morning I met Ron and Chris Lane, and Gordon Hinkle of Congressman John Doolittle's office, for a tour of the Gold Run Diggings and the Canyon Creek Trail.
Ron has developed quite an interest in this area; he sees that an irreplaceable resource hangs, so precariously, in the balance, that one of the most beautiful trails in the Sierra is "For Sale," that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has had a mandate to purchase critical parcels there, since the creation of the North Fork of the American Wild & Scenic River, in 1978, but that nothing has been purchased; Ron saw these things, and decided to do something positive. So, in a variety of ways, he has worked to bring Gold Run and the Canyon Creek Trail to the attention of the movers and shakers, the decision-makers, the responsible officials, and really, anyone who could help secure this incredibly beautiful and historic area for We the People and our posterity.
I deeply appreciate Ron's efforts.
For my own part, letters about Gold Run to my representatives, mainly to Senators Feinstein and Boxer, have fallen into the typical abyss. The Gold Run situation is complicated by mercury contamination, which derives from its use in the sluice boxes of the hydraulic mines; for mercury amalgamates with fine gold, trapping it. A single large sluice box, of a thousand feet in length, would be "charged" with an entire ton of mercury, and every day another hundred pounds would be poured in, to replace what inevitably washed out of the box with the tailings. This finely-divided atomic mercury made its way down Canyon Creek into the North Fork of the American, down the North Fork to the Sacramento, down the Sacramento to the San Francisco Bay, and on into the ocean. But a large fraction settled out before ever reaching the Pacific. It remains in our waters to this day, and one should not eat very many fish caught in the Bay, for one would poison oneself with mercury.
If it were not for the mercury at Gold Run, the 800 acres of old mining ground now for sale, embracing two miles of Canyon Creek, would have long since been sold. Offers have been made. It is mercury, and a bit of sheer luck, which have averted disaster.
At any rate, under cloudy skies, with the icy remnants of Tuesday evening's violent thunderstorms and ensuing snow lightly frosting the forest, we set out to give Gordon a tour.
We parked at the Gold Run end of things, near one of the gates barring access to the 800 acres, and walked down into the Diggings. We visited Stewart's Pond, where ducks and swallows were happily going about their business, and then continued south on the Main Diggings Road, to the obscure old road leading east to the Canyon Creek Trail.
Gordon is a fellow lover of history, and we talked a little World War Two, and a little Ancient Rome, but mainly we talked Gold Run, and hydraulic mining, and rich strikes, dark tunnels, drift mines, the Chinese, the Anti-Chinese (I was pleased to be able to inform Gordon of one curiosity of California history, stemming from the Constitutional Convention of 1879: the enactment of an official State holiday, "Anti-Chinese Day"), and many such things--sluice boxes, mining ditches, monitors, and the "State of California versus the Gold Run Ditch & Mining Company" (1881).
It was a gorgeous day, with flat-bottomed fair-weather cumulus clouds at first seeming to disperse and admit the glad sun, but too soon they coalesced and darkened, and our five-mile ramble ended under a light snowfall. The usual early-season flowers had arisen along the old trail, species of Larkspur and Poppy, Biscuit-root, Virgin's Bower, and some lovely liliaceous flowers whose name escapes me at this moment..
We dropped down the good old trail past Gorge Point to The Rockslide, where we decided it might be better not to descend all the way to the river, but rather, retreat up to the Old Wagon Road, climb to the Indiana Hill Ditch, and follow the ditch around into the Secret World, exiting the World to the north by the Wagon Wheel Tunnel, thence into the great 400-feet-deep pit of the Gold Run Ditch & Mining Company, and *thence* on the Main Diggings Road to Stewart's Pond and our vehicles.
All this came off without a hitch, and we stopped briefly for lunch at a sunny and propitious spot on the old mining ditch, high above Canyon Creek, with a bit of a view into Giant Gap. The clouds soon cast us into cold cold shade, so we picked ourselves up and kept a-walking.
It was a very nice day, and Gordon seemed to appreciate the beauty of the area, and its history.
Ron and Chris kindly drove me home, where the sleety, hail-like "snow" increased, and they hurried away to the lower elevations.
Such was a very nice day, rambling around the old gold mines and into the wilds of Canyon Creek. We even took Gordon out to the politically-incorrect Blasted Digger, that lightning-struck pine on the rocky ridge east of Canyon Creek, that wondrous spot which offers awesome views into Giant Gap, and even beyond, to the freshly snow-dusted mountains around the head of the North Fork of the North Fork.
Friday, April 6, 2007
Eagles on the Nest
[written April 6, 2007]
Early this morning I drove out to Lovers Leap with camera and binoculars. I had a pretty good idea of where the Golden Eagle nest ought to be, not far from the Joint Plane which drops arrow-straight to the river from the V-notch on Pinnacle Ridge. First I scanned the main Lovers Leap Spur in search of Peregrines, but saw nothing. Then I braced my arms on my knees and carefully scanned the area around the Joint Plane, just above where it drops out of view behind the nearby Spur, perhaps 800 feet above the river, across the Gap from the Leap. I saw a tangle of dead branches beneath a rock overhang, and thought maybe I had it.
But no.
Ten minutes after my arrival, without having noticed any falcons in the air, I saw a Peregrine right below me on the Spur, on what I call the Second Step. It was silhouetted against the dark shadows which held everything across the river in their thrall, everything except the highest pinnacles. It clearly knew I was there; whenever I scooted out into plain view to get a really good look, it turned its head to fix me in the gaze of its right eye. It did not leave its sunny perch.
After a time, Deren Ross of Auburn quietly arrived, with his spotting scope, and we obtained incredible views of the falcon, every feather in focus, every subtlety of color revealed. I could see sun, sky, and canyon, all reflected in its eye, for goodness' sake. Then Deren put the scope on the eagles' nest, and I was amazed, it was scarcely a hundred feet from the false nest, but I doubt anyone, using binoculars, would spot it, unless the eagles were actually arriving or leaving. An adult eagle was on the nest, turning around from time to time. I could not see egg or eaglet. I never saw the mate.
The nest was beneath a small overhang, on steep north-facing cliffs, perhaps sixty or a hundred feet east of the Joint Plane. It was made of a mass of dead grey branches, four or five feet in diameter. I expect it was lined with the club moss which coats many rock surfaces in the Gap.
Clouds of Violet-Green Swallows and White-Throated Swifts circled over the cliffs below us, and a Kestrel, or Sparrow Hawk, the smallest of our falcons, came whirring by, scarcely twenty feet away, beating its reddish wings rapidly, climbing slowly. Occasionally we heard a Canyon Wren.
Late in the afternoon I enticed my son, Greg, out to some little cliffs, hoping to see some distant eagles or falcons. We saw nothing; well, there were more or less spectacular thunder-clouds over the high country, with rain showers drifting down, and bright-glowing snowfields on Snow Mountain. We could see the Iowa Hill Canal, east of Tadpole Canyon. But no falcons, no eagles.
Greg picked up a massive pine cone, from a tall and old Digger Pine leaning over us, and gave it a toss down the cliff. We could hear it rolling down the canyon wall for quite a long time. This scared up a few Band-tailed Pigeons, who flapped around noisily before landing in various trees. One seemed to immediately leave its chosen tree, typical pigeon behavior, but at once I saw it was larger, and put my binoculars on it.
After all that time looking for distant eagles, one had been roosting in a Douglas Fir maybe two hundred feet away, the whole time we were there! It soared west, with a few lazy flaps, and then plunged out of sight, making for a rabbit, snake, or squirrel, I would guess. It looked to be a yearling, with a hint of white left in its tail.
Such were some fine experiences in the Great American Canyon.
Early this morning I drove out to Lovers Leap with camera and binoculars. I had a pretty good idea of where the Golden Eagle nest ought to be, not far from the Joint Plane which drops arrow-straight to the river from the V-notch on Pinnacle Ridge. First I scanned the main Lovers Leap Spur in search of Peregrines, but saw nothing. Then I braced my arms on my knees and carefully scanned the area around the Joint Plane, just above where it drops out of view behind the nearby Spur, perhaps 800 feet above the river, across the Gap from the Leap. I saw a tangle of dead branches beneath a rock overhang, and thought maybe I had it.
But no.
Ten minutes after my arrival, without having noticed any falcons in the air, I saw a Peregrine right below me on the Spur, on what I call the Second Step. It was silhouetted against the dark shadows which held everything across the river in their thrall, everything except the highest pinnacles. It clearly knew I was there; whenever I scooted out into plain view to get a really good look, it turned its head to fix me in the gaze of its right eye. It did not leave its sunny perch.
After a time, Deren Ross of Auburn quietly arrived, with his spotting scope, and we obtained incredible views of the falcon, every feather in focus, every subtlety of color revealed. I could see sun, sky, and canyon, all reflected in its eye, for goodness' sake. Then Deren put the scope on the eagles' nest, and I was amazed, it was scarcely a hundred feet from the false nest, but I doubt anyone, using binoculars, would spot it, unless the eagles were actually arriving or leaving. An adult eagle was on the nest, turning around from time to time. I could not see egg or eaglet. I never saw the mate.
The nest was beneath a small overhang, on steep north-facing cliffs, perhaps sixty or a hundred feet east of the Joint Plane. It was made of a mass of dead grey branches, four or five feet in diameter. I expect it was lined with the club moss which coats many rock surfaces in the Gap.
Clouds of Violet-Green Swallows and White-Throated Swifts circled over the cliffs below us, and a Kestrel, or Sparrow Hawk, the smallest of our falcons, came whirring by, scarcely twenty feet away, beating its reddish wings rapidly, climbing slowly. Occasionally we heard a Canyon Wren.
Late in the afternoon I enticed my son, Greg, out to some little cliffs, hoping to see some distant eagles or falcons. We saw nothing; well, there were more or less spectacular thunder-clouds over the high country, with rain showers drifting down, and bright-glowing snowfields on Snow Mountain. We could see the Iowa Hill Canal, east of Tadpole Canyon. But no falcons, no eagles.
Greg picked up a massive pine cone, from a tall and old Digger Pine leaning over us, and gave it a toss down the cliff. We could hear it rolling down the canyon wall for quite a long time. This scared up a few Band-tailed Pigeons, who flapped around noisily before landing in various trees. One seemed to immediately leave its chosen tree, typical pigeon behavior, but at once I saw it was larger, and put my binoculars on it.
After all that time looking for distant eagles, one had been roosting in a Douglas Fir maybe two hundred feet away, the whole time we were there! It soared west, with a few lazy flaps, and then plunged out of sight, making for a rabbit, snake, or squirrel, I would guess. It looked to be a yearling, with a hint of white left in its tail.
Such were some fine experiences in the Great American Canyon.
Thursday, April 5, 2007
Peregrines in Giant Gap
[written April 5, 2007]
This afternoon I ventured out to Lovers Leap in search of raptures, I mean, raptors, and found two men spellbound, gazing into the depths. All day it had been cloudy, the canyon dull and flat, shadowless, but as the afternoon waned the sun broke through. Thus the Pinnacles were sharply lit, and shadows deepened, offering more and more contrast, and many of the Sierran snowfields far to the east were luminous, etched whiter than white against the softer pastels of the clouds.
The men had hiked and climbed in the Sierra together since childhood. They contemplated a trip down to Green Valley. I began to expound upon the theme of Green Valley, and unleashed a torrent of words, while the North Fork's own dwindling torrent roared two thousand feet below us. I also told them of the Peregrine Falcons and Golden Eagles, but we saw none, though one of them remarked he had seen a Peregrine, while visiting Lovers Leap recently.
I had never ever seen one, anywhere.
After a time the men left, and I heard their voices as they ascended the steep trail; which way, one asked, go left, the other replied. Then their voices seemed to get louder, and again it was which way, but, go right was the reply. Then some excited nonsense about having a magical birthday, on the very equinox, and in olden times the Druids would have felt such a birthday must count for a lot, and so on and so forth, and lo! three teenagers shouldered through the blooming brush.
They were from Auburn, I found, and soon enough I was expounding upon the landscape, and it was not enough to say, "over here is Little Bald Mountain, and away over there, the Coast Ranges north of San Francisco," but, no, I must tell these young men of equinoctial birth about townships, sections, ranges, and Mt. Diablo, and how, since we were in fact within Township 15 East, Range 10 North, this meant we were "something like" six times fifteen miles east, and six times ten miles north, of the Diablo summit.
Which made perfect sense to me, and might have made more sense to them if we had been able to actually see the Diablo summit; but there was too much haze and moisture in the air.
I also explained to them about the falcons and eagles, and soon their sharp teenage eyes picked out a Peregrine, a mere dot of light against some vast canyon shadow, and I whipped my binoculars to my eyes, and, sure enough, there it was, my first Peregrine Falcon.
My overall impression was of a soaring bird, with much blue-grey, but with flashes of white, and not as big as a Red-Tailed Hawk.
It, or its mate, soared by several times, often a thousand feet below us, often seeming to move slowly, but in fact moving very quickly. This is also the case with the Golden Eagles; one sees them soaring so calmly, so effortlessly, yet in less than a minute they have moved a mile.
It was a very nice visit to Lovers Leap.
I was sad to see, however, that the whole area looks beaten up by OHVs, that many trees have been cut using chainsaws, that even the historic Incense Cedar logs lying athwart the trail down to the cliff have been sawn through, and the very sculptural root masses hauled away. I have suggested to the Bureau of Land Management, for quite a few years now, that a vehicle closure on the last couple hundred yards of road would be a good thing. All parking could be held to the north, before that last rise to the current parking area. Further depredations with chainsaws would be much less likely.
Finally, I now hear there is an Golden eaglet in the nest, down in the Gap, across from the Leap.
This afternoon I ventured out to Lovers Leap in search of raptures, I mean, raptors, and found two men spellbound, gazing into the depths. All day it had been cloudy, the canyon dull and flat, shadowless, but as the afternoon waned the sun broke through. Thus the Pinnacles were sharply lit, and shadows deepened, offering more and more contrast, and many of the Sierran snowfields far to the east were luminous, etched whiter than white against the softer pastels of the clouds.
The men had hiked and climbed in the Sierra together since childhood. They contemplated a trip down to Green Valley. I began to expound upon the theme of Green Valley, and unleashed a torrent of words, while the North Fork's own dwindling torrent roared two thousand feet below us. I also told them of the Peregrine Falcons and Golden Eagles, but we saw none, though one of them remarked he had seen a Peregrine, while visiting Lovers Leap recently.
I had never ever seen one, anywhere.
After a time the men left, and I heard their voices as they ascended the steep trail; which way, one asked, go left, the other replied. Then their voices seemed to get louder, and again it was which way, but, go right was the reply. Then some excited nonsense about having a magical birthday, on the very equinox, and in olden times the Druids would have felt such a birthday must count for a lot, and so on and so forth, and lo! three teenagers shouldered through the blooming brush.
They were from Auburn, I found, and soon enough I was expounding upon the landscape, and it was not enough to say, "over here is Little Bald Mountain, and away over there, the Coast Ranges north of San Francisco," but, no, I must tell these young men of equinoctial birth about townships, sections, ranges, and Mt. Diablo, and how, since we were in fact within Township 15 East, Range 10 North, this meant we were "something like" six times fifteen miles east, and six times ten miles north, of the Diablo summit.
Which made perfect sense to me, and might have made more sense to them if we had been able to actually see the Diablo summit; but there was too much haze and moisture in the air.
I also explained to them about the falcons and eagles, and soon their sharp teenage eyes picked out a Peregrine, a mere dot of light against some vast canyon shadow, and I whipped my binoculars to my eyes, and, sure enough, there it was, my first Peregrine Falcon.
My overall impression was of a soaring bird, with much blue-grey, but with flashes of white, and not as big as a Red-Tailed Hawk.
It, or its mate, soared by several times, often a thousand feet below us, often seeming to move slowly, but in fact moving very quickly. This is also the case with the Golden Eagles; one sees them soaring so calmly, so effortlessly, yet in less than a minute they have moved a mile.
It was a very nice visit to Lovers Leap.
I was sad to see, however, that the whole area looks beaten up by OHVs, that many trees have been cut using chainsaws, that even the historic Incense Cedar logs lying athwart the trail down to the cliff have been sawn through, and the very sculptural root masses hauled away. I have suggested to the Bureau of Land Management, for quite a few years now, that a vehicle closure on the last couple hundred yards of road would be a good thing. All parking could be held to the north, before that last rise to the current parking area. Further depredations with chainsaws would be much less likely.
Finally, I now hear there is an Golden eaglet in the nest, down in the Gap, across from the Leap.
Sunday, April 1, 2007
The Falcons and Eagles of Giant Gap
[written April 1, 2007]
A correspondent, expert in all things avian, writes:
"Yesterday, I missed finding the Great Grey Owl on Pliocene Ridge (Yuba-Sierra Co.) but I came up big at Giant Gap. Shortly after getting out onto Lover's Leap, I heard the courting calls of two Peregrine Falcons. The sound was coming from across the river. The calls are often made in flight. I kept searching the cliffs and airspace near lower north facing cliffs. I was surprised that I couldn't find them. I then peered straight below Lover's Leap and spotted two adult Peregrines in courtship flight display. I am fairly certain they will be nesting on the south-facing cliffs below Lover's Leap. This angle is preferred by many birds including falcons. Besides, the other side is already taken. A Golden Eagle is sitting in a nest on the other side of the river. I spotted the nest with my binocs but it wasn't until I put up the scope that I could see the majestic ruler of Giant Gap's airways. The falcons are great to watch during courtship and when hunting but they're also very sensitive to presence of anything moving above them. "
This is good news, showing that the endangered Peregrine Falcon is re-occupying its old territories, and also that Golden Eagles, who always used to nest in Giant Gap, are at last nesting there again.
The Goldens were pretty thoroughly scared away by logging near the nest site, on Tahoe National Forest lands flanking Giant Gap, during the early Reagan years, when the word came down from above, to cut it all, to cut everything, to wreck everything wild, and to ruin every beauty.
But now the Goldens are back. My correspondent cautions that the Peregrines are "very sensitive to the presence of anything moving above them." The same is true enough of the eagles. They are easily scared from their nest sites by rock climbers, for instance. Hence we should take care, if we visit Lovers Leap, to be quiet and minimize our presence.
This quietness is something the bird-watchers know well; in fact, I remarked to a friend, this morning, that bird-watchers, almost above all others, know how to immerse themselves in wild places, know how to be quiet and yet alert, how to grasp every nuance without ever grasping, and that, in a way, they are like Zen Buddhists who do not even know they are Zen Buddhists.
To which he replied, "And that's the best kind (of Zen Buddhist)!"
A correspondent, expert in all things avian, writes:
"Yesterday, I missed finding the Great Grey Owl on Pliocene Ridge (Yuba-Sierra Co.) but I came up big at Giant Gap. Shortly after getting out onto Lover's Leap, I heard the courting calls of two Peregrine Falcons. The sound was coming from across the river. The calls are often made in flight. I kept searching the cliffs and airspace near lower north facing cliffs. I was surprised that I couldn't find them. I then peered straight below Lover's Leap and spotted two adult Peregrines in courtship flight display. I am fairly certain they will be nesting on the south-facing cliffs below Lover's Leap. This angle is preferred by many birds including falcons. Besides, the other side is already taken. A Golden Eagle is sitting in a nest on the other side of the river. I spotted the nest with my binocs but it wasn't until I put up the scope that I could see the majestic ruler of Giant Gap's airways. The falcons are great to watch during courtship and when hunting but they're also very sensitive to presence of anything moving above them. "
This is good news, showing that the endangered Peregrine Falcon is re-occupying its old territories, and also that Golden Eagles, who always used to nest in Giant Gap, are at last nesting there again.
The Goldens were pretty thoroughly scared away by logging near the nest site, on Tahoe National Forest lands flanking Giant Gap, during the early Reagan years, when the word came down from above, to cut it all, to cut everything, to wreck everything wild, and to ruin every beauty.
But now the Goldens are back. My correspondent cautions that the Peregrines are "very sensitive to the presence of anything moving above them." The same is true enough of the eagles. They are easily scared from their nest sites by rock climbers, for instance. Hence we should take care, if we visit Lovers Leap, to be quiet and minimize our presence.
This quietness is something the bird-watchers know well; in fact, I remarked to a friend, this morning, that bird-watchers, almost above all others, know how to immerse themselves in wild places, know how to be quiet and yet alert, how to grasp every nuance without ever grasping, and that, in a way, they are like Zen Buddhists who do not even know they are Zen Buddhists.
To which he replied, "And that's the best kind (of Zen Buddhist)!"
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