Tuesday morning Jerry Rein and Catherine O'Riley and I walked down the Canyon Creek Trail (CCT), on our way to the High Old Upriver Trail or HOUT, where a tremendous bloom is in progress.
We noted very very many OHV tracks in the Gold Run Diggings, not only on the main road, but also wandering across hill and dale.
The increase in OHV use at Gold Run has itself been increasing. Five years ago there was essentially zero OHV use. On the BLM lands in the southern reaches of the Diggings, the main problem at that time was mining claims.
Having filed a claim, a claimant obtained a key to the BLM gate at the end of Garrett Road. Then it became time to use backhoe and bulldozer to make test pits and roads, suddenly disturbing the historic character of mines which had remained almost untouched since the 1880s.
That is, the people like you and me who might have used the gated road to drive to, say, the head of the Pickering Bar Trail, and who would not have damaged one iota of history, were barred from using this ancient road (depicted on the 1866 GLO map of the area).
But the people who explicitly intended to tear up the Diggings every which way had keys to the gate.
One such used his key, his backhoe, and his dump truck, to steal the last significant accumulation of Eocene-age petrified wood in that southern area. This was done about six years ago as I recall, and two or three years after I walked the Diggings with BLM personnel, pointing out the petrified wood, and asking that it be protected.
For the pretty petrified wood had already been looted from the old hydraulic mines everywhere in this part of the Sierra, and only a little remained. Elsewhere in the United States such petrified wood might have inspired creation of a State Park.
I believe that some part of the OHV use now occurring involves continued theft of petrified wood. I heard from a friend, earlier this year, that a group of people, apparently on foot, were gathering petrified wood in the southern Diggings.
The gate at the end of Garrett is probably a good thing. But mining claims and OHVs are bad things. Not everywhere bad; but there, at Gold Run, yes: bad.
Well.
At a certain point, well down the CCT, a fallen Canyon Live Oak has blocked the trail for many years. I seem to recall that it was there, lying across a switchback, in 1977. Recently this fairly large trunk broke a few feet above the root mass, and yesterday we had the pleasure and excitement of clearing it from the trail. It took some huffing and puffing, and when our perfectly coordinated efforts managed to roll the root mass over, it never stopped, but crashed directly down the slope and disappeared from view, breaking up into smaller chunks along the way.
Good thing no one was below us!
We cleared the remaining debris from the trail and felt quite gratified at a job well done.
Very pretty clouds graced the sky and sometimes shaded us as we marched upcanyon and marveled at the flowers. Since my previous visit last Friday, many many more Bush Monkeyflowers have started to bloom. I expect these very remarkable bushes will hit full bloom within a couple-few weeks, at least down around the 2000' contour and below. At Lovers Leap, 4000', this same species usually waits until the end of May to max out.
And when maxed out, one single bush can bear a couple hundred blooms, large, almost orchid-like, or more closely resembling snapdragons, in a salmon pink hue.
There are tens of thousands of these small bushes in Giant Gap and Canyon Creek.
We wandered a mile or so up the canyon, and watched the pretty clouds scoot by, heading south. Then certain clouds to the west began to look somewhat fuzzy and flared and we knew that rain showers must be falling from them. As the afternoon wore on, a compact mass of dark clouds formed to the west, and the showers became more visible.
On our way out the HOUT, raindrops kissed us every few minutes, but never enough to even begin to dampen clothes or hair. Yet on the CCT, plants were all wet from rain, and we saw that the showers hadn't missed us by much.
It was so very pleasant to hike the HOUT on a perfect spring day.
We were treated to a bird's-eye view of a bird, while on the HOUT near the Blue Lupine Bear Bed. Bears seem to like good scenic overlooks, and the Blue Lupine Bear Bed is a perfect example. A Great Blue Heron flew along the roaring river below, and with Jerry's binoculars we got a pretty good look at the thing, so tall and slender, patiently waiting on the rocks at river's edge for a chance to snag a fish with its long sharp beak.
Such was a fine day in the one and only American River Canyon.
Showing posts with label Canyon Creek. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Canyon Creek. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Saturday, April 9, 2005
Canyon Visitation
The original plan was to lead a PARC (Protect the American River Canyon) hike to Green Valley, back in March, but heavy rain canceled and we rescheduled for April 9th. PARC's Eric Peach called to confirm a few days ago, when weather forecasts suggested a weak storm for Friday, with clearing on Saturday the 9th.
Friday's weak storm magically became a howling blizzard focused at the head of the Green Valley Trail, so at the very last minute, early Saturday morning, Eric and I decided that Canyon Creek was the more reasonable destination, with its lower trailhead elevation. The group would meet at the Gold Run exit on I-80 at about 9:45 a.m.
The day dawned with a monstrous river of fog nearly filling the North Fork canyon, swiftly ruffled by the rising sun, beneath clear and azure skies. The fog soon boiled up into mysterious masses, and within three hours had evaporated, only to be reincarnated as fair-weather cumulus clouds, a few thousand feet above. I was stuffing lunch and camera in my day pack when the telephone rang. Alex Henderson reported that I-80 was being closed at Colfax because of a major accident up on the Summit, and that our crew ought to take the back roads if at all possible.
Fortunately, Eric too made one more call, just as his gang was leaving Auburn, so I told him all about the back roads. Then I left for Gold Run and paced around in the sunshine for an hour with Alex. Eric et. al. arrived, and after some fussing around with packs and boots we set out south into the Diggings, towards the Canyon Creek Trail.
By a lucky break the esteemed Otis and Jane Wollan were among the group, along with Tony and Margie, Ann, Alex, and Eric's wife Paula. Like Eric, Otis has long been an advocate for the North Fork and the environment, here in Placer County. The world was fresh and wet and cool. As we walked south on the Main Diggings Road, we encountered ATV tracks made that very morning. I had heard of a new ATV trail in the Diggings, and sure enough, the tracks sprang from that very trail, which leads from a house on Garrett Road down to the Main Diggings Road.
We hit the Canyon Creek Trail hard and fast, or rather, we bumbled along admiring wildflowers, of which there were many: Houndstongues and Shooting Stars and Balsam Root and Indian Pink were all in bloom along upper reached of the trail. We stopped at the great tunnel of the Gold Run Ditch & Mining Co. (1873), blasted twelve feet wide and nine feet high from the blocky-fracturing metavolcanic rock of the Calaveras Complex. This tunnel splits into two smaller tunnels a few hundred feet in, each branch over a thousand feet long, ending in vertical shafts in the Diggings. These tunnels allowed the GRD&M to wash the Eocene gravels all the way down to the bedrock floor of the ancient river. Millions of cubic yards of tailings flowed through the tunnels in massive sluice boxes, only to enter yet other sluice boxes for the last mile down Canyon Creek to the North Fork.
The day was absolutely lovely, with billowy clouds and deep blue sky and roaring cascades and waterfalls all along the creek. Vultures careened along aloft. The Leaper was in good form, with somewhat too much water slamming across the deeply incised chamber for its most ideal shape to manifest. Then we reached the Inner Gorge. First one spots it from afar, then the trail is cut into cliffs rising directly above the gorge, and many fine views are had.
Eric and I had noted some scuffed patches on the trail, made by a bear or more likely a human, earlier in the morning. I criticized the coordination and walking ability of whoever or whatever it was, and joked that it must be an overlarge man, Budweiser in hand; for the scuffs and slips were oddly frequent and deep.
The PARC folks made an especially good group to appreciate the wonders of Canyon Creek; they were astounded, even stunned, by this strange strange twisted gorge-within-a-gorge, where the creek drops in waterfalls into a kind of cave, from which all kinds of hissings and thunderings emerge to echo and reflect from the cliffs.
Lots of yellow Biscuit Root and some few Slender Larkspur are in bloom along that part of the trail. Canyon Nemophila and Lacepod were abundant.
We took the steep cross-country route down to the Big Waterfall, enjoying a lunch break while being cooled by drifting spray. The white pigeons were back, in that neat group of seven seen in there for two years now. They seem to love the Big Waterfall and are almost always near it.
The sun became lost in the clouds and we felt a chill set in, so back on with packs and on down the trail it was. At The Terraces we found my overlarge-man-with-a-Budweiser, in the form of four young men with backpacks, tarps and sleeping bags spread across the lower terrace.
This reminds me that many parts of the Canyon Creek Trail need work; the trail is easily damaged in its present, over-fragile form.
We walked out Lower Terraces Trail to the main trail and on down to the river, where we enjoyed another sustained break. Once again the clouds intervened and threw us into shadow and once again we shouldered our packs and started hiking--up, this time.
But not for long. Soon we reached the semi-secret HOUT (High Old Upriver Trail) and struck out towards Giant Gap, rounding Bogus Spur to reach the excellent east-facing overlook, the North Fork all emerald and white below, and Giant Gap rearing up into massive cliffs and pointy pinnacles just up the canyon. Cloud shadows drifted across the cliffs.
I should say that the flowers are not yet at their peak, but down there on the HOUT, on south-facing slopes at about 1800' elevation, there is a ton of flowers. There are tens of thousands of Blue Dicks, and quite an array of Harlequin Lupines, and, well, many other species.
It is beginning to look like this may be a very remarkable wildflower season, a once-in-a-decade bloom.
The Canyon creek Trail is steep lower down, and we paused to rest near the Inner Gorge. There were the Seven Pigeons of Doom, or whatever they're called, perched across the gorge. Someone said they wanted to see the lovely birds take flight, so I heaved a rock their way with some shouted imprecation such as, "avast, birdies!" The rock almost hit them, it was a remarkable and lucky heave. Of course they dutifully took flight and zoomed around.
On the hike up and out we found time to walk the short and scary Six Inch Trail, and then the Blasted Digger Trail. So it really became the Grand Tour. When we finally returned to the main trail, my slow and steady pace easily outpaced the rest of the group, and, rather than repeatedly waiting for them to catch up, I just kept on slowly climbing, and reached my car around 7:00 p.m. I trust they arrived not too long after. I myself rushed home in a horrible hunger and made quesadillas with Chinese hot sauce and spinach and garlic, for me and my family.
It was another great day on the North Fork.
Friday's weak storm magically became a howling blizzard focused at the head of the Green Valley Trail, so at the very last minute, early Saturday morning, Eric and I decided that Canyon Creek was the more reasonable destination, with its lower trailhead elevation. The group would meet at the Gold Run exit on I-80 at about 9:45 a.m.
The day dawned with a monstrous river of fog nearly filling the North Fork canyon, swiftly ruffled by the rising sun, beneath clear and azure skies. The fog soon boiled up into mysterious masses, and within three hours had evaporated, only to be reincarnated as fair-weather cumulus clouds, a few thousand feet above. I was stuffing lunch and camera in my day pack when the telephone rang. Alex Henderson reported that I-80 was being closed at Colfax because of a major accident up on the Summit, and that our crew ought to take the back roads if at all possible.
Fortunately, Eric too made one more call, just as his gang was leaving Auburn, so I told him all about the back roads. Then I left for Gold Run and paced around in the sunshine for an hour with Alex. Eric et. al. arrived, and after some fussing around with packs and boots we set out south into the Diggings, towards the Canyon Creek Trail.
By a lucky break the esteemed Otis and Jane Wollan were among the group, along with Tony and Margie, Ann, Alex, and Eric's wife Paula. Like Eric, Otis has long been an advocate for the North Fork and the environment, here in Placer County. The world was fresh and wet and cool. As we walked south on the Main Diggings Road, we encountered ATV tracks made that very morning. I had heard of a new ATV trail in the Diggings, and sure enough, the tracks sprang from that very trail, which leads from a house on Garrett Road down to the Main Diggings Road.
We hit the Canyon Creek Trail hard and fast, or rather, we bumbled along admiring wildflowers, of which there were many: Houndstongues and Shooting Stars and Balsam Root and Indian Pink were all in bloom along upper reached of the trail. We stopped at the great tunnel of the Gold Run Ditch & Mining Co. (1873), blasted twelve feet wide and nine feet high from the blocky-fracturing metavolcanic rock of the Calaveras Complex. This tunnel splits into two smaller tunnels a few hundred feet in, each branch over a thousand feet long, ending in vertical shafts in the Diggings. These tunnels allowed the GRD&M to wash the Eocene gravels all the way down to the bedrock floor of the ancient river. Millions of cubic yards of tailings flowed through the tunnels in massive sluice boxes, only to enter yet other sluice boxes for the last mile down Canyon Creek to the North Fork.
The day was absolutely lovely, with billowy clouds and deep blue sky and roaring cascades and waterfalls all along the creek. Vultures careened along aloft. The Leaper was in good form, with somewhat too much water slamming across the deeply incised chamber for its most ideal shape to manifest. Then we reached the Inner Gorge. First one spots it from afar, then the trail is cut into cliffs rising directly above the gorge, and many fine views are had.
Eric and I had noted some scuffed patches on the trail, made by a bear or more likely a human, earlier in the morning. I criticized the coordination and walking ability of whoever or whatever it was, and joked that it must be an overlarge man, Budweiser in hand; for the scuffs and slips were oddly frequent and deep.
The PARC folks made an especially good group to appreciate the wonders of Canyon Creek; they were astounded, even stunned, by this strange strange twisted gorge-within-a-gorge, where the creek drops in waterfalls into a kind of cave, from which all kinds of hissings and thunderings emerge to echo and reflect from the cliffs.
Lots of yellow Biscuit Root and some few Slender Larkspur are in bloom along that part of the trail. Canyon Nemophila and Lacepod were abundant.
We took the steep cross-country route down to the Big Waterfall, enjoying a lunch break while being cooled by drifting spray. The white pigeons were back, in that neat group of seven seen in there for two years now. They seem to love the Big Waterfall and are almost always near it.
The sun became lost in the clouds and we felt a chill set in, so back on with packs and on down the trail it was. At The Terraces we found my overlarge-man-with-a-Budweiser, in the form of four young men with backpacks, tarps and sleeping bags spread across the lower terrace.
This reminds me that many parts of the Canyon Creek Trail need work; the trail is easily damaged in its present, over-fragile form.
We walked out Lower Terraces Trail to the main trail and on down to the river, where we enjoyed another sustained break. Once again the clouds intervened and threw us into shadow and once again we shouldered our packs and started hiking--up, this time.
But not for long. Soon we reached the semi-secret HOUT (High Old Upriver Trail) and struck out towards Giant Gap, rounding Bogus Spur to reach the excellent east-facing overlook, the North Fork all emerald and white below, and Giant Gap rearing up into massive cliffs and pointy pinnacles just up the canyon. Cloud shadows drifted across the cliffs.
I should say that the flowers are not yet at their peak, but down there on the HOUT, on south-facing slopes at about 1800' elevation, there is a ton of flowers. There are tens of thousands of Blue Dicks, and quite an array of Harlequin Lupines, and, well, many other species.
It is beginning to look like this may be a very remarkable wildflower season, a once-in-a-decade bloom.
The Canyon creek Trail is steep lower down, and we paused to rest near the Inner Gorge. There were the Seven Pigeons of Doom, or whatever they're called, perched across the gorge. Someone said they wanted to see the lovely birds take flight, so I heaved a rock their way with some shouted imprecation such as, "avast, birdies!" The rock almost hit them, it was a remarkable and lucky heave. Of course they dutifully took flight and zoomed around.
On the hike up and out we found time to walk the short and scary Six Inch Trail, and then the Blasted Digger Trail. So it really became the Grand Tour. When we finally returned to the main trail, my slow and steady pace easily outpaced the rest of the group, and, rather than repeatedly waiting for them to catch up, I just kept on slowly climbing, and reached my car around 7:00 p.m. I trust they arrived not too long after. I myself rushed home in a horrible hunger and made quesadillas with Chinese hot sauce and spinach and garlic, for me and my family.
It was another great day on the North Fork.
Monday, March 7, 2005
Visit to Canyon Creek
Near Gold Run, Canyon Creek turns to the south and enters the North Fork canyon in a long series of waterfalls. Sunday I met several friends for a walk down the Canyon Creek Trail (CCT). There were ten of us altogether. We left our cars at the Gold Run exit and sneaked through the defunct gas station to a road leading into the Diggings. A walk of half a mile or so brought us to the CCT trailhead in Potato Ravine.
A man named -- -- contacted me several years ago, seeking information about waterfalls in the North Fork. He was developing a website about waterfalls. I made the mistake of telling him about the CCT, for, despite my request that he not publicize it, he put up pictures and maps on his website. Then he went further, and put the pictures and maps on a major trails website. Suddenly large numbers of people were wandering around out on Garrett Road, trying to find the way to the CCT.
I do not know whether this led directly to the recent closure of the old road from Garrett to The Bluffs and the Paleobotanist Trail.
The CCT is fragile. It has not been adequately maintained for over a century. I absolutely believe in public access to this fine yet fragile trail. I myself have led many many people in there. I myself have a map of the trail on my website. But one has to worm one's way into my North Fork American web pages to find it. My idea was, only someone who actually cared about the North Fork would find it; and that kind of person is welcome, and needed.
I write about the CCT to this email list all the time. So, I'm not keeping any secrets. But I maintain the notion that the people on this email list care about the North Fork, and that some kind of positive action on some issue or another, Canyon Creek, for instance, could result.
For if we don't succeed in finding a way for the BLM to buy the private lands now for sale in the Gold Run Diggings, including about 90% of the CCT itself, well, history shows that our access could be lost, or at least, broken and restricted. As has just happened, by the blockage of the Paleobotanist Trail.
I have worked on the CCT for over twenty years. Most of my work has involved cutting brush from the trail. I built a bridge where the CCT crosses Canyon Creek, six years ago or so, and then rebuilt it, a couple years back. Many many parts of the trail need work. It cannot well tolerate much use. It will be damaged further. It has been damaged further, already, by the increased use since -- -- publicized it.
As our group filed down into the canyon, the young folks, ages 13 to 20, dashed ahead, running down the trail. Being young, they did not have the sense to keep their feet on the narrow path. The edge of the trail was broken down in places.
Now, I have carried a shovel in there many times, and have restored, with extreme care and delicacy, several hundred feet of the trail, where bushes once forced animals and humans alike downslope. I made a tiny bench cut in such places, in keeping with the overall narrowness of the trail, merely restoring its proper line. I tried to do it in such a way that no one would even realize the work had been done. But there are many many problem areas which remain.
After we reached the great drain tunnel of the Gold Run Ditch & Mining Co., 1873, where three to five thousand cubic yards of Diggings gravel per day once flowed through the giant sluice boxes into Canyon Creek and into the creek's own giant sluice boxes, a few of us old folk took the lead and left the youngsters behind.
I noted footprints less than two days old on the trail, Vibram-soled prints unlike those made by me and Catherine and Alex near a week ago. Here again, one problem area on the trail had been broken down further by a careless hiker. This will about force me to restore this segment of the trail.
Now, I actually like trail work. I wouldn't mind making a complete fix of the CCT. It's going to require backpacking quite a few 50-pound sacks of mortar and concrete all the way down to the rockslide below Gorge Point. Then the stone steps can be built which will fix this dangerous reach of the trail. And before that is done, the deep gaps near the tunnel should be fixed. In fact, I have nurtured a vague and pleasant fantasy that, once the BLM buys the CCT parcel, they will let me repair the trail. Not to make it a highway; just to fix the bad spots and prevent further damage from occurring. Some hundreds of hours of work would be needed. I already have done a hundred or so hours of work on the thing, not counting the lopping which I do on a routine basis.
Perhaps it is not strange that I have developed a proprietary attitude towards the CCT. I have hiked it since 1976. I have literally bloodied myself working on it. I carried the lumber for the bridge over a mile on my shoulder, both times. It took several trips.
Oh well.
Sunday was a blessing of a day, warm and sunny. We straggled down the trail and some of us made it all the way to the North Fork. We had worked up a sweat just going down the trail, and at the Last Waterfall, beside the river, butterflies of several species landed on our heads and hands, to delicately sip our sweat.
A Great Blue Heron suddenly winged past, heading down the river, and I said, "Just wait; some kayakers or rafters will not be far behind." For the kayaks scare up ducks and herons and hawks and eagles and the birds usually go down the river to escape. Sure enough, five kayaks soon appeared. They stopped at Canyon Creek for a break, on their way to Mineral Bar from Euchre Bar.
We made a nice slow climb up and out in the afternoon sun. At the bridge, a cute couple was met, hiking down the trail with backpacks. Well, the man, a tall young fellow, had a tall backpack. I did not recognize them and gently asked how they had learned about the trail.
"I found out about it on the internet, on a waterfalls website," the tall young man replied.
They looked like good people, and I have no fear that they will leave garbage along the trail. It is likely enough that they will damage the trail a little, just as our party had. It is a fragile trail.
When we reached our cars, around four or five in the afternoon, I-80 westbound was at a near standstill. Perhaps there had been a wreck on Three Mile Grade, a few miles west. The traffic was backed up all the way up to the Alta exit, a few miles east, and beyond. What a nightmare.
It was a lovely day on the Canyon Creek Trail.
A man named -- -- contacted me several years ago, seeking information about waterfalls in the North Fork. He was developing a website about waterfalls. I made the mistake of telling him about the CCT, for, despite my request that he not publicize it, he put up pictures and maps on his website. Then he went further, and put the pictures and maps on a major trails website. Suddenly large numbers of people were wandering around out on Garrett Road, trying to find the way to the CCT.
I do not know whether this led directly to the recent closure of the old road from Garrett to The Bluffs and the Paleobotanist Trail.
The CCT is fragile. It has not been adequately maintained for over a century. I absolutely believe in public access to this fine yet fragile trail. I myself have led many many people in there. I myself have a map of the trail on my website. But one has to worm one's way into my North Fork American web pages to find it. My idea was, only someone who actually cared about the North Fork would find it; and that kind of person is welcome, and needed.
I write about the CCT to this email list all the time. So, I'm not keeping any secrets. But I maintain the notion that the people on this email list care about the North Fork, and that some kind of positive action on some issue or another, Canyon Creek, for instance, could result.
For if we don't succeed in finding a way for the BLM to buy the private lands now for sale in the Gold Run Diggings, including about 90% of the CCT itself, well, history shows that our access could be lost, or at least, broken and restricted. As has just happened, by the blockage of the Paleobotanist Trail.
I have worked on the CCT for over twenty years. Most of my work has involved cutting brush from the trail. I built a bridge where the CCT crosses Canyon Creek, six years ago or so, and then rebuilt it, a couple years back. Many many parts of the trail need work. It cannot well tolerate much use. It will be damaged further. It has been damaged further, already, by the increased use since -- -- publicized it.
As our group filed down into the canyon, the young folks, ages 13 to 20, dashed ahead, running down the trail. Being young, they did not have the sense to keep their feet on the narrow path. The edge of the trail was broken down in places.
Now, I have carried a shovel in there many times, and have restored, with extreme care and delicacy, several hundred feet of the trail, where bushes once forced animals and humans alike downslope. I made a tiny bench cut in such places, in keeping with the overall narrowness of the trail, merely restoring its proper line. I tried to do it in such a way that no one would even realize the work had been done. But there are many many problem areas which remain.
After we reached the great drain tunnel of the Gold Run Ditch & Mining Co., 1873, where three to five thousand cubic yards of Diggings gravel per day once flowed through the giant sluice boxes into Canyon Creek and into the creek's own giant sluice boxes, a few of us old folk took the lead and left the youngsters behind.
I noted footprints less than two days old on the trail, Vibram-soled prints unlike those made by me and Catherine and Alex near a week ago. Here again, one problem area on the trail had been broken down further by a careless hiker. This will about force me to restore this segment of the trail.
Now, I actually like trail work. I wouldn't mind making a complete fix of the CCT. It's going to require backpacking quite a few 50-pound sacks of mortar and concrete all the way down to the rockslide below Gorge Point. Then the stone steps can be built which will fix this dangerous reach of the trail. And before that is done, the deep gaps near the tunnel should be fixed. In fact, I have nurtured a vague and pleasant fantasy that, once the BLM buys the CCT parcel, they will let me repair the trail. Not to make it a highway; just to fix the bad spots and prevent further damage from occurring. Some hundreds of hours of work would be needed. I already have done a hundred or so hours of work on the thing, not counting the lopping which I do on a routine basis.
Perhaps it is not strange that I have developed a proprietary attitude towards the CCT. I have hiked it since 1976. I have literally bloodied myself working on it. I carried the lumber for the bridge over a mile on my shoulder, both times. It took several trips.
Oh well.
Sunday was a blessing of a day, warm and sunny. We straggled down the trail and some of us made it all the way to the North Fork. We had worked up a sweat just going down the trail, and at the Last Waterfall, beside the river, butterflies of several species landed on our heads and hands, to delicately sip our sweat.
A Great Blue Heron suddenly winged past, heading down the river, and I said, "Just wait; some kayakers or rafters will not be far behind." For the kayaks scare up ducks and herons and hawks and eagles and the birds usually go down the river to escape. Sure enough, five kayaks soon appeared. They stopped at Canyon Creek for a break, on their way to Mineral Bar from Euchre Bar.
We made a nice slow climb up and out in the afternoon sun. At the bridge, a cute couple was met, hiking down the trail with backpacks. Well, the man, a tall young fellow, had a tall backpack. I did not recognize them and gently asked how they had learned about the trail.
"I found out about it on the internet, on a waterfalls website," the tall young man replied.
They looked like good people, and I have no fear that they will leave garbage along the trail. It is likely enough that they will damage the trail a little, just as our party had. It is a fragile trail.
When we reached our cars, around four or five in the afternoon, I-80 westbound was at a near standstill. Perhaps there had been a wreck on Three Mile Grade, a few miles west. The traffic was backed up all the way up to the Alta exit, a few miles east, and beyond. What a nightmare.
It was a lovely day on the Canyon Creek Trail.
A Remembrance of Times Past
The Inimitable Julie, a hiker par excellence who stands about five feet two inches tall, and somehow takes ten-foot strides, as near as I can tell, writes:
*******
My first experience with Canyon Creek was about 28 years ago. I spent quite
a bit of time at Pickering Bar with friends who had a mining camp there,
downriver on the north side where all those lovely ledges make a perfect
summer home. My friends were living in a tipi. ( Not Robert, the fellow who
lived in one at Green Valley years later.) Anyway exploring upriver led to
the discovery of an unbelievable sight. A creek that cascades down the side
of the canyon in a series of magnificent waterfalls, each one with it's own
deep clear pool, the rock is scoured clean like you expect to see on a big
waterway. We explored up the creek several layers of pools and lounged on
the large terraces of stone. Further up a huge waterfall pounded down
filling the air with a cold mist and rainbows. I don't think I'll ever
forget the first time I saw Canyon Creek. I visited the falls many times
over a two summer period. Then life changed, and different things were
happening. It seems I forgot about Canyon Creek for some years. I never knew
then that there was a trail. We were using Pickering Bar and Blue wing. I
have only learned about the trail from you, it was Larry who mentioned it.
He Was talking about a trail, with a creek, with many waterfalls, in the
vicinity of Gold Run. I had never heard anyone else mention Canyon Creek.
Thank you for telling us about the special trail. As time goes by we do see
more and more people in the canyon. Each person wants to show one or two
very special friends, and those friends tell their special friends. And so
it goes. There is no answer. It's just the nature of things.However I now
have a different appreciation of the trail and will be even that much more
careful. I visited there a week ago or so. I have never met anyone on the
trail! See you. Julie
*******
*******
My first experience with Canyon Creek was about 28 years ago. I spent quite
a bit of time at Pickering Bar with friends who had a mining camp there,
downriver on the north side where all those lovely ledges make a perfect
summer home. My friends were living in a tipi. ( Not Robert, the fellow who
lived in one at Green Valley years later.) Anyway exploring upriver led to
the discovery of an unbelievable sight. A creek that cascades down the side
of the canyon in a series of magnificent waterfalls, each one with it's own
deep clear pool, the rock is scoured clean like you expect to see on a big
waterway. We explored up the creek several layers of pools and lounged on
the large terraces of stone. Further up a huge waterfall pounded down
filling the air with a cold mist and rainbows. I don't think I'll ever
forget the first time I saw Canyon Creek. I visited the falls many times
over a two summer period. Then life changed, and different things were
happening. It seems I forgot about Canyon Creek for some years. I never knew
then that there was a trail. We were using Pickering Bar and Blue wing. I
have only learned about the trail from you, it was Larry who mentioned it.
He Was talking about a trail, with a creek, with many waterfalls, in the
vicinity of Gold Run. I had never heard anyone else mention Canyon Creek.
Thank you for telling us about the special trail. As time goes by we do see
more and more people in the canyon. Each person wants to show one or two
very special friends, and those friends tell their special friends. And so
it goes. There is no answer. It's just the nature of things.However I now
have a different appreciation of the trail and will be even that much more
careful. I visited there a week ago or so. I have never met anyone on the
trail! See you. Julie
*******
Friday, January 28, 2005
Visit to Canyon Creek
Thursday morning I met Ron and Catherine for a visit to Canyon Creek, near Gold Run. From the Gold Run exit on eastbound I-80, we doubled back west a short distance on the frontage road to Garrett Road, which leads south two miles to the edge of the North Fork canyon.
The heavy rains of the day before, and light showers throughout the night, had kept Canyon Creek high. There is still a lot of snow in its upper basin. And, with the passage of the air-mixing storm, the atmosphere had stratified, cold air sinking lower, warm air rising higher, and a river of fog had formed in the great canyon.
This happens the first night and morning after almost every storm. We reached our trailhead, at the BLM gate, just before 9:00 a.m. Cirrus clouds above slowed warming by the sun, and every leaf and needle sparkled with water droplets.
The red clay road follows the rim of the canyon east towards Canyon Creek, with the Diggings adjacent on the north, but hidden by a screen of heavy manzanita. Here grows the California Ground Cone, a startling plant which looks like a Douglas Fir cone growing erect from the light duff of manzanita leaves. In the Broomrape family, it has no chlorophyll whatsoever, instead relying on the roots of the manzanita for its nutrients. It is a parasite. But it is too early for these ground cones, yet.
Turning in and out around the head of Sheldon Ravine, we reached the unmarked Pickering Bar Trail, and just to the east, stopped at the wonderful scenic overlook. Black Mountain and Quartz Mountain stood fifteen miles upcountry, freshly dusted with snow, and in the middle ground, the tremendous gorge of Giant Gap etches its profile against those distant ridges and forests. Fog wreathed the canyon in many places, here, still flowing slowly west, like a river, there, warmed by the sun, rising into towers and disjoint masses of many hues. In the foreground one can see Canyon Creek's own gorge, more by implication than directly, and the Blasted Digger is easily picked out, on the ridge dividing Canyon Creek from the North Fork.
Continuing down the road we crossed Indiana Ravine and passed the Stone Cabin, which has suffered even more damage in recent months. A bit of a scramble up the steep banks of this old hydraulic mining pit brought us to the dry reservoir at the end of the Indiana Hill Ditch. We took a shortcut across the Diggings and reached the ditch just where the trail to Diving Board Ridge forks away into the unseen depths. A few steps east along the ditch brought us to another fine overlook, where one can see directly down Canyon Creek to the North Fork, only about 1400' below. Parts of the Canyon Creek Trail could be seen. The waterfalls were roaring in their hidden chasms and recesses. We took a longish break and admired the views, and the fog, rising everywhere now in writhing phantoms and ghostly shards, merging with The Void. We watched it happen, watched as the fog lifted and evaporated in the warmth of the sun.
The Big Waterfall was directly below us, 600' or so below us, and therefore, certain non-native pigeons were surely down there as well, silent sentinels perched on some crag. I gave a suitable rock a tremendous heave, hoping, cruelly, to scare them, to make them flutter away from the cliffs, and circle endlessly, which always amuses Catherine. It is important to keep Catherine amused. But my ruthless rock reaped no rewards, that is, no pigeons circled in endless deliberation about just when and just where to land and settle into yet another sustained vigil.
Duty beckoned, having left Point A, one must actually reach Point B, so we followed the old mining ditch around the corner into Canyon Creek's own proper canyon and took an unmarked shortcut down to the trail, reaching it just above the tiny bridge. Crossing the little inner gorge on wet two-by-sixes, we ambled around the corner and took yet another break, where a fine view of The Leaper opens from the trail. The Leaper was in fine form, shooting out from hidden source in a narrow jet, and crashing against the cliff face opposite (for it enters a kind of vertical rectangular chasm), free-falls into a round pool, from which yet another waterfalls spills into a lower pool. In the meantime, the main, large waterfall is partly visible, a more massive cylindrical region of raging white water plunging into its own pool.
Many kinds of roarings and hissings and thunderings could be heard from the falls and cascades up and down the creek, but The Leaper makes its own special slapping sound as it crashes into its chasm wall. We spent quite a while there and took some photographs.
Then down and down, past Spike Point to Gorge Point, where the Brewer's Rock Cress's purple blooms have been joined by the yellow of Biscuit Root. Yet again, for all its storms and all the supposed excess of snow and precipitation of every kind, this winter has somehow nurtured the earliest bloom I have ever seen. Biscuit Root in January? You surely jest.
I saw the pigeons, and followed up with another rock aimed their way, which scattered them into their usual gyrations, so all was well on that count, anyway. I only hope Catherine appreciates my sacrifices.
We turned away from the trail and followed a steep but easy cross-country route down to the Big Waterfall. Again the cameras came out. Then it was down Big Waterfall Trail to The Terraces, where some dozens, or hundreds, of California Milkmaids were not only in full bloom, but had actually started to set seed. Lower Terraces Trail took us back to the main trail almost exactly where the High Old Upriver Trail, or HOUT, secretly forks away east.
The HOUT is a tenuous little track, often enough blasted right from the very cliffs, and runs along a nearly level line east into 2400'-deep Giant Gap. It is hard to find. Having found it, it is hard to follow. It is a lovable little trail and we are quite devoted to it.
In many reaches of the North Fork canyon there are no tributaries worth the name, and a strongly insular quality obtains: there is The Canyon, and then there is, at least, they say there is, somewhere, out of all view, The Rest of the World. No little valleys enter from the side, offering one a route out and away to The Rest of the World. This reach of the North Fork, from Canyon Creek to Green Valley, is much like this. Yes, the canyon walls are scored by minor ravines and gullies, but (from across the canyon, say) one can see every inch of the "basins" of these "tributaries," for they are entirely within the canyon.
The only exception is Lovers Leap Ravine, in the heart of Giant Gap, which heads up in a little valley on the gentle summit uplands of Moody Ridge, west of Lovers Leap itself. But it approaches the North Fork in a series of high waterfalls amid very steep cliffs. Since it carries little water, it has not deeply incised itself into the canyon wall. I interpret the bend in the canyon wall there, the "inside corner" Lovers Leap Ravine follows down to the river, to be more an artifact of gross structural relations in the bedrock, than an artifact of incision by that tiny stream.
The bedrock here is all the metavolcanic member of the Calaveras Complex, several thousands of feet, more than a mile, of lava flows and volcanic ash beds and mudflows, all laid down perhaps in a subaqueous environment, that is, on the flanks of some oceanic volcano or chain of volcanos, and underwater; and some very disrupted strata exist, too, which may represent turbidity flows, mixing already heterogeneous volcanic strata into chaotic jumbles. And pretty much all of it seems quite mafic, poor in quartz, rich in iron and magnesium, roughly basaltic in composition, say, dark, and often fine-grained. Occasionally some lighter stuff is seen. Bogus Spur has some strange orange-weathering rock. Sometimes there is chert, or at least cherty "stuff" of uncertain provenance.
And these several thousands of feet of strata of volcanic quasi-sediments, were originally, let's suppose, roughly horizontal, but now are all tipped up on edge, nearly vertical. They were smashed down under the margin of North America 150 million years ago, and at last, uplifted and exhumed by long erosion, in their new, vertical, orientation.
And metamorphosed, along the way.
But this metavolcanic part of the Paleozoic Calaveras Complex (one of the more strongly-marked "terranes" within the Northern and Central Sierra block) is not uniform in composition, for some parts are very massive, other parts, more platy and divided. The most massive parts are in Giant Gap, where they are organized into a series of huge parallel slabs, and the river turns in tortuous sharp angles, around the bases of these (vertical) mega-slabs. Lovers Leap and The Pinnacles seem to be founded from one and the same mega-slab, for instance.
One might have quite a bit of trouble trying to climb up and out of the canyon, following Lovers Leap Ravine. I've never tried, but I do hope to at least roughly parallel the thing, from rim to river, someday.
We reached Bogus Spur a little after noon and took lunch on a mossy lawn two hundred feet above the river. The North Fork was running moderately high for this time of year, apparently because rather warm temperatures have melted much snow in the last two weeks, and this in turn has been followed by rain up to high elevations. The water looked quite clear, where one could even see at all, for all through Giant Gap there is white water, lots and lots of white water. There are even some low falls, in the Gap.
Fair-weather cumulus clouds had been reincarnated from the vanished, evaporated fog, and above them, cirrus clouds continued to filter the sunshine. It was sometimes cool.
Later, we had time for a portion of wandering out along the HOUT (a fourth species of flower was observed in bloom), but at 2:30 we saddled up and made the long march out. We followed quite a circuitous route which took us back up the Canyon Creek Trail, past the great tunnel of the Gold Run Ditch & Mining Co. (GRD&M, 1873), then up the Old Wagon Road (also 1873) to the Indiana Hill Ditch (1852, now that I'm doing dates), where we followed someone's secret route over Judd Pass (at the head of Judd Ravine, a tributary of Canyon Creek, on Indiana Hill) into The Diggings, where some roads seemed to lead us in circles down into the huge pit of the GRD&M, which we immediately left on yet another road, climbing to the west and south, back to our vehicles, at the BLM gate.
Such was an especially fine day in the North Fork canyon.
The heavy rains of the day before, and light showers throughout the night, had kept Canyon Creek high. There is still a lot of snow in its upper basin. And, with the passage of the air-mixing storm, the atmosphere had stratified, cold air sinking lower, warm air rising higher, and a river of fog had formed in the great canyon.
This happens the first night and morning after almost every storm. We reached our trailhead, at the BLM gate, just before 9:00 a.m. Cirrus clouds above slowed warming by the sun, and every leaf and needle sparkled with water droplets.
The red clay road follows the rim of the canyon east towards Canyon Creek, with the Diggings adjacent on the north, but hidden by a screen of heavy manzanita. Here grows the California Ground Cone, a startling plant which looks like a Douglas Fir cone growing erect from the light duff of manzanita leaves. In the Broomrape family, it has no chlorophyll whatsoever, instead relying on the roots of the manzanita for its nutrients. It is a parasite. But it is too early for these ground cones, yet.
Turning in and out around the head of Sheldon Ravine, we reached the unmarked Pickering Bar Trail, and just to the east, stopped at the wonderful scenic overlook. Black Mountain and Quartz Mountain stood fifteen miles upcountry, freshly dusted with snow, and in the middle ground, the tremendous gorge of Giant Gap etches its profile against those distant ridges and forests. Fog wreathed the canyon in many places, here, still flowing slowly west, like a river, there, warmed by the sun, rising into towers and disjoint masses of many hues. In the foreground one can see Canyon Creek's own gorge, more by implication than directly, and the Blasted Digger is easily picked out, on the ridge dividing Canyon Creek from the North Fork.
Continuing down the road we crossed Indiana Ravine and passed the Stone Cabin, which has suffered even more damage in recent months. A bit of a scramble up the steep banks of this old hydraulic mining pit brought us to the dry reservoir at the end of the Indiana Hill Ditch. We took a shortcut across the Diggings and reached the ditch just where the trail to Diving Board Ridge forks away into the unseen depths. A few steps east along the ditch brought us to another fine overlook, where one can see directly down Canyon Creek to the North Fork, only about 1400' below. Parts of the Canyon Creek Trail could be seen. The waterfalls were roaring in their hidden chasms and recesses. We took a longish break and admired the views, and the fog, rising everywhere now in writhing phantoms and ghostly shards, merging with The Void. We watched it happen, watched as the fog lifted and evaporated in the warmth of the sun.
The Big Waterfall was directly below us, 600' or so below us, and therefore, certain non-native pigeons were surely down there as well, silent sentinels perched on some crag. I gave a suitable rock a tremendous heave, hoping, cruelly, to scare them, to make them flutter away from the cliffs, and circle endlessly, which always amuses Catherine. It is important to keep Catherine amused. But my ruthless rock reaped no rewards, that is, no pigeons circled in endless deliberation about just when and just where to land and settle into yet another sustained vigil.
Duty beckoned, having left Point A, one must actually reach Point B, so we followed the old mining ditch around the corner into Canyon Creek's own proper canyon and took an unmarked shortcut down to the trail, reaching it just above the tiny bridge. Crossing the little inner gorge on wet two-by-sixes, we ambled around the corner and took yet another break, where a fine view of The Leaper opens from the trail. The Leaper was in fine form, shooting out from hidden source in a narrow jet, and crashing against the cliff face opposite (for it enters a kind of vertical rectangular chasm), free-falls into a round pool, from which yet another waterfalls spills into a lower pool. In the meantime, the main, large waterfall is partly visible, a more massive cylindrical region of raging white water plunging into its own pool.
Many kinds of roarings and hissings and thunderings could be heard from the falls and cascades up and down the creek, but The Leaper makes its own special slapping sound as it crashes into its chasm wall. We spent quite a while there and took some photographs.
Then down and down, past Spike Point to Gorge Point, where the Brewer's Rock Cress's purple blooms have been joined by the yellow of Biscuit Root. Yet again, for all its storms and all the supposed excess of snow and precipitation of every kind, this winter has somehow nurtured the earliest bloom I have ever seen. Biscuit Root in January? You surely jest.
I saw the pigeons, and followed up with another rock aimed their way, which scattered them into their usual gyrations, so all was well on that count, anyway. I only hope Catherine appreciates my sacrifices.
We turned away from the trail and followed a steep but easy cross-country route down to the Big Waterfall. Again the cameras came out. Then it was down Big Waterfall Trail to The Terraces, where some dozens, or hundreds, of California Milkmaids were not only in full bloom, but had actually started to set seed. Lower Terraces Trail took us back to the main trail almost exactly where the High Old Upriver Trail, or HOUT, secretly forks away east.
The HOUT is a tenuous little track, often enough blasted right from the very cliffs, and runs along a nearly level line east into 2400'-deep Giant Gap. It is hard to find. Having found it, it is hard to follow. It is a lovable little trail and we are quite devoted to it.
In many reaches of the North Fork canyon there are no tributaries worth the name, and a strongly insular quality obtains: there is The Canyon, and then there is, at least, they say there is, somewhere, out of all view, The Rest of the World. No little valleys enter from the side, offering one a route out and away to The Rest of the World. This reach of the North Fork, from Canyon Creek to Green Valley, is much like this. Yes, the canyon walls are scored by minor ravines and gullies, but (from across the canyon, say) one can see every inch of the "basins" of these "tributaries," for they are entirely within the canyon.
The only exception is Lovers Leap Ravine, in the heart of Giant Gap, which heads up in a little valley on the gentle summit uplands of Moody Ridge, west of Lovers Leap itself. But it approaches the North Fork in a series of high waterfalls amid very steep cliffs. Since it carries little water, it has not deeply incised itself into the canyon wall. I interpret the bend in the canyon wall there, the "inside corner" Lovers Leap Ravine follows down to the river, to be more an artifact of gross structural relations in the bedrock, than an artifact of incision by that tiny stream.
The bedrock here is all the metavolcanic member of the Calaveras Complex, several thousands of feet, more than a mile, of lava flows and volcanic ash beds and mudflows, all laid down perhaps in a subaqueous environment, that is, on the flanks of some oceanic volcano or chain of volcanos, and underwater; and some very disrupted strata exist, too, which may represent turbidity flows, mixing already heterogeneous volcanic strata into chaotic jumbles. And pretty much all of it seems quite mafic, poor in quartz, rich in iron and magnesium, roughly basaltic in composition, say, dark, and often fine-grained. Occasionally some lighter stuff is seen. Bogus Spur has some strange orange-weathering rock. Sometimes there is chert, or at least cherty "stuff" of uncertain provenance.
And these several thousands of feet of strata of volcanic quasi-sediments, were originally, let's suppose, roughly horizontal, but now are all tipped up on edge, nearly vertical. They were smashed down under the margin of North America 150 million years ago, and at last, uplifted and exhumed by long erosion, in their new, vertical, orientation.
And metamorphosed, along the way.
But this metavolcanic part of the Paleozoic Calaveras Complex (one of the more strongly-marked "terranes" within the Northern and Central Sierra block) is not uniform in composition, for some parts are very massive, other parts, more platy and divided. The most massive parts are in Giant Gap, where they are organized into a series of huge parallel slabs, and the river turns in tortuous sharp angles, around the bases of these (vertical) mega-slabs. Lovers Leap and The Pinnacles seem to be founded from one and the same mega-slab, for instance.
One might have quite a bit of trouble trying to climb up and out of the canyon, following Lovers Leap Ravine. I've never tried, but I do hope to at least roughly parallel the thing, from rim to river, someday.
We reached Bogus Spur a little after noon and took lunch on a mossy lawn two hundred feet above the river. The North Fork was running moderately high for this time of year, apparently because rather warm temperatures have melted much snow in the last two weeks, and this in turn has been followed by rain up to high elevations. The water looked quite clear, where one could even see at all, for all through Giant Gap there is white water, lots and lots of white water. There are even some low falls, in the Gap.
Fair-weather cumulus clouds had been reincarnated from the vanished, evaporated fog, and above them, cirrus clouds continued to filter the sunshine. It was sometimes cool.
Later, we had time for a portion of wandering out along the HOUT (a fourth species of flower was observed in bloom), but at 2:30 we saddled up and made the long march out. We followed quite a circuitous route which took us back up the Canyon Creek Trail, past the great tunnel of the Gold Run Ditch & Mining Co. (GRD&M, 1873), then up the Old Wagon Road (also 1873) to the Indiana Hill Ditch (1852, now that I'm doing dates), where we followed someone's secret route over Judd Pass (at the head of Judd Ravine, a tributary of Canyon Creek, on Indiana Hill) into The Diggings, where some roads seemed to lead us in circles down into the huge pit of the GRD&M, which we immediately left on yet another road, climbing to the west and south, back to our vehicles, at the BLM gate.
Such was an especially fine day in the North Fork canyon.
Tuesday, July 6, 2004
First Canyoneering Descent, Canyon Creek
Various people on this email list know and love the Canyon Creek Trail, near Gold Run. It is surely one of the most beautiful and remarkable trails in this part of the Sierra. And, as one descends the trail, an inner gorge develops along the creek, twisted, water-polished, full of gloom (since the sun cannot pass the overhanging cliffs) and the dull boom of hidden waterfalls.
I have always wanted to rappel down into this twisted gorge; yes, I have talked, and talked, but I have never acted.
Yesterday a fellow named Mike Ming (?) of the Auburn area called to ask the way to the Canyon Creek Trail. He and a friend, Brendan, were planning to rappel down the waterfalls. I gave him directions to the Paleobotanist Trail, out along Garrett Road, and asked for a report on the day's adventures.
This morning he called, full of excitement, to duly report, that they had had success, and, starting up at the first big waterfall, had worked right down the creek, rappelling whenever necessary, through the twisted inner gorge, and on down over the Big Waterfall. Since they had started late, around 1:00 p.m., they had lost the sun by the time they reached the Big Waterfall, and were soaked and cold, from swimming through pools and roping down right through falls.
I asked him for a write-up of the great adventure, which I will send along to you.
Now if only we could find some money for the BLM, to buy the 800-acres-now-for-sale, which includes this remarkable trail, these amazing waterfalls ...
I have always wanted to rappel down into this twisted gorge; yes, I have talked, and talked, but I have never acted.
Yesterday a fellow named Mike Ming (?) of the Auburn area called to ask the way to the Canyon Creek Trail. He and a friend, Brendan, were planning to rappel down the waterfalls. I gave him directions to the Paleobotanist Trail, out along Garrett Road, and asked for a report on the day's adventures.
This morning he called, full of excitement, to duly report, that they had had success, and, starting up at the first big waterfall, had worked right down the creek, rappelling whenever necessary, through the twisted inner gorge, and on down over the Big Waterfall. Since they had started late, around 1:00 p.m., they had lost the sun by the time they reached the Big Waterfall, and were soaked and cold, from swimming through pools and roping down right through falls.
I asked him for a write-up of the great adventure, which I will send along to you.
Now if only we could find some money for the BLM, to buy the 800-acres-now-for-sale, which includes this remarkable trail, these amazing waterfalls ...
Monday, June 28, 2004
Visit to Canyon Creek; Capital-to-Capital Trail
Sunday morning I met Michael Garabedian at the Monte Vista Inn for a hike on the Canyon Creek Trail. Mike is quite an interesting man, a great lover of the North Fork. He contacted me a few weeks ago about fighting the proposed Capital-to-Capital Trail, of which more later, but what I found so unusual is that, over a period of several years, he has been exploring the North Fork more or less inch by inch, starting on the main American River, in Sacramento!!! He has worked his way all the way up to Pickering Bar, near Gold Run. He is aiming for the Sierra crest.
Canyon Creek is a mere skip and a jump upstream from Pickering Bar. In fact, a faint Gold Rush-era trail connects the two.
We used a secret route into the Diggings to reach the trailhead, from which it is a scant one and a half miles to the river. Parenthetically, I called one of the owners of the 800-acres-now-for-sale a week ago, and learned that there is no news, no escrow, no counter-counter-offer from the interested party. I dare to hope that no news is good news.
Canyon Creek has subsided to summer flows, but is still quite pretty. Recently the trail was posted to a major trails/hiking website, quite regrettably, I think, and many more people are using it. The narrow trail-bed, almost unmaintained for a century, cannot withstand this heavier use. I saw many places where heavy-footed hikers had broken down the outside edge of the trail, erasing the tiny path altogether; and as I hiked, I fumed, imagining great louts staggering along, Budweisers in hand, with all the grace and coordination of broken backhoes, ponderously operating their drunken legs by pulling levers more or less at random, and ruining the old old trail.
The flowers have almost gone now, even the Mustang Mint, the Monardella, withering in the summer heat. We paused fairly often to enjoy the views, and Mike was suitably impressed by the Inner Gorge, where waterfalls are hidden within twisting shadowy stone caverns, and where the trail, high above, was hewn from the very cliffs. Nearing the North Fork, we stopped at the fine overlook, with its strange little Indian grinding rock, and its view up the canyon into Giant Gap. Then we made for the river, and crossed Canyon Creek itself to a shady spot alongside the deep pool, at the base of the last waterfall.
I was surprised to find the Water Ouzel nest active there. The nest has been there for years. The parents--ouzels are somewhat wren-like, almost robin-sized grey birds, which forage for food underwater, plunging directly into rapids--the parents were making constant trips out to the North Fork for food, then back to the nest, beside the waterfall. A loud cheeping from their babies would erupt every time, and almost instantly the parent would zoom back to the river.
We rested and I swam the cool pool before starting back up the trail in the early afternoon heat. High pressure had eased into such a position as to set up an offshore wind aloft, which damped down the usual up-canyon wind to a near dead calm. The heat was intense, the sun glared down, and the trail seemed steeper than usual. We plodded along and took many breaks in the shade of the gnarled Canyon Live Oaks.
Back on top, we faced the difficult choice of whether to attend a wine-tasting, in Squires Canyon, or not. There would be interesting people, fine wine, food, and shade. On the other hand, more prudently, we could just go home, and rest the good rest. But--Michael is intent upon stopping the blasted Capital-to-Capital-Trail--a lawsuit may be required--and some good advice on this matter could be had, at the wine-tasting. So we gritted our teeth and chose to taste fine wine.
This proved to be quite a nice thing to do. Ed Stadum was hosting, the personable Bob Pfister was present, along with other conneisseurs of fine wines, and the legendary Bill Newsom sat in a place of high honor, with fifteen bottles of Zinfandel making a kind of forest before him; and this forest of Zinfandel was quite varied in taste and bouquet. One had to try small glasses of nearly every kind there was. The conneisseurs argued over the ordering of the wines; which was best, which second best, third, fourth, fifth.
Placer County has chosen to push the Capital-to-Capital Trail up the North Fork canyon bit by bit. What they call "Phase One" goes from the Confluence, below Auburn, up to Ponderosa Bridge, below Weimar. The County prepared a "Mitigated Negative Declaration" (in essence, "there are no negative environmental impacts") for this roughly 12-mile segment, and insisted that it is a "stand-alone" project. This just plain smells to high heaven to me; it reeks of politics and of making an end run around any honest environmental study of the blasted C-to-C Trail. However, I have been quite surprised that what *I* consider to be the leadership on environmental issues, in Placer County, namely, PARC and the Placer Group of the Mother Lode Chapter of the Sierra Club, seem strangely willing to just go along with this five-foot-wide highway for mountain bikes, running up the North Fork canyon.
I suppose I am weak-minded. If Eric Peach and Terry Davis say, "It's not so bad; it's OK," I begin to believe them. I myself virtually never hike in that part of the canyon, so, who am I to say, "build no trail"? But the thing just rankles me. I'm glad that Michael Garabedian has the courage and simple good sense to stand up and say, "This trail is a mistake; this is too wild of a canyon, too precious a solitude, to build a mountain bike highway into it."
We tasted fine wine and found good advice and good encouragement for Michael's idea that a lawsuit may be necessary to halt Phase One of the C-to-C Trail, and forcing a full Environmental Impact Study of the entire trail, rather than allowing this "negative declaration" to stand its craven stance.
The Supervisors did not "certify" the Negative Declaration last Tuesday; Michael attended the hearing, and reports that County Counsel found reason to suspect that the Negative Declaration does not really meet adequate legal standards. There remains a window of opportunity to comment on this trail, a window extending to the next Supervisor's hearing, July 13, and during this time, comments can be submitted which will have legal standing, later, in a court of law. I will write more about this soon.
There is some chance the project will come to a halt without any litigation at all.
Canyon Creek is a mere skip and a jump upstream from Pickering Bar. In fact, a faint Gold Rush-era trail connects the two.
We used a secret route into the Diggings to reach the trailhead, from which it is a scant one and a half miles to the river. Parenthetically, I called one of the owners of the 800-acres-now-for-sale a week ago, and learned that there is no news, no escrow, no counter-counter-offer from the interested party. I dare to hope that no news is good news.
Canyon Creek has subsided to summer flows, but is still quite pretty. Recently the trail was posted to a major trails/hiking website, quite regrettably, I think, and many more people are using it. The narrow trail-bed, almost unmaintained for a century, cannot withstand this heavier use. I saw many places where heavy-footed hikers had broken down the outside edge of the trail, erasing the tiny path altogether; and as I hiked, I fumed, imagining great louts staggering along, Budweisers in hand, with all the grace and coordination of broken backhoes, ponderously operating their drunken legs by pulling levers more or less at random, and ruining the old old trail.
The flowers have almost gone now, even the Mustang Mint, the Monardella, withering in the summer heat. We paused fairly often to enjoy the views, and Mike was suitably impressed by the Inner Gorge, where waterfalls are hidden within twisting shadowy stone caverns, and where the trail, high above, was hewn from the very cliffs. Nearing the North Fork, we stopped at the fine overlook, with its strange little Indian grinding rock, and its view up the canyon into Giant Gap. Then we made for the river, and crossed Canyon Creek itself to a shady spot alongside the deep pool, at the base of the last waterfall.
I was surprised to find the Water Ouzel nest active there. The nest has been there for years. The parents--ouzels are somewhat wren-like, almost robin-sized grey birds, which forage for food underwater, plunging directly into rapids--the parents were making constant trips out to the North Fork for food, then back to the nest, beside the waterfall. A loud cheeping from their babies would erupt every time, and almost instantly the parent would zoom back to the river.
We rested and I swam the cool pool before starting back up the trail in the early afternoon heat. High pressure had eased into such a position as to set up an offshore wind aloft, which damped down the usual up-canyon wind to a near dead calm. The heat was intense, the sun glared down, and the trail seemed steeper than usual. We plodded along and took many breaks in the shade of the gnarled Canyon Live Oaks.
Back on top, we faced the difficult choice of whether to attend a wine-tasting, in Squires Canyon, or not. There would be interesting people, fine wine, food, and shade. On the other hand, more prudently, we could just go home, and rest the good rest. But--Michael is intent upon stopping the blasted Capital-to-Capital-Trail--a lawsuit may be required--and some good advice on this matter could be had, at the wine-tasting. So we gritted our teeth and chose to taste fine wine.
This proved to be quite a nice thing to do. Ed Stadum was hosting, the personable Bob Pfister was present, along with other conneisseurs of fine wines, and the legendary Bill Newsom sat in a place of high honor, with fifteen bottles of Zinfandel making a kind of forest before him; and this forest of Zinfandel was quite varied in taste and bouquet. One had to try small glasses of nearly every kind there was. The conneisseurs argued over the ordering of the wines; which was best, which second best, third, fourth, fifth.
Placer County has chosen to push the Capital-to-Capital Trail up the North Fork canyon bit by bit. What they call "Phase One" goes from the Confluence, below Auburn, up to Ponderosa Bridge, below Weimar. The County prepared a "Mitigated Negative Declaration" (in essence, "there are no negative environmental impacts") for this roughly 12-mile segment, and insisted that it is a "stand-alone" project. This just plain smells to high heaven to me; it reeks of politics and of making an end run around any honest environmental study of the blasted C-to-C Trail. However, I have been quite surprised that what *I* consider to be the leadership on environmental issues, in Placer County, namely, PARC and the Placer Group of the Mother Lode Chapter of the Sierra Club, seem strangely willing to just go along with this five-foot-wide highway for mountain bikes, running up the North Fork canyon.
I suppose I am weak-minded. If Eric Peach and Terry Davis say, "It's not so bad; it's OK," I begin to believe them. I myself virtually never hike in that part of the canyon, so, who am I to say, "build no trail"? But the thing just rankles me. I'm glad that Michael Garabedian has the courage and simple good sense to stand up and say, "This trail is a mistake; this is too wild of a canyon, too precious a solitude, to build a mountain bike highway into it."
We tasted fine wine and found good advice and good encouragement for Michael's idea that a lawsuit may be necessary to halt Phase One of the C-to-C Trail, and forcing a full Environmental Impact Study of the entire trail, rather than allowing this "negative declaration" to stand its craven stance.
The Supervisors did not "certify" the Negative Declaration last Tuesday; Michael attended the hearing, and reports that County Counsel found reason to suspect that the Negative Declaration does not really meet adequate legal standards. There remains a window of opportunity to comment on this trail, a window extending to the next Supervisor's hearing, July 13, and during this time, comments can be submitted which will have legal standing, later, in a court of law. I will write more about this soon.
There is some chance the project will come to a halt without any litigation at all.
Thursday, June 10, 2004
Visit to Canyon Creek; the HOUT
Yesterday I met Catherine O'Riley for a hike on our beloved Canyon Creek Trail. After the thunderstorms and rain of the day before, Wednesday dawned cool under a general overcast, but by ten in the morning the clouds had parted into fair-weather cumulus, of which there were many, but all in all giving much more sun than shadow. It was in fact *the* perfect spring day.
We were delayed for a time while I learned the bad news about the family Subaru from Randy of Dutch Flat Motors. A rather modest dent would require some thousands to repair; and worse, Randy was not equipped to do the work. Randy is a jovial man, on the large side, now favoring hoggish Harley Davidsons, but once upon a time a racing bicyclist, who competed in the 1972 Olympics, at Munich.
We used our usual secret road into the Diggings and drove a mile or so to the trailhead in Potato Ravine. The Gold Run Diggings is a vast complex of hydraulic mines, once an irregular tiling of dozens of discrete claims, but over time some 800 acres fell into the ownership of one James Stewart, a friend of Jack London and Franklin Delano Roosevelt; except that a number of worked-out claims in the southern part of the Diggings had lapsed back into public lands, now managed by the BLM. For years many of us have urged the BLM to try to purchase ever so much of the 800 acres as possible; for a number of important trails, historical sites, and paleobotanical resources span the irregular boundary between private and public lands, there to the south.
In recognition of this most-remarkable part of the Diggings, when Congress designated the North Fork American a Wild & Scenic River, in 1978, they created a special "Gold Run Addition" to the W&SR corridor, which extends fully a mile north of the river, well into the Diggings. The BLM was directed to acquire the private inholdings within this special area; but the owners were not willing sellers, and nothing could be done.
The 800 acres has been for sale for the last few years. Time for the BLM and act, swiftly, decisively! But no. There is no money. Land trades have become difficult to execute. And now we learn that a credible offer has been received on the 800 acres, by someone desiring a "private reserve," and the owners have made a counter-offer. I have been afraid to call the one owner with whom I am acquainted, for fear that disaster has already struck, and the sale is in escrow.
We set off down the trail, winding out of Potato Ravine on the Indiana Hill Ditch (which, in testimony recorded during the 1881 trial, State of California vs. the Gold Run Ditch & Mining Company, we learn was completed on September 13, 1852), and then dropping away south and east to closely parallel Canyon Creek. For a time we were on BLM lands, then crossing onto a part of the 800 acres, which runs right down to the North Fork itself. We made rapid progress down the trail, across the little bridge, stopping briefly at the first large waterfall, and enjoying the late-season wildflowers.
Notable among these were the Two-Lobed Clarkia, Harvest Brodiaea, a species of Lotus, a species of Madia, and the very last of the Bush Monkeyflower. The bloom this warm and dry spring has been pushed forward nearly a month, so many species which would still make a fine display, have already shed their flowers and set seed.
We passed the Rock Slide and were on the steep slopes above the Big Waterfall when a family of Canyon Wrens caught our eye. They were foraging for insects among a jumble of rocks, not singing at all, but busily poking into every tiny cave and crevice. These birds are a rusty brown with a creamy breast, pert wren trails, and a curved beak. Their wild lilting descending sequence of notes is a classic ornament on cliffs and in canyons, in the Sierra and elsewhere.
Then to our amazement one of the mysterious white racing pigeons which had taken up residence near the Big Waterfall, winter-before-last, soared into view, disappearing towards the waterfall, then circling back and sweeping away south into the main North Fork.
We decided to break away east on the HOUT (High Old Upriver Trail), a strangely level thread of a path which can be followed miles up the canyon into the heart of Giant Gap. It is a relict of the Giant Gap Survey, a scheme of a hundred years past to divert waters of the North Fork for San Francisco's water supply. The schemers put men at work to rough in the line of the proposed canal, and they dutifully blasted out narrow ledges from the cliffs, and drove a couple of tunnels through the flaring rock spurs below Lovers Leap.
The clouds had gradually increased in size and their shadows drifted across the cliffs all around us. The views east, of Lovers Leap and the Pinnacles, which opened occasionally to our admiring eyes, were made even more dramatic and lovely by the fluffy clouds. These clouds seemed to swell higher before our eyes, and for most of the day, we felt a kind of restless excitement, at the prospect that a fully-blown thunderstorm might develop. To which we only said, bring it on!
At a certain point, nearly a mile east from the CCT, a fork is reached, where one can either hew to the line of the Survey (the HOUT), or drop away east and down to the North Fork, just shy of massive Big West Spur, which might be more esthetically named Castle Spur, in honor of a fine large conical mass of bare rock adorning its summit, a thousand feet above the river. The river makes a funny kind of square turn around the base of this spur ridge before turning again to bear nearly west to Canyon Creek. A large expanse of large boulders occupies the outside of this last big bend in the river; all the boulders look to derive from the steep slopes in the immediate area, being various types of metavolcanic rock of the late-Paleozoic Calaveras Complex.
We took a long lunch break here amid the boulders, which at the base of the little trail contain some level pockets of sand. The river was sparkling clear, moderately cold, and moving along quite nicely. Across from us and a ways upstream, a gigantic boulder reared up ten or fifteen feet above the water, and a little clump of moss caught my eye. I pointed it out to Catherine, remarking it looked much like what I had thought to be an extraordinary Water Ouzel nest, on a mid-river boulder, up in the Royal Gorge. These ouzels a like large grey wrens and dive right into the river, foraging for insects etc. underwater. They zoom up and down the river itself, a foot or so above the water, and have a rippling, chattering, random song which hardly sounds like a song at all. John Muir's favorite bird. And they nest, almost always, in the spray of waterfalls, making a hollow ball of moss and such, which a downward-sloping entrance, often impossible to see unless the birds are actually going in our out.
That's a water ouzel's nest. But I had seen that one rarely strange nest in the Royal Gorge, like some kind of miniature wigwam, perched atop a boulder. Here, perhaps, another, and I might have to stop thinking of such an ouzel nest as so rare or unusual. We went to investigate, hopping from boulder to boulder to boulder to a last boulder almost at mid-stream, only forty or fifty feet from the Big Boulder. The truth could not be denied. It was an ouzel nest, the rock near the entrance streaked with white excrement. The entrance was plain to see, opening to the west, downstream. The nest was about six feet above the water, on a ledge.
Swallows were zooming around, but there were no ouzels visiting the nest. The young must have been already fledged, several weeks ago perhaps. After a time we started back.
I placed my right foot on a polished little boss of stone and with my usual casual expertise made a leap to the next boulder. Then, with all the grace of a ballet dancer, I slipped and turned, in slow motion as it seemed, and made what amounted to a swan dive right into the North Fork. I remember seeing a boulder underwater as my face slammed down, and darting my hands down to break my fall. Boulders to either side bruised my hips as I plunged fully and completely into the river, but I kept my face safe. It was complete submersion, a total soaking from head to toe.
Standing up, the bruises almost incapacitated me; it felt as though I had pulled the muscles; I could really barely stand, and made a slow and awkward business of climbing out of the water.
After a minute I could move again, and used much more caution than usual in hopping back to the main boulder-field and our sand hollow.
I had a long-sleeved shirt to change into and just wore my blue jeans dry. Actually, they're still drying, right outside on my porch.
After a time we decided to follow an old miners' trail up the river to the first square corner of the base of Big West Spur. As we hopped along, I tested my bruises and kept up a decent pace and felt reassured that I was, after all, OK. Then a holler was heard. I looked back; no Catherine. What; a rattlesnake? A strange flower, a rare frog? What could make her holler like that? I retreated a dozen yards and she came in view, dripping water.
It was a double baptism, then, into the North Fork; except, Catherine had not equalled my own total submersion, only managing a modest three-quarters. We can now justly claim admission into the ranks of those hardy souls who swim the North Fork in spring.
So we squished along in our wet shoes and reached our square corner, a ways up above the river on a cliff, admiring the narrow gorge there, and the deep pools, and remembering a few years past when we had scrambled and swum Giant Gap, with Chris Schiller, and had finally left the swimming behind, at just this point, just this sunny bar of rounded boulders, a hundred feet below us.
Eventually it was time to start back, and we took it pretty easy, as is best after all, reaching Catherine's truck around six p.m.
Such was another fine day on the North Fork.
We were delayed for a time while I learned the bad news about the family Subaru from Randy of Dutch Flat Motors. A rather modest dent would require some thousands to repair; and worse, Randy was not equipped to do the work. Randy is a jovial man, on the large side, now favoring hoggish Harley Davidsons, but once upon a time a racing bicyclist, who competed in the 1972 Olympics, at Munich.
We used our usual secret road into the Diggings and drove a mile or so to the trailhead in Potato Ravine. The Gold Run Diggings is a vast complex of hydraulic mines, once an irregular tiling of dozens of discrete claims, but over time some 800 acres fell into the ownership of one James Stewart, a friend of Jack London and Franklin Delano Roosevelt; except that a number of worked-out claims in the southern part of the Diggings had lapsed back into public lands, now managed by the BLM. For years many of us have urged the BLM to try to purchase ever so much of the 800 acres as possible; for a number of important trails, historical sites, and paleobotanical resources span the irregular boundary between private and public lands, there to the south.
In recognition of this most-remarkable part of the Diggings, when Congress designated the North Fork American a Wild & Scenic River, in 1978, they created a special "Gold Run Addition" to the W&SR corridor, which extends fully a mile north of the river, well into the Diggings. The BLM was directed to acquire the private inholdings within this special area; but the owners were not willing sellers, and nothing could be done.
The 800 acres has been for sale for the last few years. Time for the BLM and act, swiftly, decisively! But no. There is no money. Land trades have become difficult to execute. And now we learn that a credible offer has been received on the 800 acres, by someone desiring a "private reserve," and the owners have made a counter-offer. I have been afraid to call the one owner with whom I am acquainted, for fear that disaster has already struck, and the sale is in escrow.
We set off down the trail, winding out of Potato Ravine on the Indiana Hill Ditch (which, in testimony recorded during the 1881 trial, State of California vs. the Gold Run Ditch & Mining Company, we learn was completed on September 13, 1852), and then dropping away south and east to closely parallel Canyon Creek. For a time we were on BLM lands, then crossing onto a part of the 800 acres, which runs right down to the North Fork itself. We made rapid progress down the trail, across the little bridge, stopping briefly at the first large waterfall, and enjoying the late-season wildflowers.
Notable among these were the Two-Lobed Clarkia, Harvest Brodiaea, a species of Lotus, a species of Madia, and the very last of the Bush Monkeyflower. The bloom this warm and dry spring has been pushed forward nearly a month, so many species which would still make a fine display, have already shed their flowers and set seed.
We passed the Rock Slide and were on the steep slopes above the Big Waterfall when a family of Canyon Wrens caught our eye. They were foraging for insects among a jumble of rocks, not singing at all, but busily poking into every tiny cave and crevice. These birds are a rusty brown with a creamy breast, pert wren trails, and a curved beak. Their wild lilting descending sequence of notes is a classic ornament on cliffs and in canyons, in the Sierra and elsewhere.
Then to our amazement one of the mysterious white racing pigeons which had taken up residence near the Big Waterfall, winter-before-last, soared into view, disappearing towards the waterfall, then circling back and sweeping away south into the main North Fork.
We decided to break away east on the HOUT (High Old Upriver Trail), a strangely level thread of a path which can be followed miles up the canyon into the heart of Giant Gap. It is a relict of the Giant Gap Survey, a scheme of a hundred years past to divert waters of the North Fork for San Francisco's water supply. The schemers put men at work to rough in the line of the proposed canal, and they dutifully blasted out narrow ledges from the cliffs, and drove a couple of tunnels through the flaring rock spurs below Lovers Leap.
The clouds had gradually increased in size and their shadows drifted across the cliffs all around us. The views east, of Lovers Leap and the Pinnacles, which opened occasionally to our admiring eyes, were made even more dramatic and lovely by the fluffy clouds. These clouds seemed to swell higher before our eyes, and for most of the day, we felt a kind of restless excitement, at the prospect that a fully-blown thunderstorm might develop. To which we only said, bring it on!
At a certain point, nearly a mile east from the CCT, a fork is reached, where one can either hew to the line of the Survey (the HOUT), or drop away east and down to the North Fork, just shy of massive Big West Spur, which might be more esthetically named Castle Spur, in honor of a fine large conical mass of bare rock adorning its summit, a thousand feet above the river. The river makes a funny kind of square turn around the base of this spur ridge before turning again to bear nearly west to Canyon Creek. A large expanse of large boulders occupies the outside of this last big bend in the river; all the boulders look to derive from the steep slopes in the immediate area, being various types of metavolcanic rock of the late-Paleozoic Calaveras Complex.
We took a long lunch break here amid the boulders, which at the base of the little trail contain some level pockets of sand. The river was sparkling clear, moderately cold, and moving along quite nicely. Across from us and a ways upstream, a gigantic boulder reared up ten or fifteen feet above the water, and a little clump of moss caught my eye. I pointed it out to Catherine, remarking it looked much like what I had thought to be an extraordinary Water Ouzel nest, on a mid-river boulder, up in the Royal Gorge. These ouzels a like large grey wrens and dive right into the river, foraging for insects etc. underwater. They zoom up and down the river itself, a foot or so above the water, and have a rippling, chattering, random song which hardly sounds like a song at all. John Muir's favorite bird. And they nest, almost always, in the spray of waterfalls, making a hollow ball of moss and such, which a downward-sloping entrance, often impossible to see unless the birds are actually going in our out.
That's a water ouzel's nest. But I had seen that one rarely strange nest in the Royal Gorge, like some kind of miniature wigwam, perched atop a boulder. Here, perhaps, another, and I might have to stop thinking of such an ouzel nest as so rare or unusual. We went to investigate, hopping from boulder to boulder to boulder to a last boulder almost at mid-stream, only forty or fifty feet from the Big Boulder. The truth could not be denied. It was an ouzel nest, the rock near the entrance streaked with white excrement. The entrance was plain to see, opening to the west, downstream. The nest was about six feet above the water, on a ledge.
Swallows were zooming around, but there were no ouzels visiting the nest. The young must have been already fledged, several weeks ago perhaps. After a time we started back.
I placed my right foot on a polished little boss of stone and with my usual casual expertise made a leap to the next boulder. Then, with all the grace of a ballet dancer, I slipped and turned, in slow motion as it seemed, and made what amounted to a swan dive right into the North Fork. I remember seeing a boulder underwater as my face slammed down, and darting my hands down to break my fall. Boulders to either side bruised my hips as I plunged fully and completely into the river, but I kept my face safe. It was complete submersion, a total soaking from head to toe.
Standing up, the bruises almost incapacitated me; it felt as though I had pulled the muscles; I could really barely stand, and made a slow and awkward business of climbing out of the water.
After a minute I could move again, and used much more caution than usual in hopping back to the main boulder-field and our sand hollow.
I had a long-sleeved shirt to change into and just wore my blue jeans dry. Actually, they're still drying, right outside on my porch.
After a time we decided to follow an old miners' trail up the river to the first square corner of the base of Big West Spur. As we hopped along, I tested my bruises and kept up a decent pace and felt reassured that I was, after all, OK. Then a holler was heard. I looked back; no Catherine. What; a rattlesnake? A strange flower, a rare frog? What could make her holler like that? I retreated a dozen yards and she came in view, dripping water.
It was a double baptism, then, into the North Fork; except, Catherine had not equalled my own total submersion, only managing a modest three-quarters. We can now justly claim admission into the ranks of those hardy souls who swim the North Fork in spring.
So we squished along in our wet shoes and reached our square corner, a ways up above the river on a cliff, admiring the narrow gorge there, and the deep pools, and remembering a few years past when we had scrambled and swum Giant Gap, with Chris Schiller, and had finally left the swimming behind, at just this point, just this sunny bar of rounded boulders, a hundred feet below us.
Eventually it was time to start back, and we took it pretty easy, as is best after all, reaching Catherine's truck around six p.m.
Such was another fine day on the North Fork.
Saturday, January 24, 2004
Visit To Canyon Creek
Friday dawned cold, and high cirrus clouds filtered the sun for several hours, so that warming was slow. NFARA's own Secretary, Catherine O'Riley, suffered a broken clavicle last summer, a break which excited many remarks from her doctors, such as "I've never seen one that bad," etc. etc. (horrors!), and after five months of recuperation, she at last felt ready to take on her beloved Canyon Creek Trail. At ten in the morning I met her at the Monte Vista, and we snuck into the Gold Run Diggings, and parked at the trailhead.
We found that the miners' garbage from the Tunnel area had indeed been removed entirely. Many thanks to Julie, and to Tom Faust for taking that on! Catherine and I spent ten minutes cleaning up more garbage from around the Tunnel Terrace, where the steam engine once chugged away, compressing air for the drilling machine which bored the gigantic hole. The thing--the Tunnel--is fully twelve feet wide and nine feet high, for the last 400 feet before it breaks out above Canyon Creek. Made in 1873, by the Gold Run Ditch & Mining Co., this tunnel allowed the hydraulic mines to continue working down through the gravels, all the way to the bedrock floor of the ancient river channel.
The clouds thinned, the day warmed, and soon we were swinging along right smartly, down past the First Big Waterfall, Spike Point, the Inner Gorge and the Rockslide, and took the Upper Terraces Trail to where the California Milkmaids are already in bloom, in that sweet spot of microclimate around the Terraces. I have seen this species of the Mustard Family in bloom there as early as January 6th.
The Terraces seem to have been constructed for camping and cooking in support of sluice box operations in Canyon Creek. The last two miles of the creek was fitted with multiple giant sluice boxes over the two decades or less of the peak of hydraulic mining. These needed constant attendance, repair, and guarding. Work was done in two twelve-hour shifts. Mercury by the ton was thrown in to catch the fine gold, and special sluice boxes called "undercurrents" were set up in many places.
We dawdled around on the tiny lawns of the Terraces, enjoying bright sunshine that finally felt really warm, and admiring the flowers. Waterfalls crashed and hissed unseen below us. After a good break, we hit the HOUT, the High Old Upriver Trail, and followed it east on its strangely level line about a mile towards Giant Gap. The great cliffs and pinnacles drew nearer and nearer; winding in and out of ravines on the HOUT, the view constantly changed.
We stopped at Bogus Gully, although I skipped ahead just a couple hundred yards, as Ron Gould and I, while on the Diving Board, a week ago, had been scanning those very slopes rather closely with binoculars, and had been surprised that so little of the HOUT could be seen. However, the sun angle at that time was as if calculated to hide the HOUT. While on one of the best-defined level benches east of Bogus Gully, exactly where we had tried and failed to pick the thing out, I saw that there is an absolutely unobstructed view back to the Diving Board. So, it was the lighting. Had we been on the Board soon after dawn, the HOUT would have been easily seen. In the early afternoon, with the sun behind is, no shadows were visible to help eke out the trail.
Catherine had chores in town, so we wandered slowly up and out, taking the side trail to the Blasted Digger Overlook, and reaching her truck around four o'clock.
It was another wonderful day in Canyon Creek and the North Fork. Of course, we were trespassing nearly every step of the way, which should remind us that somehow, some way, we must find the money for the BLM to just buy the Gold Run Diggings.
It won't be easy.
We found that the miners' garbage from the Tunnel area had indeed been removed entirely. Many thanks to Julie, and to Tom Faust for taking that on! Catherine and I spent ten minutes cleaning up more garbage from around the Tunnel Terrace, where the steam engine once chugged away, compressing air for the drilling machine which bored the gigantic hole. The thing--the Tunnel--is fully twelve feet wide and nine feet high, for the last 400 feet before it breaks out above Canyon Creek. Made in 1873, by the Gold Run Ditch & Mining Co., this tunnel allowed the hydraulic mines to continue working down through the gravels, all the way to the bedrock floor of the ancient river channel.
The clouds thinned, the day warmed, and soon we were swinging along right smartly, down past the First Big Waterfall, Spike Point, the Inner Gorge and the Rockslide, and took the Upper Terraces Trail to where the California Milkmaids are already in bloom, in that sweet spot of microclimate around the Terraces. I have seen this species of the Mustard Family in bloom there as early as January 6th.
The Terraces seem to have been constructed for camping and cooking in support of sluice box operations in Canyon Creek. The last two miles of the creek was fitted with multiple giant sluice boxes over the two decades or less of the peak of hydraulic mining. These needed constant attendance, repair, and guarding. Work was done in two twelve-hour shifts. Mercury by the ton was thrown in to catch the fine gold, and special sluice boxes called "undercurrents" were set up in many places.
We dawdled around on the tiny lawns of the Terraces, enjoying bright sunshine that finally felt really warm, and admiring the flowers. Waterfalls crashed and hissed unseen below us. After a good break, we hit the HOUT, the High Old Upriver Trail, and followed it east on its strangely level line about a mile towards Giant Gap. The great cliffs and pinnacles drew nearer and nearer; winding in and out of ravines on the HOUT, the view constantly changed.
We stopped at Bogus Gully, although I skipped ahead just a couple hundred yards, as Ron Gould and I, while on the Diving Board, a week ago, had been scanning those very slopes rather closely with binoculars, and had been surprised that so little of the HOUT could be seen. However, the sun angle at that time was as if calculated to hide the HOUT. While on one of the best-defined level benches east of Bogus Gully, exactly where we had tried and failed to pick the thing out, I saw that there is an absolutely unobstructed view back to the Diving Board. So, it was the lighting. Had we been on the Board soon after dawn, the HOUT would have been easily seen. In the early afternoon, with the sun behind is, no shadows were visible to help eke out the trail.
Catherine had chores in town, so we wandered slowly up and out, taking the side trail to the Blasted Digger Overlook, and reaching her truck around four o'clock.
It was another wonderful day in Canyon Creek and the North Fork. Of course, we were trespassing nearly every step of the way, which should remind us that somehow, some way, we must find the money for the BLM to just buy the Gold Run Diggings.
It won't be easy.
Thursday, January 1, 2004
Visit To Canyon Creek
On New Year's Eve I met Ron Gould and his friend Dale at the Monte Vista Inn, whence we snuck into the Gold Run Diggings and drove to the head of the Canyon Creek Trail (CCT).
This trail leads from the Diggings down to the North Fork American, and probably went through several different alignments, beginning in the Gold Rush, until its present route became fixed, perhaps in the 1860s. In 1849 a trading post was established at Cold Springs, up on Cold Springs Hill, which rises above the Diggings on the west; and CCT would have left Canyon Creek by way of Potato Ravine, climbing the north wall of the ravine west to Cold Springs, the trading post, and the trail to Sacramento.
In the 1870s, Potato Ravine itself was mined away, where it crossed the Diggings. Thus the upper part of the CCT became empty space. New paths were forged across the Diggings to restore access to the old trail, and these in part comprise the combination of road and trail I call the Paleobotanist Trail.
The CCT itself now begins in Potato Ravine just east of the Diggings, near some old old house or cabin sites. It drops east a short distance before crossing the ravine to the Indiana Hill Ditch. Here one passes from the private-property-now-for-sale, the 800 acres belong to Gold Run Properties (GRP), into public BLM lands. The trail follows the line of this smallish 1852 ditch for perhaps three hundred yards, and then drops away left to Canyon Creek. There it re-enters the GRP lands now for sale, and remains on private property the rest of the way to the North Fork.
The day was overcast, alternately threatening rain and promising sun, and a thin layer of sloppy-wet, rained-on snow covered the ground. However, as we dropped south through the Diggings, we left the snow above and behind us. We parked at the trailhead. Ominously, a beer can had been left atop a small cedar, marking the trail. We set off, soon reaching the Old Wagon Road and then approaching the great bedrock drain tunnel, nine feet high and twelve feet wide, of the Gold Run Ditch & Mining Company. Near the tunnel a small flat held a steam engine, back in 1873, when the tunnel was made, and twice in the last year or so a would-be miner made a terrible mess of the flat, requiring many backpack loads of garbage to be hauled up and out. The sharp eyes of Ron Gould spotted another cache of garbage above the tunnel, half-hidden in the trees, from the last miner's camp. We dragged it down to the trail and left it for another day. Two backpack loads ought to do it.
On down the trail, the main North Fork canyon hove into view, fog and cloud clinging to the canyon rim, where snow still covered the ground, and some few snatches of fog remaining within the canyon. As the first large waterfall on Canyon Creek was approached, we saw that the creek was high enough to make the Leaper, a small waterfall to the side of the main fall, which plunges down a polished chute to a half-pothole and is flung out and up, making a nice arching water-rise, water-fall.
A hawk circled and soared above us as we entered upon the steeps of the trail, passing the remarkable Inner Gorge and the Big Waterfall, which speaks loudly but is never seen. Well below the Rockslide we took the faint trail right to the Big Waterfall and the Terraces, paying a visit to each in turn, before using the Lower Terraces Trail to return to the CCT proper. A few more minutes brought us down to the river, and a perch beside the last big waterfall on Canyon Creek, where we ate lunch, and bundled up a bit, as rain began to fall.
After lunch we ventured east on the Low Old Upriver Trail or LOUT, although hesitant to follow it past the rather dangerous section on a cliff. All day we had noticed how very slippery the rocks were, with no sun to dry them after recent storms. However, we girded our loins or whatever it is one does when facing such a hazard and were soon safely past, the main concern actually being our several dogs, two of which verged upon decrepitude. The other was a well-built youngster who had a happy habit of just knocking you out of her way, if she was in a hurry, on the trail.
The LOUT is rather faint in places and splits into multiple tracks, but we managed to hold the main trail at each split and eventually, after pitching up and down and up and down, with many fine views of the river, flowing high and clear and cold, below us, we reached the vicinity of Bogus Gully and began a zig-zag course right up the hillside, and after a climb of two hundred feet, reached the large bouldery area beside the gully, where a cache of mining tools exists. After a little break to recover our breath, we climbed the last hundred feet up to the High Old Upriver Trail, the HOUT, and followed it east to a very fine viewpoint.
Here one sees the North Fork, below, to the east and to the west, and the cliff I call The Eminence, or Sunset Point, right across the canyon. To the east, Giant Gap, flanked by Lovers Leap on the left, and the Pinnacle Ridge on the right, with Big West Spur hiding the lower part of the Gap, the heart of the Gap, where cliffs plunge almost vertically down to the river and its deep pools. We took a nice break and then walked the easy mile back to the CCT on the HOUT, which has an almost perfectly level course, as it originated not in the Gold Rush, like the LOUT, but in the 1890s, an artifact of the Giant Gap Survey. The Survey was a scheme to carry away the waters of the North Fork American, in a ditch and pipeline, to San Francisco. To demonstrate the feasibility of the project, men were hired on to not only survey the line of the canal through Giant Gap, but even blast out a tiny bench cut into the cliffs.
The net result is an almost-level trail, about three hundred feet above the river. One can follow it all the way past Big West Spur into the very heart of Giant Gap, with more and more outright rock-climbing required, and eventually, great tunnels appear in gigantic blades of rock, and a rather complicated route can be picked out, used by the Survey men themselves, which connects together the various level sections, where benches and tunnels were blasted from the cliffs, with sharp descents from and ascents over some very steep terrain.
Ron and I went all the way through, from Canyon Creek to Green Valley, in July. Towards Green Valley the disconnected vestiges of the Survey become even harder to follow and connect by side trails, and it works out well to hop along the bouldery banks of the river itself, until the Green Valley Trail (West) is reached.
Ron and Dale and I made the long slow trudge up and out, with occasional rain showers so light we were scarcely even dampened, but the CCT is only about a mile and a half long, so, soon enough we were at the truck, and, well, it was a fine day and a fine way to ring out the late great year, 2003.
This trail leads from the Diggings down to the North Fork American, and probably went through several different alignments, beginning in the Gold Rush, until its present route became fixed, perhaps in the 1860s. In 1849 a trading post was established at Cold Springs, up on Cold Springs Hill, which rises above the Diggings on the west; and CCT would have left Canyon Creek by way of Potato Ravine, climbing the north wall of the ravine west to Cold Springs, the trading post, and the trail to Sacramento.
In the 1870s, Potato Ravine itself was mined away, where it crossed the Diggings. Thus the upper part of the CCT became empty space. New paths were forged across the Diggings to restore access to the old trail, and these in part comprise the combination of road and trail I call the Paleobotanist Trail.
The CCT itself now begins in Potato Ravine just east of the Diggings, near some old old house or cabin sites. It drops east a short distance before crossing the ravine to the Indiana Hill Ditch. Here one passes from the private-property-now-for-sale, the 800 acres belong to Gold Run Properties (GRP), into public BLM lands. The trail follows the line of this smallish 1852 ditch for perhaps three hundred yards, and then drops away left to Canyon Creek. There it re-enters the GRP lands now for sale, and remains on private property the rest of the way to the North Fork.
The day was overcast, alternately threatening rain and promising sun, and a thin layer of sloppy-wet, rained-on snow covered the ground. However, as we dropped south through the Diggings, we left the snow above and behind us. We parked at the trailhead. Ominously, a beer can had been left atop a small cedar, marking the trail. We set off, soon reaching the Old Wagon Road and then approaching the great bedrock drain tunnel, nine feet high and twelve feet wide, of the Gold Run Ditch & Mining Company. Near the tunnel a small flat held a steam engine, back in 1873, when the tunnel was made, and twice in the last year or so a would-be miner made a terrible mess of the flat, requiring many backpack loads of garbage to be hauled up and out. The sharp eyes of Ron Gould spotted another cache of garbage above the tunnel, half-hidden in the trees, from the last miner's camp. We dragged it down to the trail and left it for another day. Two backpack loads ought to do it.
On down the trail, the main North Fork canyon hove into view, fog and cloud clinging to the canyon rim, where snow still covered the ground, and some few snatches of fog remaining within the canyon. As the first large waterfall on Canyon Creek was approached, we saw that the creek was high enough to make the Leaper, a small waterfall to the side of the main fall, which plunges down a polished chute to a half-pothole and is flung out and up, making a nice arching water-rise, water-fall.
A hawk circled and soared above us as we entered upon the steeps of the trail, passing the remarkable Inner Gorge and the Big Waterfall, which speaks loudly but is never seen. Well below the Rockslide we took the faint trail right to the Big Waterfall and the Terraces, paying a visit to each in turn, before using the Lower Terraces Trail to return to the CCT proper. A few more minutes brought us down to the river, and a perch beside the last big waterfall on Canyon Creek, where we ate lunch, and bundled up a bit, as rain began to fall.
After lunch we ventured east on the Low Old Upriver Trail or LOUT, although hesitant to follow it past the rather dangerous section on a cliff. All day we had noticed how very slippery the rocks were, with no sun to dry them after recent storms. However, we girded our loins or whatever it is one does when facing such a hazard and were soon safely past, the main concern actually being our several dogs, two of which verged upon decrepitude. The other was a well-built youngster who had a happy habit of just knocking you out of her way, if she was in a hurry, on the trail.
The LOUT is rather faint in places and splits into multiple tracks, but we managed to hold the main trail at each split and eventually, after pitching up and down and up and down, with many fine views of the river, flowing high and clear and cold, below us, we reached the vicinity of Bogus Gully and began a zig-zag course right up the hillside, and after a climb of two hundred feet, reached the large bouldery area beside the gully, where a cache of mining tools exists. After a little break to recover our breath, we climbed the last hundred feet up to the High Old Upriver Trail, the HOUT, and followed it east to a very fine viewpoint.
Here one sees the North Fork, below, to the east and to the west, and the cliff I call The Eminence, or Sunset Point, right across the canyon. To the east, Giant Gap, flanked by Lovers Leap on the left, and the Pinnacle Ridge on the right, with Big West Spur hiding the lower part of the Gap, the heart of the Gap, where cliffs plunge almost vertically down to the river and its deep pools. We took a nice break and then walked the easy mile back to the CCT on the HOUT, which has an almost perfectly level course, as it originated not in the Gold Rush, like the LOUT, but in the 1890s, an artifact of the Giant Gap Survey. The Survey was a scheme to carry away the waters of the North Fork American, in a ditch and pipeline, to San Francisco. To demonstrate the feasibility of the project, men were hired on to not only survey the line of the canal through Giant Gap, but even blast out a tiny bench cut into the cliffs.
The net result is an almost-level trail, about three hundred feet above the river. One can follow it all the way past Big West Spur into the very heart of Giant Gap, with more and more outright rock-climbing required, and eventually, great tunnels appear in gigantic blades of rock, and a rather complicated route can be picked out, used by the Survey men themselves, which connects together the various level sections, where benches and tunnels were blasted from the cliffs, with sharp descents from and ascents over some very steep terrain.
Ron and I went all the way through, from Canyon Creek to Green Valley, in July. Towards Green Valley the disconnected vestiges of the Survey become even harder to follow and connect by side trails, and it works out well to hop along the bouldery banks of the river itself, until the Green Valley Trail (West) is reached.
Ron and Dale and I made the long slow trudge up and out, with occasional rain showers so light we were scarcely even dampened, but the CCT is only about a mile and a half long, so, soon enough we were at the truck, and, well, it was a fine day and a fine way to ring out the late great year, 2003.
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