Wednesday morning I met Catherine O'Riley for a ramble down to Euchre Bar, in search of garbage. With quite a few others we have been cleaning up garbage sites scattered up and down the North Fork American between Euchre Bar on the east and Canyon Creek on the west. Rumor had it that one of the larger sites lay hidden near Euchre Bar, and, as hope is entertained that a helicopter can be found soon to haul it all away, we needed to find and evaluate the thing.
The Euchre Bar Trail (EBT) is one of the more popular trails in Tahoe National Forest (TNF), within the Foresthill Ranger District. Despite its popularity, TNF does not regularly maintain the EBT, nor do TNF rangers ever patrol the area, except, perhaps, once in a blue moon. Hence miners and squatters and marijuana growers of every stripe have a free rein down there, and some of the more horrendous piles of garbage I have ever seen, grow unchecked from year to year, with new ones developing almost every year.
TNF is sympathetic to the problem and they cite budget constraints in excusing the complete absence of rangers and complete lack of trail maintenance. They do have time and money to manage an extensive OHV trail system over on the Foresthill Divide, near Sugar Pine Reservoir, China Wall, and Humbug Canyon, etc. The roar of these motorcycles and OHVs can be heard every summer and fall weekend, from all the way across the North Fork canyon, miles to the north. But that is only parenthetic.
From the Alta exit on I-80 one takes Casa Loma Road east and south to the trailhead at Iron Point. We continued past, driving down the Rawhide Mine Road to the locked gate, and then walking down the Lucky 3 Claim road to the North Fork of the North Fork American River (NFNFAR). Our destination was not far from the EBT itself, but approaching from this side, we had less than 1000 feet of elevation loss/gain, versus around 1800 feet on the EBT.
Incidentally, it would be wonderful if TNF could purchase the 40-acre parcel of the Lucky 3 Claim. The road-trail from dropping to the NFNFAR is of great recreational value. Of course, as often mentioned here, the Rawhide itself seems to be for sale, and like the Lucky 3, governs, as it were, public access to important trails, such as the Rawtooth, from the mine, up to the crest of Sawtooth Ridge. It too should be purchased by TNF.
The river was in shadow, running high and fast and cold, and The Sidewalks, lovely polished plane surfaces of Shoo Fly Complex metasediments, were all wet with dew and slippery. We picked our way downstream, around a rocky point, to the big mining ditch, and followed the Ditch Trail down to River Camp, the garbage site a few of us worked on last Halloween, preparing it for the helicopter. Then as now shade enveloped all, and a damp chill settled quickly into us. We noted that all the garbage bags we had used had developed holes, as tho clawed by bears, but the garbage has not yet been scattered at all.
Continuing southwest along the Ditch Trail, into the sunshine again, we looked for a trail climbing up and westward. Neither of us had ever seen this site before. We tried on one promising trail and wound along higher and higher, eventually striking an even better trail, which then seemed to end. However, above us we glimpsed some sort of flat or bench on the canyon wall, and investigating, found a lovely grove of Canyon Live Oak with talus fields lapping into the area from above. Here some 5-gallon plastic buckets and other marijuana cultivation paraphernalia appeared, and an odd old steel wire ran far up the steep slopes above us.
We retreated to the Ditch Trail, followed it farther down towards the Confluence of the NFNFAR and main North Fork, and found "the" trail to the garbage site.
The trail climbs steeply to a little flat 100 feet above the Ditch Trail, quite near the Confluence. Here we found a cubical cabin, perhaps eight feet on a side, all tightly wrapped in tarps. A faint odor of wood smoke told us someone had been there that very morning. A large pile of garbage, covered in still other tarps, was ten feet away from the cabin. The general appearance of the area was fairly neat.
A trail led away south and west towards the EBT, which could only have been a quarter-mile away, and would intersect it, I am sure, at the old cabin site on the EBT itself.
So, we found our garbage, with a squatter thrown in for good measure. This complicates the matter.
All in all, it was a pleasant hike, on a remarkably warm day for early February.
Showing posts with label Euchre Bar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Euchre Bar. Show all posts
Thursday, February 3, 2005
Sunday, October 31, 2004
Halloween Garbage Party
Ten in the morning of Halloween Day, Gay and I met Tom and Barbara Molloy, Dave Lawler, and Patrick Kavanaugh at Iron Point, for an expedition into the great canyon to clean up one of the nastiest garbage sites I have ever seen.
On the road to Iron Point, I saw the new house under construction on the 40-acre parcel above Iron Point. This parcel had had non-residential "Forest Production" zoning, which, under California law, is designed both to preserve open space and recreational opportunities for the general public, while affording the private land owner with property tax relief. The parcel is surrounded on three sides by Tahoe National Forest (TNF) lands, and touches the top of the Euchre Bar Trail, one of the most popular trails in TNF, giving access to the North Fork American Wild & Scenic River.
A prospective purchaser of the parcel applied for a Special Use Permit to construct a 2000-square-foot house on a manzanita-clad ridge crest overlooking the canyon and trailhead back in 2001, as I recall. She said she needed a house to "manage the timber" on the 40 acres. The Planning Department approved the permit. I was one of several people who wrote letters to oppose the Special Use Permit, and we expended $500 to appeal the decision. Our appeal was heard by the Planning Commission, who ruled in our favor, and withdrew the permit. The prospective purchaser hired an attorney, completed her purchase of the 40 acres, and appealed to the Board of Supervisors.
The BOS overturned the Planning Commission decision, and allowed the residential construction on the non-residential-zoned parcel. They were all in favor of it, more or less saying, "You want to bulldoze down the manzanita and plant pine trees on the steep slopes above Iron Point, and build a house overlooking the American River Canyon, a house visible from miles around? That's wonderful!"
It is the stated aim of the BOS to rename Placer County "Parcel County." In this I jest, of course, but only weakly.
The day was bright and clear and cool, and I myself had a sweater on as we started down the Euchre Bar Trail. Dave set a fast pace and I babbled about the strange distribution pattern of that strange conifer, Torreya californica, the California Nutmeg, or Stinking Yew, as we hiked along. This sharp-needled tree with its one-seeded, olive-like fruits, not held in cones at all, is found most typically in shady, cool, moist canyons, but, oddly, can also be seen on sun-blasted rocky slopes with thin soils, growing amidst Canyon Live Oaks and scrubby Bay Laurels. The genus Torreya dates from at least the Jurassic, was once widespread, and is now reduced to but a few species in small enclaves, scattered here and there around the world.
I noted that TNF does not maintain this popular trail, and that no water bars keep water from following the trail, and that this fall's storms have done more damage than I have seen in any one year since 1976. I suspect that illegal use of the trail by a gang of motorcyclists, over this past summer, exacerbated the lack of water bars, their tires cutting the trailbed. For a hundred yards at a time, or two hundred, or more, storm runoff follows right down the center of the trail, curving around switchbacks.
Hounds bayed across the canyon, as tho a bear had been treed; we could hear them most of the way down the trail. They seemed to be directly across the river from the base of the trail. They howled as we arrived, and howled as we left. Their owners were no doubt slamming down Budweisers up on Elliot Ranch Road, 2000 feet above the river and a mile or so south.
Perhaps a hundred yards past the old house site near the bottom of the trail, we broke hard left on a faint trail which leads onto an old mining ditch. This ditch took its waters from the North Fork of the North Fork, and seems to have served only the small hydraulic diggings at Euchre Bar itself. For many decades it has served as a trail leading up into the North Fork of the North Fork (NFNFAR), which joins the main North Fork just upstream from the Euchre Bar Trail.
In about a half mile we reached the garbage site. Here it seems that a cabin had been built, a hundred years ago or more, right in the line of the ditch; portions of its dry-laid stone fireplace and other stone work remain. Various lengths of black plastic pipe were scattered about. We had already accumulated a wheelbarrow, a foam mattress, and sundry other garbage before even reaching The Site.
The Site is on old terraces, likely built a century-and-a-half ago directly above a gravel bar beside the NFNFAR. Two motorcycles, various engines, parts of gold dredges, white PVC pipe and black plastic pipe, and an almost incredible amount of just plain junk, trash, garbage, littered a broad area.
A strange sort of basin or pool lined with rotting tarps had been made on the edge of the river; Patrick said it looked like a meth lab operation, tho I myself can't say why that would be. The tarps were anchored with many heavy boulders which had to be rolled aside before the slimy dripping shreds could be pulled free. That was quite a job in itself.
The five of us set to work and gathered the gigantic mess into a few main piles on the old terraces, which stand above high water levels, bagging up the small stuff. We worked hard for about four hours before wending our way slowly up and out of the tremendous canyon, quite lovely in the slanting golden rays of afternoon light. The NFNFAR had quite a respectable flow; we never even saw the main North Fork. The renowned Steve Hunter and a friend happened by on the old ditch trail, peered down at our ant-like industry, and passed by, wise enough to stay clear of a ton of nasty work.
The aim of all this was to ready the garbage for removal by a helicopter. We made a good job of it, but the very process of loading the helicopter's cargo net will itself be strenuous and time-consuming. One the miserable mess is gone, innumerable fragments of plastic, odd beer cans, pieces of rotten tarp, etc., can be gleaned from the forest floor and packed out.
I stayed behind for a time, tying off some of the garbage bags, discovering another foam mattress and carrying it up to our piles on the terraces, picking up beer cans from a thicket of poison oak. As I left, I met Steve and his friend Dan, who had been fly fishing and releasing their catch, up and down the NFNFAR. We chatted for a while before they went their way and I went mine.
The North Fork of the North Fork American well deserves Wild & Scenic River designation. A mile upstream from The Site is the old Rawhide Mine, where a small patch of private property blocks access to a historic public trail climbing to the crest of Sawtooth Ridge. Tahoe National Forest should purchase the Rawhide Mine, and clean up its own particular gigantic mess of garbage, which as it is now, is washed down the river during flood events. The NFNFAR is littered with Rawhide garbage all the way down to the North Fork, and, I would imagine, the main river has its own portion of junk washed down from this same source. So. Let's encourage TNF to buy the Rawhide, clean up the giant mess, and open up the old trail.
We reached the top of the trail around four o'clock. It had been a rather fine day down in the great canyon, as usual. I hope that somehow funds can be found to get a helicopter in there soon. The Site is a very pretty place, or will be, once the garbage is gone.
On the road to Iron Point, I saw the new house under construction on the 40-acre parcel above Iron Point. This parcel had had non-residential "Forest Production" zoning, which, under California law, is designed both to preserve open space and recreational opportunities for the general public, while affording the private land owner with property tax relief. The parcel is surrounded on three sides by Tahoe National Forest (TNF) lands, and touches the top of the Euchre Bar Trail, one of the most popular trails in TNF, giving access to the North Fork American Wild & Scenic River.
A prospective purchaser of the parcel applied for a Special Use Permit to construct a 2000-square-foot house on a manzanita-clad ridge crest overlooking the canyon and trailhead back in 2001, as I recall. She said she needed a house to "manage the timber" on the 40 acres. The Planning Department approved the permit. I was one of several people who wrote letters to oppose the Special Use Permit, and we expended $500 to appeal the decision. Our appeal was heard by the Planning Commission, who ruled in our favor, and withdrew the permit. The prospective purchaser hired an attorney, completed her purchase of the 40 acres, and appealed to the Board of Supervisors.
The BOS overturned the Planning Commission decision, and allowed the residential construction on the non-residential-zoned parcel. They were all in favor of it, more or less saying, "You want to bulldoze down the manzanita and plant pine trees on the steep slopes above Iron Point, and build a house overlooking the American River Canyon, a house visible from miles around? That's wonderful!"
It is the stated aim of the BOS to rename Placer County "Parcel County." In this I jest, of course, but only weakly.
The day was bright and clear and cool, and I myself had a sweater on as we started down the Euchre Bar Trail. Dave set a fast pace and I babbled about the strange distribution pattern of that strange conifer, Torreya californica, the California Nutmeg, or Stinking Yew, as we hiked along. This sharp-needled tree with its one-seeded, olive-like fruits, not held in cones at all, is found most typically in shady, cool, moist canyons, but, oddly, can also be seen on sun-blasted rocky slopes with thin soils, growing amidst Canyon Live Oaks and scrubby Bay Laurels. The genus Torreya dates from at least the Jurassic, was once widespread, and is now reduced to but a few species in small enclaves, scattered here and there around the world.
I noted that TNF does not maintain this popular trail, and that no water bars keep water from following the trail, and that this fall's storms have done more damage than I have seen in any one year since 1976. I suspect that illegal use of the trail by a gang of motorcyclists, over this past summer, exacerbated the lack of water bars, their tires cutting the trailbed. For a hundred yards at a time, or two hundred, or more, storm runoff follows right down the center of the trail, curving around switchbacks.
Hounds bayed across the canyon, as tho a bear had been treed; we could hear them most of the way down the trail. They seemed to be directly across the river from the base of the trail. They howled as we arrived, and howled as we left. Their owners were no doubt slamming down Budweisers up on Elliot Ranch Road, 2000 feet above the river and a mile or so south.
Perhaps a hundred yards past the old house site near the bottom of the trail, we broke hard left on a faint trail which leads onto an old mining ditch. This ditch took its waters from the North Fork of the North Fork, and seems to have served only the small hydraulic diggings at Euchre Bar itself. For many decades it has served as a trail leading up into the North Fork of the North Fork (NFNFAR), which joins the main North Fork just upstream from the Euchre Bar Trail.
In about a half mile we reached the garbage site. Here it seems that a cabin had been built, a hundred years ago or more, right in the line of the ditch; portions of its dry-laid stone fireplace and other stone work remain. Various lengths of black plastic pipe were scattered about. We had already accumulated a wheelbarrow, a foam mattress, and sundry other garbage before even reaching The Site.
The Site is on old terraces, likely built a century-and-a-half ago directly above a gravel bar beside the NFNFAR. Two motorcycles, various engines, parts of gold dredges, white PVC pipe and black plastic pipe, and an almost incredible amount of just plain junk, trash, garbage, littered a broad area.
A strange sort of basin or pool lined with rotting tarps had been made on the edge of the river; Patrick said it looked like a meth lab operation, tho I myself can't say why that would be. The tarps were anchored with many heavy boulders which had to be rolled aside before the slimy dripping shreds could be pulled free. That was quite a job in itself.
The five of us set to work and gathered the gigantic mess into a few main piles on the old terraces, which stand above high water levels, bagging up the small stuff. We worked hard for about four hours before wending our way slowly up and out of the tremendous canyon, quite lovely in the slanting golden rays of afternoon light. The NFNFAR had quite a respectable flow; we never even saw the main North Fork. The renowned Steve Hunter and a friend happened by on the old ditch trail, peered down at our ant-like industry, and passed by, wise enough to stay clear of a ton of nasty work.
The aim of all this was to ready the garbage for removal by a helicopter. We made a good job of it, but the very process of loading the helicopter's cargo net will itself be strenuous and time-consuming. One the miserable mess is gone, innumerable fragments of plastic, odd beer cans, pieces of rotten tarp, etc., can be gleaned from the forest floor and packed out.
I stayed behind for a time, tying off some of the garbage bags, discovering another foam mattress and carrying it up to our piles on the terraces, picking up beer cans from a thicket of poison oak. As I left, I met Steve and his friend Dan, who had been fly fishing and releasing their catch, up and down the NFNFAR. We chatted for a while before they went their way and I went mine.
The North Fork of the North Fork American well deserves Wild & Scenic River designation. A mile upstream from The Site is the old Rawhide Mine, where a small patch of private property blocks access to a historic public trail climbing to the crest of Sawtooth Ridge. Tahoe National Forest should purchase the Rawhide Mine, and clean up its own particular gigantic mess of garbage, which as it is now, is washed down the river during flood events. The NFNFAR is littered with Rawhide garbage all the way down to the North Fork, and, I would imagine, the main river has its own portion of junk washed down from this same source. So. Let's encourage TNF to buy the Rawhide, clean up the giant mess, and open up the old trail.
We reached the top of the trail around four o'clock. It had been a rather fine day down in the great canyon, as usual. I hope that somehow funds can be found to get a helicopter in there soon. The Site is a very pretty place, or will be, once the garbage is gone.
Thursday, August 19, 2004
Euchre Gorge
Son Greg and I met Ron Gould, Catherine O'Riley, and Cindy the Masseuse Wednesday for a hike through Euchre Gorge, between Green Valley on the west and Euchre Bar on the east. From Euchre Bar, we planned to follow the High Ditch Trail up the North Fork of the North Fork to its end, and then rock-hop up the river to the Lucky 3 Claim, and follow the little road up to the Rawhide Mine gate, where we would leave one vehicle; thence back to the top of the Euchre Bar Trail, our point of beginning.
Ron and Catherine and I had made a concerted effort, over the past year, to trace the lines of two of Green Valley's largest mining ditches, through oceans of brush and poison oak. There is a High Ditch, which begins at a minor ravine at the east end of Green Valley, and runs all the way to The Pyramid, at the very west end of Green Valley; so it is roughly a mile in length. The other "big one" is the Green Valley Blue Gravel Mine (GVBGM) ditch, the line of which is cut into cliffs of gray marble at the east end of Green Valley; this ditch took its water from the south bank of the North Fork itself, well upstream from Euchre Bar, and crossed the river on a high wooden flume about half-way between the Bar and Green Valley. Its terminus is in the center of Green Valley.
The High Ditch is up at about 2050' elevation, the GVBGM at about 1950' elevation, while the North Fork itself is crossed by the 1800-foot contour in the middle of Green Valley. The GVBGM ditch is especially notable because it was the kernel of a plan to divert the waters of the North Fork into a canal, to supply the city of San Francisco, in the 1890s. R.L. Dunn, a mining engineer, was one of the principals, and hired on men to rough in the line of the proposed canal through Giant Gap, even driving two tunnels in the massive blades of cliffs below Lovers Leap. The whole project became known as the Giant Gap Survey. We just call it The Survey, and it makes a discontinuous trail all the way from Green Valley on the east, to Canyon Creek on the west, through Giant Gap itself.
We had explored The Survey time and again, and I named it the High Old Upriver Trail or HOUT, inasmuch as we almost always followed it east and upstream from its hidden intersection with the Canyon Creek Trail. But gradually it became clear that this little ledge hacked from the cliffs, with its strangely level course, was in fact that curious footnote to the history of the North Fork, the Giant Gap Survey.
Thus our explorations of the ditches of Green Valley were really a continuation of our earlier intense and recursive reconnaissance of The Survey, in and around Giant Gap. The Green Valley scouting had led us again and again to the Marble Cliffs, where the GVBGM ditch broke out of the Euchre Gorge into the Valley. And the time had come to dare to follow the deadly and tenuous track across those unforgiving cliffs.
10:30 in the morning, the sun bright, the day waxing hot and then hotter, found us at the top of the Euchre Bar Trail (EBT), and perhaps ten minutes' walk carried us down to near the 3000-foot contour, just before the main trail leaves the Iron Point ridge to switch back and forth through the oak woods down to the Bar. We turned onto the almost invisible Iron Point Trail, which forks away west, and dropped into the east end of Green Valley.
This Iron Point Trail (IPT) is not quite where it appears on the 7.5 minute Dutch Flat quadrangle, but then, neither is the main Euchre Bar Trail, in the switchback section. For quite a few years I didn't believe the IPT even existed, having tried and failed to find it both above and below. It is in middling bad shape and, as one makes the final descent into the gentle slopes of Green Valley, is difficult to follow in places, and splits into two trails.
Someone had tied many pieces of bright orange flagging to bushes and trees all along the Iron Point Trail, which we removed. What I consider to be the main (and older) trail in this last section levels out just exactly where Green Valley's High Ditch took its water from a certain ravine (tho one sees no sign of the ditch, across the ravine in thick forest). From there it is an easy ramble south through open oak woods to the Green Valley Blue Gravel Mine ditch.
We were all feeling the heat. I had been lopping brush all the way down the IPT and was dripping with sweat. However, now we would be following the GVBGM on its almost level line, which was quite a relief. We began to notice the rushing murmur of the North Fork.
The relief did not last long. The rather large ditch bore southeast towards the river, and the terrain became cliffier and cliffier. A certain ravine and spring are met, just where the marble begins, where one drops down slightly, and a short scramble is required to regain the line of the ditch, which suddenly is no more than a tiny ledge on a sheer cliff, and that ledge has annoying gaps and outward slants and narrow places.
Catherine gave me permission to describe her as "petrified." Howsoever, we all crossed the nasty section in good time, found one last patch of shade where the ledge broadened, and took a sustained break.
The crystal clear water of the North Fork was gathered into pools large and deep just below us, well, I should say, almost if not entirely 200 feet below us, and we could look across the length of Green Valley to Lovers Leap, and see, all to well, one of the houses where some cute young couple with their shiny SUVs decided to lord it over the North Fork canyon and all the rest of us. How charming, to have an address on Lovers Leap Road! How clever, to hire a bulldozer and any number of men with chainsaws, to clearcut the forest below their house, so as to see the river itself in Green Valley, and the Sierra crest at the head of the canyon!
Insufferable wretches.
Green Valley, where the North Fork canyon attains unusual width, and where thick accumulations of glacial outwash gravels dating to a series of glacial maxima over the past several hundred thousand years, were mined and mined and mined for gold--Green Valley is an artifact of the weak serpentine of the Melones Fault Zone. If one were to ask, what would the North Fork canyon look like, were it to cut a band of unusually weak rock, the answer would be, Green Valley. The serpentine might be, is often glibly considered to be, a portion of ocean-floor basalt, now turned up on edge. The right conditions of metamorphism will transform such iron-rich basalt into serpentine.
And if one were to ask, what would the canyon look like, were it to cut through a band of unusually tough and resistant rock, the answer would be, Giant Gap.
So a rare and great contrast is exhibited, between Green Valley on the east and Giant Gap on the west. Giant Gap is a cliff-bound gorge cut about 2300 feet deep into the massive metavolcanic rocks of the Calaveras Complex (ca. 200 m.y. old). The Melones serpentine is in faulted contact withe the Calaveras on the west, and in faulted contact with the Paleozoic (ca. 400 m.y.) Shoo Fly Complex on the east.
But it is more complicated than that, for a narrow band or zone of Mesozoic metasediments actually separates the serpentine from the Shoo Fly (also metasediments). And the Marble Cliffs are part of these metasediments, being beds of limestone, tilted up 90 degrees to vertical, striking north and south across the river. Lens-like shreds of serpentine are mixed into the Mesozoic metasediments, so that this troubling little zone of rocks just east of the Melones Fault Zone should likely be considered to be a tectonic melange within the multiply-stranded fault zone itself. Whether the melange represents scraps of sediments overlying the original ocean-floor basalt, I cannot say.
Having passed the narrow ledge section, we soon left the steep gray cliffs behind and turned the corner into the gorge proper. This whole section of the GVBGM ditch appears to have been a wooden flume; there is never a hint of a ditch dug down into the steep slopes. It made for a nice trail, tho. Canyon Live Oak, California Bay Laurel, Mock Orange, mostly small Douglas Fir, and Poison Oak were common, and had overwhelmed the ditch-trail in many places, so loppers came into play. We passed Sugarloaf Ravine, with is fine high waterfalls, across the canyon, and sometimes had fine views of deep pools below us in the Gorge.
I had made this same hike once in years past, well, actually, several times, but once I'd followed the ditch-trail all the way through from Euchre Bar to Green Valley, and I had a vague memory of a little "side" trail to the river, at the critical point where the GVBGM had crossed the North Fork on its high flume. I couldn't dredge up the details and began worrying that we would pass this side trail; for it is by no means trivial to make the 150-foot descent to the river from the ditch trail. The slopes are quite steep enough up by the ditch trail, and usually steepen into al-out cliffs closer to the river.
Fortunately Ron scouted ahead and quickly found our crucial side trail, which mirrors the general scheme of things by starting off steep, and then steepening further yet, and then following a steeply-pitching ledge down an outright cliff. It took a while to pick our way down this cliff, and one pair of loppers could not take the strain and attempted suicide, clattering desperately onto the unyielding rocks beside the river; but we retrieved them unharmed, and made a short boulder-hop upstream to a fine long pool, fording the river to a gravel bar veneered by sand, with a fire-ring, some little garbage, and, thankfully, a large patch of shade.
It did not take us long to get into the North Fork at last, and swim up and down the pool. The rocks beside the pool were interesting, vertical layers of metasediments; I could not tell for sure whether they were part of the Mesozoic tectonic melange, or the Shoo Fly, but, my money is on the Mesozoic melange. There was no outright marble, but thin layers of limy sediments were in the mix, sometimes beautifully folded.
This counted as a lunch break. We swam, or waded, gingerly, as the case was, and explored up and down the river. Eventually we had to saddle up and press on. A good boulder-hop led us through a kind of tunnel-gate between two huge boulders, and another sandy camp area was reached. From here a well-defined trail continues upstream to the bridge, briefly climbing to the level of the GVBGM but not holding that level.
We crossed the bridge and climbed a short distance, a few hundred yards at most, to the side trail to yet another ditch, certainly close enough to the level of the GVBGM, across the North Fork to the south, that cannot entirely discount the possibility that this ditch, too, supplied water to the GVBGM.
However, my sense has always been that this "High Ditch" ("high" because it is higher than the much lower ditch-line one sees blasted from the rocks on the north bank of the river, above the Euchre Bar bridge)--this High Ditch was built to supply water to the mines of Euchre Bar itself. But my sense could be wrong.
I must bring this account to an end, somehow.
We followed the High Ditch up the North Fork of the North Fork, past the appalling, garbage-strewn miners' camp, to its terminus, and found a shallow pool for some more swimming and another long break in the shade, before making the boulder-hop upstream to The Sidewalks, large planar masses of unequivocal Shoo Fly rocks flanking the river, leading us quickly to the Lucky 3 Claim.
Here some remarkable dry-laid stone walls bolster terraces, presumably an old house site, in the forest just above the river. Gold-dredging equipment and other junk it scattered around. And here a terribly steep little road climbs to the main Rawhide Road. After another rest, we made the climb, and sweat seemed to almost explode from my face, and drip onto the trail in front of me, as I trudged along.
At least we were in the shade.
We hit the Rawhide Road about a half-mile below the gate, and soon enough, tho it seemed to take forever, we reached Ron's truck, and made the jolting drive back up to Iron Point.
We had made a kind of circumambulation of Green Valley's East Knoll and of Iron Point, a hike with occasional river scrambles of perhaps five miles, on a very hot August day. We did have nice strong breezes for most of the hike, and very little trouble with insects.
It is not easy to make the hike between Euchre Bar and Green Valley, on the ditch trail, the GVBGM trail; in particular, the Marble Cliffs are dangerous, and not just anyone's cup of tea. To follow the river itself would require a fair amount of swimming and one heck of a lot of boulder-hopping. I did that once, years ago.
It was another great day on both the North Fork, and the North Fork of the North Fork.
Ron and Catherine and I had made a concerted effort, over the past year, to trace the lines of two of Green Valley's largest mining ditches, through oceans of brush and poison oak. There is a High Ditch, which begins at a minor ravine at the east end of Green Valley, and runs all the way to The Pyramid, at the very west end of Green Valley; so it is roughly a mile in length. The other "big one" is the Green Valley Blue Gravel Mine (GVBGM) ditch, the line of which is cut into cliffs of gray marble at the east end of Green Valley; this ditch took its water from the south bank of the North Fork itself, well upstream from Euchre Bar, and crossed the river on a high wooden flume about half-way between the Bar and Green Valley. Its terminus is in the center of Green Valley.
The High Ditch is up at about 2050' elevation, the GVBGM at about 1950' elevation, while the North Fork itself is crossed by the 1800-foot contour in the middle of Green Valley. The GVBGM ditch is especially notable because it was the kernel of a plan to divert the waters of the North Fork into a canal, to supply the city of San Francisco, in the 1890s. R.L. Dunn, a mining engineer, was one of the principals, and hired on men to rough in the line of the proposed canal through Giant Gap, even driving two tunnels in the massive blades of cliffs below Lovers Leap. The whole project became known as the Giant Gap Survey. We just call it The Survey, and it makes a discontinuous trail all the way from Green Valley on the east, to Canyon Creek on the west, through Giant Gap itself.
We had explored The Survey time and again, and I named it the High Old Upriver Trail or HOUT, inasmuch as we almost always followed it east and upstream from its hidden intersection with the Canyon Creek Trail. But gradually it became clear that this little ledge hacked from the cliffs, with its strangely level course, was in fact that curious footnote to the history of the North Fork, the Giant Gap Survey.
Thus our explorations of the ditches of Green Valley were really a continuation of our earlier intense and recursive reconnaissance of The Survey, in and around Giant Gap. The Green Valley scouting had led us again and again to the Marble Cliffs, where the GVBGM ditch broke out of the Euchre Gorge into the Valley. And the time had come to dare to follow the deadly and tenuous track across those unforgiving cliffs.
10:30 in the morning, the sun bright, the day waxing hot and then hotter, found us at the top of the Euchre Bar Trail (EBT), and perhaps ten minutes' walk carried us down to near the 3000-foot contour, just before the main trail leaves the Iron Point ridge to switch back and forth through the oak woods down to the Bar. We turned onto the almost invisible Iron Point Trail, which forks away west, and dropped into the east end of Green Valley.
This Iron Point Trail (IPT) is not quite where it appears on the 7.5 minute Dutch Flat quadrangle, but then, neither is the main Euchre Bar Trail, in the switchback section. For quite a few years I didn't believe the IPT even existed, having tried and failed to find it both above and below. It is in middling bad shape and, as one makes the final descent into the gentle slopes of Green Valley, is difficult to follow in places, and splits into two trails.
Someone had tied many pieces of bright orange flagging to bushes and trees all along the Iron Point Trail, which we removed. What I consider to be the main (and older) trail in this last section levels out just exactly where Green Valley's High Ditch took its water from a certain ravine (tho one sees no sign of the ditch, across the ravine in thick forest). From there it is an easy ramble south through open oak woods to the Green Valley Blue Gravel Mine ditch.
We were all feeling the heat. I had been lopping brush all the way down the IPT and was dripping with sweat. However, now we would be following the GVBGM on its almost level line, which was quite a relief. We began to notice the rushing murmur of the North Fork.
The relief did not last long. The rather large ditch bore southeast towards the river, and the terrain became cliffier and cliffier. A certain ravine and spring are met, just where the marble begins, where one drops down slightly, and a short scramble is required to regain the line of the ditch, which suddenly is no more than a tiny ledge on a sheer cliff, and that ledge has annoying gaps and outward slants and narrow places.
Catherine gave me permission to describe her as "petrified." Howsoever, we all crossed the nasty section in good time, found one last patch of shade where the ledge broadened, and took a sustained break.
The crystal clear water of the North Fork was gathered into pools large and deep just below us, well, I should say, almost if not entirely 200 feet below us, and we could look across the length of Green Valley to Lovers Leap, and see, all to well, one of the houses where some cute young couple with their shiny SUVs decided to lord it over the North Fork canyon and all the rest of us. How charming, to have an address on Lovers Leap Road! How clever, to hire a bulldozer and any number of men with chainsaws, to clearcut the forest below their house, so as to see the river itself in Green Valley, and the Sierra crest at the head of the canyon!
Insufferable wretches.
Green Valley, where the North Fork canyon attains unusual width, and where thick accumulations of glacial outwash gravels dating to a series of glacial maxima over the past several hundred thousand years, were mined and mined and mined for gold--Green Valley is an artifact of the weak serpentine of the Melones Fault Zone. If one were to ask, what would the North Fork canyon look like, were it to cut a band of unusually weak rock, the answer would be, Green Valley. The serpentine might be, is often glibly considered to be, a portion of ocean-floor basalt, now turned up on edge. The right conditions of metamorphism will transform such iron-rich basalt into serpentine.
And if one were to ask, what would the canyon look like, were it to cut through a band of unusually tough and resistant rock, the answer would be, Giant Gap.
So a rare and great contrast is exhibited, between Green Valley on the east and Giant Gap on the west. Giant Gap is a cliff-bound gorge cut about 2300 feet deep into the massive metavolcanic rocks of the Calaveras Complex (ca. 200 m.y. old). The Melones serpentine is in faulted contact withe the Calaveras on the west, and in faulted contact with the Paleozoic (ca. 400 m.y.) Shoo Fly Complex on the east.
But it is more complicated than that, for a narrow band or zone of Mesozoic metasediments actually separates the serpentine from the Shoo Fly (also metasediments). And the Marble Cliffs are part of these metasediments, being beds of limestone, tilted up 90 degrees to vertical, striking north and south across the river. Lens-like shreds of serpentine are mixed into the Mesozoic metasediments, so that this troubling little zone of rocks just east of the Melones Fault Zone should likely be considered to be a tectonic melange within the multiply-stranded fault zone itself. Whether the melange represents scraps of sediments overlying the original ocean-floor basalt, I cannot say.
Having passed the narrow ledge section, we soon left the steep gray cliffs behind and turned the corner into the gorge proper. This whole section of the GVBGM ditch appears to have been a wooden flume; there is never a hint of a ditch dug down into the steep slopes. It made for a nice trail, tho. Canyon Live Oak, California Bay Laurel, Mock Orange, mostly small Douglas Fir, and Poison Oak were common, and had overwhelmed the ditch-trail in many places, so loppers came into play. We passed Sugarloaf Ravine, with is fine high waterfalls, across the canyon, and sometimes had fine views of deep pools below us in the Gorge.
I had made this same hike once in years past, well, actually, several times, but once I'd followed the ditch-trail all the way through from Euchre Bar to Green Valley, and I had a vague memory of a little "side" trail to the river, at the critical point where the GVBGM had crossed the North Fork on its high flume. I couldn't dredge up the details and began worrying that we would pass this side trail; for it is by no means trivial to make the 150-foot descent to the river from the ditch trail. The slopes are quite steep enough up by the ditch trail, and usually steepen into al-out cliffs closer to the river.
Fortunately Ron scouted ahead and quickly found our crucial side trail, which mirrors the general scheme of things by starting off steep, and then steepening further yet, and then following a steeply-pitching ledge down an outright cliff. It took a while to pick our way down this cliff, and one pair of loppers could not take the strain and attempted suicide, clattering desperately onto the unyielding rocks beside the river; but we retrieved them unharmed, and made a short boulder-hop upstream to a fine long pool, fording the river to a gravel bar veneered by sand, with a fire-ring, some little garbage, and, thankfully, a large patch of shade.
It did not take us long to get into the North Fork at last, and swim up and down the pool. The rocks beside the pool were interesting, vertical layers of metasediments; I could not tell for sure whether they were part of the Mesozoic tectonic melange, or the Shoo Fly, but, my money is on the Mesozoic melange. There was no outright marble, but thin layers of limy sediments were in the mix, sometimes beautifully folded.
This counted as a lunch break. We swam, or waded, gingerly, as the case was, and explored up and down the river. Eventually we had to saddle up and press on. A good boulder-hop led us through a kind of tunnel-gate between two huge boulders, and another sandy camp area was reached. From here a well-defined trail continues upstream to the bridge, briefly climbing to the level of the GVBGM but not holding that level.
We crossed the bridge and climbed a short distance, a few hundred yards at most, to the side trail to yet another ditch, certainly close enough to the level of the GVBGM, across the North Fork to the south, that cannot entirely discount the possibility that this ditch, too, supplied water to the GVBGM.
However, my sense has always been that this "High Ditch" ("high" because it is higher than the much lower ditch-line one sees blasted from the rocks on the north bank of the river, above the Euchre Bar bridge)--this High Ditch was built to supply water to the mines of Euchre Bar itself. But my sense could be wrong.
I must bring this account to an end, somehow.
We followed the High Ditch up the North Fork of the North Fork, past the appalling, garbage-strewn miners' camp, to its terminus, and found a shallow pool for some more swimming and another long break in the shade, before making the boulder-hop upstream to The Sidewalks, large planar masses of unequivocal Shoo Fly rocks flanking the river, leading us quickly to the Lucky 3 Claim.
Here some remarkable dry-laid stone walls bolster terraces, presumably an old house site, in the forest just above the river. Gold-dredging equipment and other junk it scattered around. And here a terribly steep little road climbs to the main Rawhide Road. After another rest, we made the climb, and sweat seemed to almost explode from my face, and drip onto the trail in front of me, as I trudged along.
At least we were in the shade.
We hit the Rawhide Road about a half-mile below the gate, and soon enough, tho it seemed to take forever, we reached Ron's truck, and made the jolting drive back up to Iron Point.
We had made a kind of circumambulation of Green Valley's East Knoll and of Iron Point, a hike with occasional river scrambles of perhaps five miles, on a very hot August day. We did have nice strong breezes for most of the hike, and very little trouble with insects.
It is not easy to make the hike between Euchre Bar and Green Valley, on the ditch trail, the GVBGM trail; in particular, the Marble Cliffs are dangerous, and not just anyone's cup of tea. To follow the river itself would require a fair amount of swimming and one heck of a lot of boulder-hopping. I did that once, years ago.
It was another great day on both the North Fork, and the North Fork of the North Fork.
Sunday, April 4, 2004
The High Ditch Trail
Saturday morning, Catherine O'Riley and Dave Lawler kindly picked me up and we drove to the Euchre Bar Trail (EBT), on our way to the High Ditch Trail (HDT) leading away upcanyon from the Bar, where we would meet Julie and her sister, Kasa, and Ron Gould.
Sun bright and sky blue, clear and cool, shrubs a-flower, and work to be done. We carried loppers and small saws. I struck off fast down the trail, GPS unit in hand, with propitious satellites favoring high accuracy, aiming to pause at the invisible trail to East Green Valley, and scout its route. It leaves the EBT at the top of the switchback section, where a grove of Kellogg's Black Oak (Quercus kelloggii) adorns the ridge crest. I recorded a waypoint on the GPS (I was very close to the 3080' contour) and slung my pack off.
This trail is always hard to find, and where the Dutch Flat quadrangle would have it running straight, it actually switches sharply back and forth through oak woods, and these switchbacks easily become lost in the accumulating litter of leaves and branches, and are even guarded aggressively by poison oak. I kicked leaves and rotten old limbs around, threw bigger branches off the trail, lopped poison oak, and then, hearing voices above, left, content to have restored not the bed of the trail itself, but at least its line, over the first few switchbacks.
More work is needed. This trail drops down to the pass between Green Valley's East Knoll (a fine viewpoint) and the main canyon wall, and then descends a broad, poison-oak-infested ravine to the Valley itself. It course becomes again confused in these lower reaches.
I rejoined Dave and Catherine and, GPS unit tracking my course, immediately left them again on an intermittent jog down the EBT. I found that it is less than one mile down to the house site near the base of the trail, at the 2200' contour, and covered the distance in fourteen minutes, or a little less. The true course of the trail is perhaps a sixth of a mile north from where depicted on the Dutch Flat quadrangle. I recorded a waypoint and continued towards the bridge.
A hundred yards or so down the EBT brings one to the trail forking left to the High Ditch Trail. I put my pack down and did some serious lopping. Hundreds of small conifers are sprouting up in an area largely given to Canyon Live Oak over recent centuries; and now, without wildifire, about to become a crowded stand of Douglas Fir with a weakening Canyon Live Oak understory. I felt little remorse at felling some dozens of these coniferous weeds. A distinct trail connects the EBT to the HDT alog the shortest possible route, and in a few minutes, with Catherine and Dave and I all lopping away, we had this old trail exposed to view and easily passable.
The HDT itself has benefitted from lopping, much, recently, by Julie, and we added our mite while making good time on the easy, nearly level ditch. This ditch was blasted out from cliffs in places; it is rather large, and yet appears only to have brought water to the diggings at Euchre Bar itself. It must have cost someone, or more likely some company of someones, quite dearly in its day. I wonder whether their golden harvest ever settled that expense. The HDT very nearly coincides with the 2000' contour.
About a quarter mile on the HDT brings one to the confluence of the NFAR, and the NFNFAR. The latter stream suddenly appears directly beside the HDT, and near 100' below, blending an emerald crystalline clarity with foaming white rapids. In general, the HDT traverses steep slopes studded with rocky outcrops and draped with a fine old gnarled forest of Canyon Live Oak (Quercus chrysolepsis).
We caught up with Kasa and Julie just past a springy area where trees have fallen and blocked the HDT. Julie found a way to lop through masses of shrubs and avoid the trees, and she and Kasa had just then roughed in an excellent path, through what had been a major obstacle.
A half mile in on the HDT brings one to a major garbage site, a gravel bar gold miner's camp with all kinds of gear and garbage and strange debris. The magnitude of the problem is shocking and sickening. One despairs of every carrying all that mess out. A helicopter?
A well-defined old trail drops down the steeps above the HDT to this bar.
But we forged ahead, towards the upstream end of the ditch, and soon arrived at a long broad pool roiled by a small waterfall, and found sunny boulders beside the pool, and had lunch. The ditch was still all of 25 feet above the river, but just there a rocky eminence jutted into the canyon, making sheer cliffs along the line of the ditch, and no trace at all of a blasted ledge, or any continuation.
Julie and Kasa left us soon after Ron Gould (who had hiked to Humbug Canyon) joined us.
Ouzels zoomed up and down the river, chattering. Sawtooth Ridge soared 2000' above us, across the NFNFAR.
We decided to scout upstream, having heard from the good Steve Hunter that a road dropped down to the NFNFAR about a quarter mile up, from the Rawhide Mine Road. Perhaps we could pull off a loop. Turning the base of the cliff through dense willows and alders and over large boulders, we broke free onto a long and broad expanse of bedrock. The up-ended quasi-slates of the Shoo Fly Complex had been planed nearly flat, like a giant's sidewalk, and we could just stroll along and admire the view. A marvelous little stretch of river. A giant boulder of white quartz marked the beginning of the Giants' Sidewalk.
It looks much as tho the High Ditch took its water from the NFNFAR in the Giants' Sidewalk area, and carried it in a wooden flume down around Cliff Corner to where the ditch itself began.
Passing a side canyon, really a ravine, we saw an old bridge, with massive dry-laid stone abutments, a little ways above. We climbed to inspect it and found Steve's road, a curious little thing, just barely too narrow for a jeep, and often bolstered with old-looking dry-laid stone walls, along the downhill side. The bridge itself is made from three tree trunks, decked with two-by-fours nailed across. Following the road down, to the north, we reached some minor miner shacks, in a fairyland of dry-laid stone retaining walls, strangely perfect and made with an artistic flair, all overhung and hidden within the live oak forest. We dropped our packs and explored up and down and sideways.
Several gold dredges were in the area, and we found evidence that this is a mining claim on Tahoe National Forest lands. We were near a section line, as I found later, when I plotted my GPS track data on the Dutch Flat quadrangle, on my computer, at home. A rope and cable spanned the river just upstream, with a kind of trolley hanging from pulleys. Glacial outwash deposits across the river had been mined for gold in days long gone by.
After a time we hit the road and followed the narrow little thing on up the canyon wall, occasionally observing traces of an older mule trail, and in less than half a mile reached the Rawhide road, the last few hundred yards looking like nothing more than someone's aimless exercise with a bulldozer. We had stumbled upon a historic trail, or trail-and-road, one I had really never heard of, tho long suspecting the aimless bulldozing must really have aimed at the river.
Afternoon shadows lengthened and sheltered us from the sun as we slowly climbed the rough road. I observed little patches of glacial outwash, or maybe re-worked till, in two locations during our climb, at elevations 2400 and 3000 feet. The river below is at about 2000 feet.
Soon enough we passed the Rawhide gate and then another half mile brought us to our cars. On the way out, Catherine and Dave and I stopped at Casa Loma and walked down to the railroad tracks to enjoy the view of Giant Gap in the afternoon. It is one of the greatest views in California.
All in all, a very nice day, and I must say, that High Ditch Trail is a real winner. Thanks Julie!
Sun bright and sky blue, clear and cool, shrubs a-flower, and work to be done. We carried loppers and small saws. I struck off fast down the trail, GPS unit in hand, with propitious satellites favoring high accuracy, aiming to pause at the invisible trail to East Green Valley, and scout its route. It leaves the EBT at the top of the switchback section, where a grove of Kellogg's Black Oak (Quercus kelloggii) adorns the ridge crest. I recorded a waypoint on the GPS (I was very close to the 3080' contour) and slung my pack off.
This trail is always hard to find, and where the Dutch Flat quadrangle would have it running straight, it actually switches sharply back and forth through oak woods, and these switchbacks easily become lost in the accumulating litter of leaves and branches, and are even guarded aggressively by poison oak. I kicked leaves and rotten old limbs around, threw bigger branches off the trail, lopped poison oak, and then, hearing voices above, left, content to have restored not the bed of the trail itself, but at least its line, over the first few switchbacks.
More work is needed. This trail drops down to the pass between Green Valley's East Knoll (a fine viewpoint) and the main canyon wall, and then descends a broad, poison-oak-infested ravine to the Valley itself. It course becomes again confused in these lower reaches.
I rejoined Dave and Catherine and, GPS unit tracking my course, immediately left them again on an intermittent jog down the EBT. I found that it is less than one mile down to the house site near the base of the trail, at the 2200' contour, and covered the distance in fourteen minutes, or a little less. The true course of the trail is perhaps a sixth of a mile north from where depicted on the Dutch Flat quadrangle. I recorded a waypoint and continued towards the bridge.
A hundred yards or so down the EBT brings one to the trail forking left to the High Ditch Trail. I put my pack down and did some serious lopping. Hundreds of small conifers are sprouting up in an area largely given to Canyon Live Oak over recent centuries; and now, without wildifire, about to become a crowded stand of Douglas Fir with a weakening Canyon Live Oak understory. I felt little remorse at felling some dozens of these coniferous weeds. A distinct trail connects the EBT to the HDT alog the shortest possible route, and in a few minutes, with Catherine and Dave and I all lopping away, we had this old trail exposed to view and easily passable.
The HDT itself has benefitted from lopping, much, recently, by Julie, and we added our mite while making good time on the easy, nearly level ditch. This ditch was blasted out from cliffs in places; it is rather large, and yet appears only to have brought water to the diggings at Euchre Bar itself. It must have cost someone, or more likely some company of someones, quite dearly in its day. I wonder whether their golden harvest ever settled that expense. The HDT very nearly coincides with the 2000' contour.
About a quarter mile on the HDT brings one to the confluence of the NFAR, and the NFNFAR. The latter stream suddenly appears directly beside the HDT, and near 100' below, blending an emerald crystalline clarity with foaming white rapids. In general, the HDT traverses steep slopes studded with rocky outcrops and draped with a fine old gnarled forest of Canyon Live Oak (Quercus chrysolepsis).
We caught up with Kasa and Julie just past a springy area where trees have fallen and blocked the HDT. Julie found a way to lop through masses of shrubs and avoid the trees, and she and Kasa had just then roughed in an excellent path, through what had been a major obstacle.
A half mile in on the HDT brings one to a major garbage site, a gravel bar gold miner's camp with all kinds of gear and garbage and strange debris. The magnitude of the problem is shocking and sickening. One despairs of every carrying all that mess out. A helicopter?
A well-defined old trail drops down the steeps above the HDT to this bar.
But we forged ahead, towards the upstream end of the ditch, and soon arrived at a long broad pool roiled by a small waterfall, and found sunny boulders beside the pool, and had lunch. The ditch was still all of 25 feet above the river, but just there a rocky eminence jutted into the canyon, making sheer cliffs along the line of the ditch, and no trace at all of a blasted ledge, or any continuation.
Julie and Kasa left us soon after Ron Gould (who had hiked to Humbug Canyon) joined us.
Ouzels zoomed up and down the river, chattering. Sawtooth Ridge soared 2000' above us, across the NFNFAR.
We decided to scout upstream, having heard from the good Steve Hunter that a road dropped down to the NFNFAR about a quarter mile up, from the Rawhide Mine Road. Perhaps we could pull off a loop. Turning the base of the cliff through dense willows and alders and over large boulders, we broke free onto a long and broad expanse of bedrock. The up-ended quasi-slates of the Shoo Fly Complex had been planed nearly flat, like a giant's sidewalk, and we could just stroll along and admire the view. A marvelous little stretch of river. A giant boulder of white quartz marked the beginning of the Giants' Sidewalk.
It looks much as tho the High Ditch took its water from the NFNFAR in the Giants' Sidewalk area, and carried it in a wooden flume down around Cliff Corner to where the ditch itself began.
Passing a side canyon, really a ravine, we saw an old bridge, with massive dry-laid stone abutments, a little ways above. We climbed to inspect it and found Steve's road, a curious little thing, just barely too narrow for a jeep, and often bolstered with old-looking dry-laid stone walls, along the downhill side. The bridge itself is made from three tree trunks, decked with two-by-fours nailed across. Following the road down, to the north, we reached some minor miner shacks, in a fairyland of dry-laid stone retaining walls, strangely perfect and made with an artistic flair, all overhung and hidden within the live oak forest. We dropped our packs and explored up and down and sideways.
Several gold dredges were in the area, and we found evidence that this is a mining claim on Tahoe National Forest lands. We were near a section line, as I found later, when I plotted my GPS track data on the Dutch Flat quadrangle, on my computer, at home. A rope and cable spanned the river just upstream, with a kind of trolley hanging from pulleys. Glacial outwash deposits across the river had been mined for gold in days long gone by.
After a time we hit the road and followed the narrow little thing on up the canyon wall, occasionally observing traces of an older mule trail, and in less than half a mile reached the Rawhide road, the last few hundred yards looking like nothing more than someone's aimless exercise with a bulldozer. We had stumbled upon a historic trail, or trail-and-road, one I had really never heard of, tho long suspecting the aimless bulldozing must really have aimed at the river.
Afternoon shadows lengthened and sheltered us from the sun as we slowly climbed the rough road. I observed little patches of glacial outwash, or maybe re-worked till, in two locations during our climb, at elevations 2400 and 3000 feet. The river below is at about 2000 feet.
Soon enough we passed the Rawhide gate and then another half mile brought us to our cars. On the way out, Catherine and Dave and I stopped at Casa Loma and walked down to the railroad tracks to enjoy the view of Giant Gap in the afternoon. It is one of the greatest views in California.
All in all, a very nice day, and I must say, that High Ditch Trail is a real winner. Thanks Julie!
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