West of Canyon Creek

This morning I at last returned to the North Fork canyon, south of Gold Run, to verify that, yes, the HOUT exists west of Canyon Creek.

The day dawned cool and cloudy and in an instant I suddenly felt compelled to hike, not just those mild little mile-or-two hikes on old railroad grades here on Moody Ridge, which I have enjoyed in the past week, but a real hike, meaning, a blissful tripping descent to the North Fork, followed by some form of torture climbing back up and out.

So at eight a.m. I began a mild rush, stuffing my pack with a quart of water, a camera, and a sandwich made of two slices of wheat bread and two slices of Swiss cheese. Inspired cuisine!

I drove to the Dutch Flat exit on I-80, dropped down past the Highway Patrol, and used my usual not-so-secret entrance to the Gold Run Diggings (i.e., drive around the gate). Some new "No Trespassing" signs had been nailed up nearby; but they did not affect traction, so my Subie easily crawled around the steep little sidehill, and I was on the Main Diggings Road.

Driving west and south, I was dreaming, not really paying attention, when a woman suddenly appeared on the road ahead, and seemed to wish to flag me down.

It was Martha Arashi, once proprietor of the gas station at the DF exit. I often have seen her husband, Mr. Arashi, a Japanese native who loves to hike in the Diggings with his many dogs. Mr. Arashi keeps quite a variety of dogs, large and small; when I see him in the Diggings, there is always this elaborate dance we perform, without any variation: Mr. Arashi waves wildly for me to stop, shouting incoherently, and pointing to his smallest dog.

The smallest dog, it seems, is extremely, perhaps unprecedentedly liable to being crushed beneath an automobile. None of the other dogs are at risk. But for this one dog, Mr. Arashi imperiously stops my car, and only when it is safely nestled in his aged arms, am I allowed to proceed.

Today was different only in that Mrs. Arashi warned me that Mr. Arashi was ahead, and would expect me to stop so he could rescue his tiny dog from the impending destruction.

Eventually I was past the both of them and their many dogs, and in a few minutes, parked at the Canyon Creek Trail and set out walking.

I wrote a month or so back that we would have some kind of wondrous explosion of wildflowers, when the storms finally stopped. I saw many flowers today, but no more than usual, and perhaps less than I should have seen, at this time of year. Up in Potato Ravine it was Pacific Dogwood, Sierra Plum, Wood Rose, California Hazelnut; but as I dropped from the Indiana Hill Ditch towards Canyon Creek, more flowers began to appear, lush sprays of Alum Root, many Larkspur, and others.

The real flower display was on down the trail and across the bridge; then Indian Pink, Common Madia, Wild Hyacinth, Wallflower, Kaweah River Scorpionweed, Yerba Santa, and Bush Monkeyflower, began to appear in force.

The Monkeyflowers are spectacular, one small bush holding a hundred blooms, and so extravagantly large and luscious that such a bush can be seen at a distance of a quarter-mile, tho only two feet in diameter. There is something exotic and orchid-like about their light salmon blossoms.

By nine in the morning I was at the Terraces, well down below the Big Waterfall; these camping terraces were made in the 1870s, about, for the miners who tended the huge sluice boxes lining Canyon Creek. The terraces are supported by very impressive dry-laid stone walls, made from slabs of metavolcanic rock, often weighing in the hundreds of pounds. Lush little lawns invite one to just take a nap or something. But I scanned the cliffs across Canyon Creek. From the Terraces, no sign of the HOUT can be seen. Not only that, the area is rife with waterfalls and the creek is walled with sheer cliffs, near the Terraces. There would be no easy transition onto the HOUT.

I used the old miners' trail from the Terraces down to the creek, which trail ends in some neat stone stairs, and found an easy crossing upstream. Canyon Creek has dropped considerably, most all the snow having melted in its upper basin. Picking my way across cliffs, I climbed slowly while also making distance south, trying to find a traverse across a very perilous section. I kept getting forced higher, and sweat streamed down my face and soaked my shirt.

Finally a chance offered to advance farther south, and soon enough I struck the HOUT. It showed signs of having climbed from down near the creek (I was two hundred feet above, at least), but that seemed an impossibility; still, I will check that part, someday. Today I simply followed the HOUT south and west.

It was interesting to see this century-old trail, actually the line of the Giant Gap Canal, never constructed but surveyed, and "grade broken." To the east of Canyon Creek, it had seen some human use, since 1901 or whatever, and someone had actually lopped the brush back in places, twenty or thirty years ago.

Here, there was no sign of any human use whatsoever. Bears, yes; humans, no. No lopped branches. But it was wonderful, quite easy going, and again and again I was pleased and even astounded by the fine views I had of Canyon Creek and the North Fork and Giant Gap. All of the trails were visible: the main CCT, the Big Waterfall Trail, Upper and Lower Terraces trails, and even the HOUT itself, well east, at various points, including Bogus Spur.

It was much of the same character as the usual HOUT, east of Canyon Creek: a narrow path, a foot or two wide, bolstered here and there by dry-laid stone walls, and with some signs of blasting, at rock outcrops.

There were some lovely violet native onion flowers at one fine cliff-etched patch of trail where I paused to rest and take photographs.

The North Fork was flowing high and fast and a little murky, betokening the rapidity of the snowmelt in this warm weather. I could look straight down to the confluence of Canyon Creek and the North Fork, and see the last waterfall from above.

I was near the base of Diving Board Ridge, and in just the area where I felt, from past and distant observations, that a route might be found to the summit. I saw what seemed surely an old human trail leading up and away from the HOUT, in the most favorably open region. But I advanced and turned the corner of the main eastern spur of the Diving Board.

Immediately, passing from east-facing slopes to south-facing slopes, I was met with a tangle of buckbrush and poison oak. I spent ten minutes lopping until the sweat must have been squirting from my pores--it felt that way--just to get past one bad buckbrush threaded with a million poison oak stems and a trillion lush poison oak leaves. Finally, I could step past the thing. But to no avail: another mass of buckbrush waited just beyond.

So. Stopped by buckbrush. It has happened before.

I wandered back along the HOUT, looking for but not seeing the human trail which had seemed so obvious on the way out. The clouds were thinning and real sunlight began to warm things up. I decided I had seen enough, and at a likely-looking spot, began the climb to the Diving Board.

Soon I struck what must have been the very human trail I had noted before, and followed it up on easy grades.

Of course there were any number of game trails in the area as well. In such circumstances, if the human trail switches back, one is liable to lose it altogether; for game trails often emanate from switchbacks, and one is fooled, and follows the game trail instead of taking the hard left or right which is required to hold the line of the human trail. One bush, too, is enough to hide the true trail.

So, what with one bush and another, I lost the thing, but had easy going up and over various rock thrones and outcrops, and struck the human trail again, higher; lost it again; and then struck that very human trail which is a continuation of the lumber slide coming down the crest of Diving Board, and therefore I was only a few yards from the summit, where I rested in the shade and ate half a horrible sandwich.

I stripped my sweat-soaked shirt off and scarcely bothered to whisk the mosquitos away. The orange biting "deer flies" began to pester me, tho, so I started the climb up and out, shirtless, wet and yet not shiny, for every bush seemed to attached cobwebs and leaves and debris of all kinds to my torso, and I became increasingly dotted with gritty little things. I meditated on these gritty things as I climbed: spider legs, to be sure, but mostly just some kind of dirt.

At the Indiana Hill Ditch I crossed into the Diggings through a little pass onto a secret trail, which is not so secret now, with "quad" tracks leading right to the pass itself.

Soon I was walking through the great big huge pit of the Gold Run Ditch and Mining Company, four hundred feet deep and half a mile across, from which who knows how many cubic yards of gravel were washed into the tunnels and sluice boxes, to thunder away into Canyon Creek, and more sluice boxes, and at last, the North Fork.

The sun was now fully out, and the Diggings seemed an amorphous glare of light and heat, so I kept my head down and walked steadily along, soon climbing back up into Potato Ravine Pass and my car. It was noon. A short but sweet trip into the great canyon had verified that, yes, grade had been broken on the Giant Gap Canal, west of Canyon Creek, and, moreover, there seemed to be an old human trail connecting this new part of the HOUT, to the Diving Board itself. The course of this supposed trail is not entirely clear, yet.

Such was a morning near Gold Run.

Of Moss and Men

Over recent weeks I have made quite a number of visits to the Gold Run Diggings, the Canyon Creek Trail (CCT), and the HOUT (High Old Upriver Trail). On several occasions I have hiked from the end of Garrett Road to the Secret World and beyond, to the Indiana Hill Ditch. There are rarely fine views into the North Fork canyon and Giant Gap from that area. Since the late 1970s I have dreamed of a "Giant Gap" trail connecting Lovers Leap to the Gold Run Diggings at the end of Garrett. The idea arose during hikes along the canyon rim west of Lovers Leap, where a small mining ditch makes an almost level trail. From this old ditch one can look directly down to the river in Giant Gap, and across the canyon to the Pinnacles, and southwest to Iowa Hill.

Unfortunately, there are about ten private parcels along the rim of the canyon west of Lovers Leap. These parcels account for but a small fraction of the distance between the Leap and Garrett, the rest being almost all BLM land, but several of the parcels drape across the line of the ditch. Suppose the parcels were all for sale and the BLM had a ton of money: then buy them, buy them all, even at absurdly high prices, they'd be more than worth it.

For, these are "view" parcels, and it should be regarded as a certainty that some or even all of them will sprout the usual monuments to egotism, large houses with large fire breaks, the fire breaks allowing the houses the widest and deepest of views. Right now, this part of the canyon rim, best seen from near Iowa Hill and Roach Hill and Giant Gap Ridge, is still of a perfectly natural appearance. Were we to have any respect for our heritage and for future generations, we would make sure that this view remained perfectly natural.

The remarkable views of Giant Gap from near the head of the Pickering Bar Trail could also be impacted by construction on some of these view parcels.

The Indiana Hill Ditch was completed on September 13, 1852. It would, I always thought, make for a wonderful trail. It could be a part of the Giant Gap Trail. Its terminus is a small mining reservoir perched above the Secret World. Following the ditch east from there, it bends around to the north. It is infested with heavy brush. For years my friends and I kept a small path open along the ditch; for a time, it was the best way to get in to the Canyon Creek Trail. Since the upper end of the CCT has been opened to Potato Ravine, the ditch has not been needed. The bushes have grown and closed our narrow gaps. Recently, I have made a more careful investigation of the ditch. I find that the berm is broken down in many places, and that, even if it were cleared of brush, it would not be in good shape for much use as a trail. It is of sufficient historical importance, and scenic and recreational value, to deserve special care. With some work, it could be stabilized for use as a foot trail.

Howsoever, it is a wonder. From a certain point along the ditch, one can look directly down Canyon Creek to its confluence with the North Fork. I was there last Wednesday, after days of sustained heavy rainstorms, and Canyon Creek was a raging roaring river in its own right. I could see the creek itself over much of the reach from just below the Big Waterfall to the North Fork. Amazing!

Several species of early-blooming wildflowers have appeared. The first blooms are always near The Terraces, one of the camps used by the men who used to work the sluice boxes in Canyon Creek, in the 1870s. This camp site was undoubtedly selected for its warm microclimate. I have often seen California Milkmaids in bloom there in early January. This year, what with the coldness of the weather, the Milkmaids appeared a week or so later than usual.

At Gorge Point on the Canyon Creek Trail, Biscuit Root and Brewer's Rock Cress are now flowering. In the meantime, dozens of Milkmaids have appeared along the lower reaches of the CCT. And on the HOUT, last Saturday, I saw my first Blue Dicks of the season, along with a few Biscuit Roots and some really small guys I didn't recognize.

I used the Paleobotanist Trail, from the Bluffs off Garrett Road, to reach the CCT. This adds nearly a mile, and makes a hike on the HOUT a fairly long affair. Canyon Creek had settled into a medium to medium-high flow, enough to make The Leaper, a waterfall which eagerly rises before falling into its own little chasm, rather bold and noisy. In fact, the sound of the waterfalls along the CCT was everywhere quite loud; various hissings, thunderings, and low, almost cyclic bass-drum boomings reverberating from within the Inner Gorge.

A mile east on the HOUT carries one past Bogus Gully to a fine viewpoint. The North Fork swirls in emerald and white a couple hundred feet below, while Giant Gap frames the eastern sky. Just a few yards beyond this viewpoint is another, similar, but with the whole stretch of the North Fork up to Big West Spur in view. Awesome.

Rain showers had come and gone all day, and as the clouds seemed to gather and darken, I retreated. Wondering whether I might find some short-cut up to a higher point on the CCT, I left the HOUT early and followed a deer trail up. Soon enough I was scrambling across rock outcrops and ducking under oak and manzanita.

The canyon wall there faces south, and catches a lot of sun, and has much exposed rock. Woody vegetation is somewhat sparse, dominated by Canyon Live Oak, Digger Pine, and various brushy species, like White Manzanita, Toyon, Buckbrush, Mountain Mahogany, and Silktassel. There are many grassy areas, and many mossy areas, which last present an interesting subject in themselves.

There is a species of coarse moss--I think it is a type of club moss, but may be mistaken--which colonizes many slopes. It knits together fine material which passes for soil, and in places, this sheath of coarse moss covers talus slides (elsewhere it covers solid rock). Hidden from our view are underground galleries, where mice and other rodents have their little dens, as do snakes.

To what extent does the nitrogen from these animals' excrement fertilize and sustain the sheathing masses of moss?

This moss--when I say it knits its quasi-soil together, I mean, it knits it *very tightly together*, so that a shovel would have trouble cutting it, and if one tore away at it, it would come up in chunks.

One sees at first glance that these moss-sheaths, somehow, some way, are terraced, like so many miniature rice paddies. Small areas of mineral soil, a few inches or a foot across, lie perfectly flat, held up by walls of moss. How do these areas arise? Why are they free of moss?

At times, looking over a moss-sheath, the quasi-soil bound by the moss seems much as though it had flowed into position, or been built up like travertine around a hot spring.

I am tempted to believe that it literally *has* flowed into position, and *has* been built up "like travertine." I believe these moss-sheaths may be thousands of years old, and that they are indeed constantly fertilized by excrements, but that, perhaps, it is wildfires which are most critical to their development.

For, a good wildfire will leave deposits of ashes on the steep slopes, and these will be mobilized by rain storms, and work their way down the slopes. At the same time, the thin soils on these steep slopes will become exposed to higher-than-ordinary rates of erosion after wildfires, and the soils too will wash downwards.

In the meantime, whatever moss colonies exist, having, let's say, survived the fire (because they are in an especially rocky, untreed, unshrubbed area)--these moss colonies tend to trap and slow down the sediments and ashes. So the mossy areas expand. Slowly.

So far as the little bare-soiled mini-terraces in the moss-fields: could these represent the traffic of animals of all sorts, over the long term? Does a deer or a bear or a fox or a bobcat or a human tend to step in some certain places, and those certain places become moss-terraces? Maybe.

On Saturday, while struggling along on my supposed short-cut, I came to a neat little cliff, all sheathed in moss, with a clump of poison oak leaning out over the top. It was the easiest way to continue on my short-cut. As I debated which sequence of moss-terraces to use for my hand- and toe-holds, I saw one sloping moss-terrace--an oddity--right at the base of the cliff. I realized, suddenly, that this one barren spot was exactly where bears, for who knows how long, hundreds, thousands of years, have made their first step onto the cliff from the ground below.

Soon enough I was at the top of the little cliff, and ducked my head and bulled through the poison oak, and angled up and west, up and west, and reached some really fine cliffy viewpoints, just before crossing a rocky ridge to the Canyon Creek Trail. The last few hundred yards were really rough going, and could never make any kind of short-cut to the HOUT. Perhaps a lower line might work instead.

So, I have been out in sun and storm, watched flowers gradually come into bloom, listened to waterfalls, enjoyed many fine views, and pondered moss-travertine deposits. And last Saturday, I found the Paleobotanist Trail blocked by fallen trees in two places, and this morning, carried my saw through the dripping forest at The Bluffs and on down the trail, and cut through the trees, rolling the logs away.

It is clear that Spring is on its way, and I hear, from a bird-watching friend, that hundreds of robins, and hawks of many kinds, and eagles, have been seen migrating upslope and northeast, in the canyon down near Auburn.

Visit to Green Valley; field trips afoot

Saturday morning, on the last day of January, 2004, Catherine O'Riley, Joe Varady, and I met to make a visit to Green Valley. High clouds obscured the sun and a chill inspired us all to wear our long sleeves on the downward reach of the old trail.

Green Valley was one of the great Gold Rush mining camps of the upper North Fork, perhaps *the* great mining camp of them all, as its population is set at fully 2000 people by multiple sources from the 1850s. It was a distinct Mining District, and had its own Recorder, and even after most of the people left, significant mining continued down into the 20th century itself.

There was never a road. Trails graded for loaded mules led down from both sides of the canyon. It is a descent of something more than 2000 feet in elevation, from over 4000 feet on the canyon rim, to the river, at 1800 feet. There were stores; a hotel; undoubtedly, gambling halls or dens, be they in tents or log cabins. The Chinese were active in Green Valley for decades, and in 1854 the whites resolved to expel these Celestials, these Sons of the Flowery Kingdom, for they had made the great mistake to striking it silly rich. The China Claim, as it was called, yielded full $100,000 of the royal metal in the summer of 1853. It was a river claim.

A broad belt of serpentine extends far to the north and south from where it has been cut by the North Fork, at Green Valley. This is the serpentine of the Melones Fault Zone, one of the principal old faults of the Sierra, and poorly understood by geologists. A long narrow belt of ultramafic rock, often altered to serpentine, lies along the Zone, striking north-south. It is sometimes called the Feather River Peridotite. It is weaker than the rocks east or west of the Zone, this ultramafic rock. All the various main canyons cross it, and usually its relative weakness, as a rock, is revealed in the relative wideness of the canyons which cut it. And so in Green Valley, where the North Fork canyon is about three miles across, over the serpentine, but only one mile across, and half a mile deep, in the massive Calaveras Complex rocks of Giant Gap, just to the west.

Serpentine is somewhat poisonous to plants, and some species will simply not tolerate it. For instance, Ponderosa Pine and Kelloggs Black Oak both stay rather strictly away from the serpentine. Hence if you see either of these species in Green Valley, you know that, whatever parent material the soils there have developed from, it is likely *not* serpentine. This is especially true of the north, south-facing side of the canyon, where soils tend to be thin and poorly-developed.

In Green Valley there is a conspicuous forest of Ponderosa Pine which runs up to around 2200' in elevation, and at the Hayden Hill Mine there is a knoll capped with Kelloggs Black Oak, at 2400'. These groves mark the presence of extensive deposits of glacial outwash sediments. The outwash deposits were mined heavily, and there are several to many more or less small hydraulic mines in Green Valley. Some have drain tunnels.

As we entered the pine forest at 2200', we took the West Trail and then immediately stayed right again on the High West Trail. This leads to the river at the site of a suspension bridge, right below the high banks of the Green Valley Blue Gravel Mine. We, however, struck off into the woods to visit The Pyramid, a serpentine knoll rising above the west end of Green Valley, elevation 2277', and blessed with good sun and great views.

There is one easy way to gain the ridge the knoll lives on, but I always forget this easy way, and end up thrashing through the brush. So it was this time. Eventually it will become fixed in my mind that just exactly where some marijuana growers left a horrible pile of garbage, years and years ago, one can walk quite easily over to the High West Trail.

We took the way-less-traveled and fought with massive old bushes until at last the summit was reached and a welcome patch of sun bade us rest. The day had improved tremendously, the clouds were mostly all gone, and the great winter view of Giant Gap, so full of shadows, lay before us. The Pinnacles seemed adorned with a cluster of starry wisps of cirrus clouds, a complex of comets which paused their headlong rush to stop and examine these strange blades and spires of rock.

I told the story of Dr. Wallace Halsey, and the Christian Brotherhood, and the idea that aliens--yes, aliens, my friends!--aliens had again and again visited Earth and instructed the poor humans, and taught us to build pyramids, and did all this long ago, long before our archeologists would dare to guess; and that there are two and only two Ancient Pyramids in California; and one pyramid is in the Owens Valley, as is only right; and the other ... the other, is in Green Valley. This knoll was pointed out to me, by a member of the Brotherhood, many years ago, as the Pyramid itself.

It is true that the sun-setting light of the winter solstice just kisses this knoll, but to my eye it is a natural artifact of the bedrock topography of Green Valley, a knoll among several knolls, which all seem to hint at long-vanished meanders of the North Fork, when the glacial outwash sediments had built up into a floodplain.

We then explored around the summit area and found signs that a trail had been cleared through heavy brush to the place a *very* long time ago (the aliens, again?), andt the trail even seemed to continue down to the south. We dared not follow it, for my experience has been that brush of an even denser weave and tangle awaits in that direction. Instead, we retreated north, took the easy way to the High West Trail, and soon enough were at the river, the cold cold water surging along in the shade, and Lovers Leap all full of sun rising 2400' above us, just to the west.

On the way up and out we visited Pyramid Camp, which has its own intricately routed little side trail, and is on the flat surface of a glacial outwash terrace, about 200' above the river, near The Pyramid. Here too a giant mass of garbage needs to be gathered up and hauled away. The camp is quite near the top of the hydraulic mining banks, and in several places very good views can be had of the river, the canyon, Giant Gap, and Lovers Leap.

The sun was lowering and so we began the long slog up and out, reaching the canyon rim just before sunset. It takes wisely slow hikers about an hour and a half to climb out of Green Valley, with a couple rests along the way.

Catherine O'Riley and I propose that we-all make a series of cleanup trips to Green Valley. There are four main garbage sites I know of. Two are near the Pyramid, one is near the hotel site in central Green Valley, and the fourth is somewhat farther east.

There is quite a bit of trail work which might be done, too. It is a strenuous hike, in and out of the deep canyon, and carrying garbage up that long trail makes it that much worse.

Saturdays are probably best for suiting the maximal number of schedules. I am of a mind to say, rain cancels. Next Saturday is out, or already scheduled, in that BLM archeologist James Barnes is coming up to Gold Run to take a look at the deteriorating Little Stone Cabin in the Secret World mining pit. Those interested in seeing the Secret World, and possibly, visiting the Diving Board, with its great views of Canyon Creek, Giant Gap, and Pickering Bar, should meet at the Gold Run exit off eastbound I-80, 10:00 a.m., February 7th. At the exit's stop sign, make a hard right onto Magra Road and park immediately on the right, near the historical monument.

The hike to the Secret World is easy; the Diving Board is difficult.