Helicopters in Giant Gap

A year or so ago I found that it was impossible to convince the Placer County Sherif's department that it should avoid Giant Gap with its helicopters, inasmuch as both Peregrine Falcons and Golden Eagles were actively nesting. The Sheriff's department seemed to think I was from Outer Space; what I asked was absurd.

Several times this spring the Sheriff helicopter has flown through Giant Gap.

Yesterday I received an email from Jan Cutts, District Ranger of the American River Ranger District, Tahoe National Forest (TNF), at Foresthill. Jan wrote:

"I want to let you know that in the next day or so there will be a helicopter operating in the North Fork American River drainage east of Giant Gap to remove trash from the Green Valley area. We have worked with our biologist regarding concerns with impacts to the Peregrine falcon in the Giant Gap area, and will be working with the helicopter to keep it as far away from the area as possible."

This was good news. I called Jan immediately and asked, which mess of garbage would they clean up? Were they going after all the garbage sites, or one, or what?

For years I have urged TNF to bring a helicopter in to the Euchre Bar and Green Valley areas, where huge and horrible accumulations of garbage exist, beyond, really, the capacity of hikers to simply carry up and out. I sent maps showing all these locations. My friends and I would volunteer to help pack it up for the helicopter cargo nets. However, there was never enough money in the TNF budget.

Well. Jan replied she did not know just what garbage site was being cleaned up, but that surely, any garbage taken out, whatsoever, was a good thing. I agreed, but wondered whether we could not expand the cleanup to include that especially horrid site, above Euchre Bar, on the North Fork of the North Fork of the American.

She advised me to contact Tom Madrigal of TNF, at the Foresthill office, and I immediately called, and left a message, but did not hear back.

Today, as advertised, a helicopter arrived in Green Valley. They appeared to be working on what I call Mexican Marijuana Growers' Camp #1, along the High Ditch, towards the east end of Green Valley. I could hear the thunder of the helicopter in the distance, grabbed my binoculars, and ran out to a cliff-top from which I can see much of Green Valley.

To my amazement, after spending quite a time in the east end of Green Valley, out of my view, the helicopter rose slowly westward, without any cargo net, and flew right through Giant Gap, perhaps 500 feet above the river, which is about as bad as it can get, so far as the nests of the falcons and eagles.

Needless to say, I was not pleased. I believe it was a National Guard helicopter. I would not be at all surprised if this garbage cleanup occurred under the auspices of the Drug Enforcement Agency, replete with special grants from the Bureau of Homeland Security, or whatever the blasted thing is called. For nothing happens nowadays without grants. Employees of one agency Coordinate Their Efforts with employees of some other agency, and this wonderful "coordination" could only happen thanks to a grant. It is the debacle of Hurricane Katrina, dragged out to an impossible degree, under an infinite recursion.

The Bears of Giant Gap

One thing or another kept me trapped indoors and off the trails for most of recent weeks. A little weather here and there--it snowed here at my place as recently as last Wednesday evening--and the exigencies of schools and children.

Friday morning I met Ron Gould at the Dutch Flat exit and we contrived to drive into the Gold Run Diggings and parked at the top of the Canyon Creek Trail. Our objective was the HOUT: the HOUT has many "problem" sections, where the original almost-level line of the Giant Gap Canal has been lost, so that game and humans alike have been forced up or down (almost always, down), until whatever obstacle is passed.

The "obstacles" are often patches of gnarled, rock-hard, half-dead buckbrush interlaced with poison oak. We wanted to take a closer look at one such section, about three-quarters of a mile up from the Canyon Creek Trail.

The Giant Gap Canal was never built. It would have carried water from the North Fork to San Francisco, via a series of ditches, tunnels, and pipelines. The most difficult section of the work was in the awesome gorge of Giant Gap. So, to demonstrate the feasibility of the project, men were hired to "break grade" through the Gap, and they even began work on two of the tunnels.

Fortunately the project never advanced very far. Work stopped around 1900, and it is passing strange that some of the clear heart sugar pine 4X4's are still there in the Gap, a century later, protected from wildfires by the cliffy terrain. These 4X4's seem to have been used to make catwalks across cliffs, and such-like purposes.

If anyone ever sets eyes on one of these 4X4's it means they have nerves of steel. They are only found in the very heart of Giant Gap, in the midst of the steepest cliffs, where the HOUT degenerates into something, almost nothing, the ghost of a dream of a trail which scarcely ever was.

And yet, there it is.

As only makes sense, the men breaking grade used the line of the proposed canal as a trail to gain access to their work. So they built small dry-laid stone walls at many locations, to bolster the path. It looks as tho they had several camps during the year or two work was in progress: in Green Valley; at Canyon Creek; right in the middle of Giant Gap itself, near one of the tunnels; and, likely enough, near the North Fork, just downstream from Big West Spur.

It only makes sense that they were not too concerned to hold the ideal line of the canal across difficult, cliffy areas; after all, when it came time to actually build the canal, a maelstrom of blasting would erase everything they had done to break the grade. So in cliffy areas the HOUT often wanders a bit off-line, and you can see that they built their little stone walls nonetheless, for it was essential to have easy access to the work.

The flowers are now far too many to name, not that I know them all anyway, and the peak bloom is still weeks away. Pacific Dogwoods are in full bloom along the Indiana Hill Ditch on the upper CCT, and we saw the first few salmon-pink blossoms of our local Bush Monkeyflower. Tufted Poppies by the hundreds, lupines and clovers of several species, the first of the Mock Orange, the many thousands of Blue Dicks. The day was warming rapidly and I felt a little overheated, wearing blue jeans. We hit the HOUT and pushed up the canyon, amazed by the flowers, the river roaring and sparkling below, clear as clear can be. Some kayakers appeared, on their way to Mineral Bar from Euchre Bar. And the HOUT was suddenly adorned with large and rather fresh piles of bear poop, in the classic spring fashion, no seeds or berries, much grassy fibers, and almost black.

So we began to wonder whether we might walk right up on the well-fed creature.

We reached our problem section and scouted the area well. It looked as though the original line of the HOUT could be restored rather easily, so we forged on and beyond, passing Big West Gully and crossing steep open slopes crowded with blue bush lupine. The North Fork stretched away west on a nearly straight line before entering a sequence of interlacing spur ridges at Canyon Creek. To our amazement mosquitos were out, which is a bit unusual in such high and rocky and sunny terrain. It is not just a good flower year, apparently, but also a good mosquito year, and I already know all too well it is a good year for ticks.

Too little hiking has left me old and decrepit and as we crossed those sun-baked west-facing slopes I felt strangely weak.

Quite near the steep patch of bush lupine is the Bear Bed, a cute little nest surrounded by multiple trunks of a Canyon Live Oak. It is not impossible that these many trunks stump-sprouted after the original tree was cut down, during the breaking of the grade a century or so ago. Canyon Live Oaks grow quite slowly, for the most part. The Bear Bed has been used a lot in recent weeks, and is almost guarded or defended by amazing masses of poop.

Ron and I think that one of the four tunnels proposed as part of the Giant Gap Canal would have been cut directly through Big West Spur, thus avoiding a long section of steep cliffs where it is almost inconceivable that a canal could have been blasted out. At any rate the HOUT suddenly climbs away from the ideal grade and circles around the end of Big West Spur on a high line, winding in and out of a series of small ravines separated by major spurs of rock. We finally turned the last corner and reached one of the more amazing of all the fine viewpoints along the HOUT, nearly 400 feet above the river, and less than 100 feet away on the horizontal. It looks as tho one could jump right in. Lovers Leap is in full view to the east, and some of the waterfalls of Lovers Leap Ravine, and portions of the HOUT itself are visible, towards Onion Point.

Yet another pile of poop showed that our mystery bear had recently used the HOUT to enter Giant Gap. Ten years ago I doubted that bears would have much to do in a place like that, so full of cliffs; but again and again I see both bears and their sign, in the steepest parts of this amazingly narrow gorge.

When I go there I feel like a real stud. For a bear, it's probably nothing; ho hum, a cliff. Any yellowjacket nests to plunder?

The sun had crossed into the western sky and the embrace of deepening shadows was not welcome for long, as a stiff breeze was running up the canyon. We retreated to the first rock blade west, and sunshine, and rested a good rest, so that I began to feel myself again.

On the way back out we paused to scout another "problem" section on Big West Spur itself, and discovered an improved line for one short reach of the old trail.

We rested again above the Land of Blue Bush Lupines and were amazed to see a duck of some kind standing in the exact center of the river, a few hundred feet below, on a large rock, which looked entirely submerged to the naked eye, but under binoculars seemed to reach the surface, albeit barely. It was probably a Common Merganser, the most-frequently seen species of duck on the North Fork.

The shadows began to cover more and more of the canyon wall west of us as we finally settled into the return, and after we left Big West Spur the hike was pretty much all in the shade.

Between Bogus Gully and the Canyon Creek Trail we finally met the elusive bear whose pungent sign had marked so much of the trail. It was resting beneath a Canyon Live Oak a few feet above the HOUT, and as I happened to be in the lead, it fell to me to almost bump right into the thing, after turning a sharp blind corner. The bear and I were about equally shocked. It was a lovely reddish bear, at least a two-year-old, and only a little less than full-grown, fat and well-rounded. It scrambled up a ravine while I fell back around the corner to tell Ron, hoping it would not disappear before he had a chance to see it. But he was too far back, so I returned only in time to see it making zig-zags up some steep slopes well above me. It was interesting that it only used the direct upward line to make the first fifty yards and get above some intervening scrub oaks; there, it felt safe enough to switch back and forth up the canyon wall, just as we humans would do if we climbed such an area.

There's not much more to tell. A slow slog up the steep trail. From time to time we had seen some rather robust black caterpillars, with an impressive halo of red hairs radiating away from their bodies, and a funny kind of Mohawk-style crest of longer white hairs down the middle of their backs. We saw some more of these punk Mohawk caterpillars on the climb. The Leaper is much diminished but still in excellent form, better even than when the creek is higher--more focused, as though a fire-hose were hidden in the top of a cliff. Such a strange waterfall it is. One can't see the water flowing to the top of the falls, just a jet of white arcing up and out before crashing into a vertical wall six or eight feet away.

We reached the top around 6:30 and despite the strange lassitude and weakness which afflicted us both out on Big West Spur--I had had the strongest desire to just take a long nap--it had been a great day in the great canyon.

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.

Flowers and Falls

Thursday morning I met Catherine O'Riley for a visit to Canyon Creek and Giant Gap. Wednesday's showers had tapered off and almost ended at sunset, although the sky still brooded in masses of clouds, with a south wind aloft, and occasional shafts of sunlight draped across the forested landscape. The several inches of snow at my place translated into no snow at all in Gold Run, and as we tromped down a road into the Diggings, we essayed to meander across hill and dale, leaving the road for a little wilderness of old sluice cuts, ancient manzanita, and quartz cobbles. This was a more direct line towards The Canyon, cutting off a northerly bight in the road.

Water was everywhere in the Diggings. The drastic rains of Tuesday afternoon had brought Canyon Creek up higher by far than at any time over this rainy season, over all this past fall and winter. I had seen, earlier Thursday, that Canyon Creek was at roughly half the flow of Tuesday. Still high and fast, and as we reached the trailhead in Potato Ravine, we could hear the creek roaring in the distance. This is unusual.

We began to see many flowers as the trail dropped away from the Indiana Hill Ditch: Houndstongues and Shooting Stars, all beaten down and in disarray after the torrential rains. Reaching the Old Wagon Road, we saw that the creek was perhaps a mite higher than anytime earlier this year. It was running fairly clear, loud and brash and strong.

Reaching the little bridge, we found that it had (somehow!) survived being overswept by Canyon Creek, presumably on Tuesday, when the North Fork itself jumped up to 29000 cubic feet per second, near Auburn. Driftwood was still floating in little pools a foot above the level of the bridge. The tiny span of twelve feet had not budged an inch.

Continuing, The Leaper hove into view, an overcharged tumult of whitewater beating against a cliff. The main waterfall was impressive, and a third fall had appeared between it and The Leaper. The other main channel, a few feet away, was dry, but looked as if it had formed a fourth waterfall, during Tuesday's high water.

At Gorge Point the spectacular views into the chasmatic Inner Gorge were all framed in masses of flowers, mainly Biscuit Root, yellow-flowered of the Carrot Family, but with some of the early-blooming species of Larkspur mixed in, and many Blue Dicks, of the Lily Family. We began to see a hundred Blue Dicks at a time, which had luxuriated into a tall, leggy full bloom in the recent warm weather, only to be smashed down by the storms.

Now they were lifting themselves slowly into the light, all laden with the dew and rain of the night and day before. We ourselves began to enjoy some sunshine, and clothes went from backs to packs. We took the cross-country route down quasi-cliffs to the base of the Big Waterfall, a route which has become known to a number of people, and will need some care to remain passable, especially in the clay section, where a patch of old hydraulic mining clay clings to the side of a narrow ridge.

The Big Waterfall doubles up in high flows, and was in fine form, the second (new) channel making a more direct descent down the roughly 120 feet from top to bottom.

Spray billowed out explosively and filled the cauldron-like basin of cliffs and overhangs almost surrounding the falls. It is such an amazing place.

This part of Canyon Creek was operated as a "tailings claim" in the 1870s, and was fitted with huge sluice boxes. For a time this patented claim, all of a mile long, and which contains nearly the entire Canyon Creek Trail, was owned by one W.H. Kinder. Later title passed to the Gold Run Ditch & Mining Co., and still later, to James Stewart. Now it is part of the 800 acres for sale in the Gold Run Diggings.

Often the quantity of tailings overwhelmed the capacities of the giant sluice boxes, and piled up deeper and deeper, while gangs of Chinese laborers shoveled madly to try to restore flow in the boxes themselves. It is strange to think of them working their 12-hour shifts, 24 hours a day, away down in that awesome gorge, with boulders careening over the waterfalls, and mist filling the air, and muddy tailings filling the creek ... .

Iron spikes driven into the cliffs fully fifty feet above the creek suggest that the tailings themselves piled up that high from time to time, and almost strangely there are tiny masses of tailings wedged into some of the cracks in these cliffs, far above the creek, to this day. The spikes may have anchored sluice boxes set into a higher position once the main boxes had been irremedially buried, over the short term. And there was gold in them there tailings. Once they reached the North Fork, all chance of processing them further, and extracting more gold, was lost.

The Big Waterfall Trail took us down to the Terraces which we swept past and made for the HOUT, pausing to photograph some bush lupines along Lower Terraces Trail.

There are many flowers along the HOUT, including the exceptional bloom of the Blue Dicks, the Biscuit Root everywhere too, but suddenly we saw Tufted Poppies and two other species of Lupine, one, the Harlequin Lupine, notable with its oddly fat leaflets and its yellow and purple flowers. There were any number of other species in bloom; Brewer's Monkeyflower, always astounding with its magenta floral tube and freckled yellow throat-patches; and the vine I call Virgin's Bower but which seems to be more often called Chaparral Clematis or Pipestem Clematis, was in full bloom out on Bogus Spur (the spur ridge dropping from Bogus Point, on Moody Ridge, 2000 feet above us).

Overall, the canyon was breathtakingly beautiful under swirling clouds, the river high and mighty and mostly white, the rain-dark cliffs scored with long bright stripes of cascades and falls, fresh snow across the way on Giant Gap Ridge, and moss and ferns and meadows and flowers everywhere.

There is an unusual bloom underway, with much more to come. The warmth of this winter season brought early-blooming California Milkmaids and Brewer's Rock Cress into flower in December, weeks earlier than usual. This will be one of those years when one must wade through the flowers on the Canyon Creek Trail. Not yet; but in May ... .

Beyond Bogus Spur a steep meadow is crossed by the HOUT, ever so faintly. We stopped there and took off our packs.

Catherine went off in search of the umbrella and water bottle which had gone missing during her pack's exciting spinning plunge down the canyon wall a couple weeks ago. I amused myself by following the "true" line of the HOUT in an area where a use-trail, game-trail thread has become the HOUT by default, the true line of this High Old Upriver Trail being lost in the woods above.

This trail follows the line of a large canal which was never built, although preliminary surveying work and some blasting was done, a little over a century ago. What remains is the ghost of a trail; one could scarcely call it a "real" trail, but it does exist, and it follows an almost level line almost all the way into Giant Gap.

I had to pick up my daughter after school, so we left earlier than might have been nice. Catherine had found her water bottle, but no umbrella. It must have been flung artfully to one side, I suppose, when her pack leapt over an especially tall shrub, on that memorable March day. She remarked that the weather forecast had been, 'chance of showers', and here we were, in a kind of secret Yosemite, waterfalls every which way, flowers up and flowers down, the sun shining benevolently--and there were no showers, and we were dry, and we were warm, and it was just our luck.

Almost immediately it began to rain lightly. To the south, near Iowa Hill, a regular shower seemed in progress, but here, one could almost count the raindrops as they fell. They were actually a welcome cooling mechanism as we trudged up the steeper parts of the Canyon Creek Trail. As we neared Waterfall View, I turned to look back and saw a goodly beam of sunshine reaching the river near Canyon Creek, half a mile south. Yet raindrops were falling on my head. This could only mean, a rainbow, so we broke back south on the Blasted Digger Trail and reached that remarkable overlook of Giant Gap and points upcountry in a few minutes, eagerly scanning the great gorge for arcs and colors.

There were some cute little snow showers falling into pure sunshine up on Sawtooth Ridge, maybe ten miles east, near Helester Point, like shimmering white curtains hanging from the sky, but no arc, no rainbow. There seemed to be too little rain for a bow, for sunshine was entering Giant Gap, at least in patches. Suddenly Catherine spotted the arc, much lower than I had been looking. It was faint and it was faded but it was, indeed, a rainbow.

We had only moments to enjoy the spectacle before a rapid return to the main trail and a no-nonsense slog back to and through the Diggings was mandated. We reached the freeway at 3:35 and I was in Alta at 3:42, three minutes ahead of my daughter's bus.

Such was an especially nice outing in the North Fork canyon.

Revisiting the HOUT

Wednesday dawned showery, after a night of sustained heavy rain, yet the morning news showed the storm passing rapidly east into Nevada, chased by clear skies to the west. I can't tell you how impressed I was by the views from Big West Spur, last week. It seemed only sensible to return and photograph the spectacle of Giant Gap emerging from its shrouds of storm-wrack and fog. An early start was demanded.

Driving my son to school at 8:00 a.m., a regular downpour of cats and dogs quelled my ardor. Sometimes these storms hang up in the Sierra for many hours, or even a day, after they have ended in lower elevations to the west. Who could say if this storm would stay or go?

Alex Henderson could. He called around 9:00, while light showers persisted here, to report sunshine there (Auburn), and proposed a hike. In a matter of minutes Catherine O'Riley was on board, and we all met at Gold Run, rather too late in the morning for Big West Spur and the good old post-storm Phantasmagoria of Fog, but at least the showers had ended.

We parked near Garrett and marched across the soggy Diggings to the Canyon Creek Trail. Little creeks one usually strides across without pausing had swelled into rushing rivers, within an ace of stopping us and forcing a ford. We were in the headwaters of Potato Ravine, not so labeled on modern maps. The waters of Potato were captured by the "Big Pit" of the Gold Run Ditch & Mining Co. in the 1870s, and since then have flowed into the more northern shaft and out to Canyon Creek in the huge drain tunnel.

At the head of Potato, west of Canyon Creek, stands Cold Springs Hill, where volcanic ash strata of the Valley Springs Formation create a perched aquifer, and a perennial spring nurtures a meadow high on the warm southwest slopes, where Indians lived for thousands of years, and where some enterprising 49er set up a trading post.

There is every reason to believe that the original beginning of the Canyon Creek Trail was at the Cold Springs Trading Post. Potato Ravine formed a kind of pass leading out of the gorge of Canyon Creek. In yet another meadow, also associated to the perched aquifer in the headwaters of Potato, were grown the very potatoes which gave the ravine its name, in 1849 or 1850.

If one is very clever and practiced using Google, one can find the diary of a doctor who spent the summer of 1849 near this trading post. Lamentably, we learn very little of this area from the doctor's diary. A mention of the impossibly steep cliffs of the North Fork (probably referring to Giant Gap), a mention of huge pines near the trading post (the Eocene river channel, unrecognized at that time, had evolved deep soils, and well-watered as well; we should imagine Ponderosa and Sugar pines, up to eight feet in diameter).

Soon we were beside Canyon Creek, high and loud and fast and a little muddy after the night of drenching downpours. Across the bridge, the roar of the first big waterfall greeted us well before it came in view. The Leaper was far beyond the fire-hose aspect of lower flows, and was a confused mass of white water bridging the little chasm-notch beside it with great force and sound and fury.

As the main North Fork canyon hove into view to the south, the last shreds of fog were already lifting and dissipating, and the clouds above were lifting as well, their bases already thousands of feet above. The showers had ended.

More and more flowers are appearing along the CCT, and really it bids fair to be an exceptional year for the things. In some years one wades through forests of flowers. Other years, drier years, they are much reduced in size and number.

The creek was raging into and through the amazing Inner Gorge, a corkscrew chasm with mist and thunder rising from hidden waterfalls. We took the steep cross-country route down to the base of the Big Waterfall, perhaps 120 feet high, which splits into two falls in high flows. It was generating an impressive cloud of spray, which drifted all around us, a hundred yards away.

I have been there several times when the creek carried *much* more water, and a kind of hurricane of mist sweeps over the very spot we were standing, and one is almost instantly soaked.

An ephemeral stream spilled down the cliffs across the creek, those remarkable steep slabs broken on right angles to make gigantic overhangs. In fact, the steep cliffs around the base of the Big Waterfall make it a hazardous place; rocks crash down frequently, and smash to smithereens of shards on the big rounded bosses of bedrock along the creek. Large sluice boxes were once mounted below the falls, and the stout iron pins in the rock, which somehow (using cables, I guess) anchored the boxes, have been smashed down flat by flood events, probably many decades ago. The pins are unchanged since I first saw them, in 1977 or 1978.

The sun broke through suddenly, and a rainbow played in the mist. We continued down the Big Waterfall Trail, past The Terraces, to the Canyon Creek Trail, and soon thereafter, struck away east on the HOUT.

The clouds thinned and the sun rapidly warmed the canyon wall, lush in spring grasses, mosses, flowers, and ferns. Last week no fewer than four ticks dug into my hide, during a hike on the HOUT. They are quite a nuisance in the rainy season, yet seem to disappear when summer comes.

Bogus Ravine, on the west side of Bogus Spur, named for Bogus Point, far above us on the canyon rim, was full of whitewater. We crossed without incident and soon reached strangely steep Croquet Meadow, just beyond where the River Trail forks right. There Alex decided to stop, but Catherine was of course ready to forge ahead to the overlooks on Big West Spur. Not a shred of fog remained, but some rather glorious cumulus clouds drifted here and there, draping shadows over the two-thousand-foot cliffs.

Here as elsewhere the world was alive with the sound of water and waterfalls; every little ravine in Giant Gap had its own long series of cascades and falls, and the North Fork itself must have been flowing near a thousand cubic feet per second, and was still a mite muddy, or at least, not its usual picture of clear clarity.

We had found the sweater, so full of holes, I had left along the trail last week, the very sweater which actually inspired "darn it, darn it!" Now, as we followed the HOUT east towards Big West Spur, we saw that the "true" line of the HOUT was above us, in trees and brush. At a certain point we found the HOUT's tiny bench cut and decided to explore back west towards Croquet Meadow: perhaps the original line of the trail could be restored.

Catherine set her pack down on the narrow trail, and I watched stupidly while it slowly turned over and began to roll away, straight down. It was almost stopped by a fallen Digger Pine, but snuck beneath its trunk and turned into a little cyclone of mass and momentum, making glad leaps and bounds and spinning away out of sight.

This changed everything. We decided to let Alex know where things stood, but on reaching Croquet he was gone, already away on the return trail. We dropped to the River Trail in hopes the pack had hung up in the brush somewhere, rather than plunging directly into the North Fork, below. No sign. We split up and I climbed back up to where it had first escaped. Then, climbing right back down the fall line, I passed the fallen pine and carelessly dislodged a good-sized rock, which instantly whirled away on its own trip to the river. Unless Catherine had veered east, she was safe, but I shouted out warnings in any case. As it went out of sight a spot of color caught my eye.

Descending, I grabbed the pack and set out west, to find Catherine scouting open grassy slopes below the River Trail. A water bag and umbrella were still missing, and we took a quick look but could find no trace of either.

Now three in the afternoon, it was prudent to retreat, rather than push on to Big West. We enjoyed a nice hike into the westering sun, enlivened somewhat when I left my GPS unit at Bogus Ravine, and had to run back over a quarter-mile of rough trail to retrieve it, while Catherine waited.

Despite these minor calamities it was a wonderful day in the great canyon. We reached our cars a little before day's end, a little wet and bedraggled, but quite pleased to have acted on impulse and taken the path less traveled.

Big West Spur

Giant Gap forms one of the most beautiful scenes in California. It was the subject of an etching by 19th-century landscape artist Thomas Moran. For a time in the 1860s there was a movement to rename it "Jehovah Gap," for such is the awe inspired by the place.

Except where invaded by granitic plutons, the bedrock of this part of the Sierra is metamorphic, sometimes referred to as the Western Metamorphic Belt, which in turn is divided into Western, Central, and Eastern belts. These "belts" are formed by one or more distinct formations, generally exposed as long linear masses, striking north, in slight contrast to the overall strike of the Sierra crest, to the northwest. A system of steep, largely inactive faults parallels and divides these belts.

For instance, here the Eastern Belt is made of the metasedimentary early-Paleozoic Shoo Fly Complex, plus those younger formations to its east, such as the Sailor Canyon and Tuttle Lake formations. The Eastern Belt is divided from the Central Belt by the serpentines and peridotites of the Melones Fault Zone, also called the Feather River Peridotite. In this area the Central Belt is composed largely by the late-Paleozoic Calaveras Complex. This "complex" has not been successfully divided into distinct formations, but here at least it shows an eastern metavolcanic series, and a western metasedimentary series.

The Calaveras rocks were once roughly flat-lying, but are now tipped up on edge. Even the volcanics seem to have been deposited in layers, which is clearly true of the metasediments. The shear conditions under which metamorphism occurred were such that a fabric or grain was imparted to the rock; and this fabric itself is mainly parallel to the bedding planes, of both the volcanics and the sediments.

The volcanics of the Calaveras frame Giant Gap. Despite the bedding planes and the metamorphic fabric, these rocks are quite massive and resistant to erosion. They are in faulted contact with the serpentines of the Melones Fault Zone to the east, and in the contact zone, Calaveras rocks show some evidence of crushing and fracturing. However, some of the most massive and resistant parts of these metavolcanics are immediately west of this fault, forming Giant Gap Ridge, The Pinnacles, and the Eminence, on the south wall of the canyon, and Red Ridge, Lovers Leap, and Big West Spur on the north.

Friday morning I met Catherine O'Riley for a walk on the HOUT. This High Old Upriver Trail forks away from the Canyon Creek Trail well down towards the river, and actually leads up the canyon into Giant Gap. In places it is quite hard to follow, it is really not much of a trail.

We parked along Garrett and crossed the Diggings to the east, picking up the Canyon Creek Trail in Potato Ravine and making good time on the downhill. Flowers began to appear at the bridge (Biscuit Root), and I was not too surprised to find the smaller of the two Canyon Creek Larkspurs already in bloom, right below Gorge Point, along with False Rue Anemone. Then there was Buckbrush, and Manroot, and Brewer's Rock Cress, and Brewer's Monkeyflower, this last quite a little jewel, with its rich magenta petals and golden throat-streaks. Overall we must have seen over a dozen different species in bloom. California Milkmaids were especially nice, on the steep east side of Big West Spur, where the HOUT plunges through an elfin forest of dwarf Canyon Live Oak.

The pattern of recent days was repeated: clear skies early, a few little puffballs late in the morning, and then cumulus clouds every which way, rapidly growing into thunderstorms, but not so closely packed as to exclude all sunlight.

In other words, it was spectacularly beautiful. As the clouds grew taller, breezes stirred and freshened into a steady west wind, which brought the ghosts of the Valley fog into the Sierra, in the form of a milky humid air-mass which threw a bit of chill over everything.

This mixture of billowing clouds and misty air made for an ethereal atmosphere not dissimilar from one of Moran's paintings. The views of the great cliffs and spires of Giant Gap was greatly enhanced by intricately-shaped patches of startlingly deep blue sky and brilliant white clouds, while below, at our level, the mist began to hide more distant parts of the canyon altogether.

We were out on Big West Spur, where the HOUT winds in and out of a series of rock-blades and ravines about 400 feet above the river, in extremely steep terrain, pretty much cliff upon cliff and rock upon rock. The wind began to chill us, so we moved from a rock-blade to a ravine, and that little bit of shelter was just enough. The force of the wind was broken, the force of the sun, repaired.

After resting and exploring and taking pictures of the Milkmaids and the sparkling clear river, rich in rapids and deep emerald pools, we decided to climb to the "first summit" of Big West Spur, where the ridge almost levels out, like the Diving Board, a mile or so to the west.

Near the summit we reached a rock tower with great views both up and down the canyon. Climbing higher, we visited a series of incredible viewpoints, and as we were also going north, it happened that we had a better and better view through Giant Gap into Green Valley. There was the Pyramid, there, Hayden Knoll, there, Sawtooth Ridge, and beyond Sawtooth, a line of storm clouds, with rain streaking to the ground, below.

It was a wonderful chiaroscuro scene, with bright and dark clouds, bright and dark cliffs, and we took many photographs. It is really one of the best of all vantage points on Giant Gap. To my amazement, we could see one of the two tunnels on the line of the HOUT, the West Tunnel, in Tunnel Gully, below Lovers Leap.

Eventually we had to leave, and made a slow yet steady march up and out of the great canyon, strangely moved by what we had seen. It was a truly great day in the North Fork.

Conversation on Diving Board Ridge

Wednesday dawned clear and promised nothing but sun, so I felt restless, while working at my computer, and gradually inched towards outright escape. One friend was recuperating from back surgery, and needed to hike for his health. Yet another friend was visiting Dutch Flat from Germany, and had expressed interest in seeing this--this what-you-may-call-it--this "Diving Board Ridge," upon which I had bestowed such extravagant praise, and over which I had lavished such impeccable prose.

Considering these facts, it seemed proper to make some telephone calls, for business must be done, and soon enough I was throwing a sandwich and a camera in my pack, and out the door I sallied, into freedom. And sunshine.

At the Gold Run exit of eastbound I-80 I lay in wait, hard against the massive stone monument, built by the Lord Sholto Chapter of the high and puissant E Clampus Vitus in 1984; built to bear the bronze tablet naming Gold Run a State Historical Landmark. The bronze was originally installed in 1950, but construction of I-80 forced its removal to this new place.

They arrived, and Alex and I piled into Ed and Ingrid's SUV to make the two miles drive south on Garrett Road, to the BLM gate, and parking.

Recently I have heard yet again from someone who innocently drove out Garrett, hoping to hike on the public lands there, lands administered by the BLM; and Garrett passes entirely onto BLM lands, without any sign that a boundary has been crossed (tho suddenly, the trees are much larger); and that person drove until Garrett seems to dwindle into a private driveway, with a home quite near.

And that person was sure he was trespassing, and gave up, and turned around. Not the first time I have heard of just this thing.

Here, towards the end of Garrett, you are still on BLM lands, but it sure doesn't look that way. Immediately past the house, the road bends east and loses all surfacing; no pavement, no gravel. And a hundred yards along is the huge green BLM gate.

This road shows on the 1866 General Land Office map as connecting the town of Gold Run to a certain section corner in Indiana Ravine, on the edge of the North Fork canyon; and it is labeled "Road to the Mines."

The road stays just south of the gold-bearing Eocene gravels of the Gold Run Diggings proper. One could walk this road without ever realizing that a wilderness of raw gravel ridges and boulders and hollows and hills of every type, lay a stone's throw away, over a band of manzanita. From here, the Diggings extend about two miles north to I-80.

We followed this Road to the Mines along the rim of the canyon, bearing generally east, but winding back and forth wildly, through groves of Whiteleaf Manzanita and Knobcone Pine, past the Pickering Bar Trail (unmarked, in a flat, breaking south into heavy manzanita, between two tall pines), to the overlook nearby.

An amazing view of Giant Gap opens from here, framing parts of Green Valley and the Sawtooth Ridge and the even more distant snow peaks, in the background. Truly amazing.

Continuing down the road, we were all hemmed in and overhung by manzanita. The road ends in what used to be a turn-around, but now is half-covered by a fallen Kellogg's Black Oak. I remember driving my VW Bug down here, several times, in the late 1970s. I would follow the little track down to the little ravine, cross, and then explore the Secret World.

This can be quite an adventure, for the Secret World has, well, many secrets. It is a smallish world, I mean, a smallish hydraulic mining pit, closed off on three sides, west, north, and east, to the rest of the Diggings and the rest of the World, by high banks and cliffs of gravel. To the south it opens into the North Fork canyon, and Indiana Ravine plunges over the edge, into a long series of waterfalls, reaching the river at Pickering Bar.

If one bears south upon entering the Secret World from the west, via the tributary ravine at the end of the road, you will find some awesome sluice cuts in the solid rock, places where narrow grooves were hacked and blasted to a depth of twenty feet. A patient exploration of these deep miniature canyons will lead one up and out on the east, into big boulder piles, and quite near to the site of the stamp mill which earned this place its name, the "Mill Claim" on the ancient maps, from the 1860s and 1870s.

For, the deep gravels could be very strongly cemented, and yet quite rich in gold. So they had to be smashed up fine, before running them into a sluice box.

Or, if one bears north on entering the Secret World, one can visit the Stone Cabin, built by gold miner Byron Emric in the 1930s or so. Or one can wend away north to the Great Wall of the Ultimate End, the Ultima Thule, as it were, of the Secret World, where a mine tunnel gives easy access through a high gravel ridge, into the main Diggings.

No, it's quite the special place. Take nothing but photos, leave nothing but footprints, and as few of those as can be managed.

We followed a loopy path to the Stone Cabin and on across boulder piles dating from the Chinese era of mining here, when the era of drift mining had ended, the stamp mill, likely hauled away, and all that remained was for Tia Sing and his gang of coolies to turn the water over the old drifting ground, and wash it all down to bedrock, and then clean that bedrock with a patience and a care which eked out steady, and possibly good, rewards.

Since the Mill Claim is described in operation by newspapers of the 1870s, and hydraulic mining at Gold Run stopped in 1882, Tia Sing and his men likely made the Secret World around 1880.

To clean the exposed bedrock floor of the Eocene river meant moving all those boulders which had once been in the sediments, but were too large for the sluice boxes, and were piled to this side and that as occasion demanded, until all the ground had been gone over with a fine-toothed comb. If the bedrock was rotten, it would be pickaxed and blasted up, and the debris carefully scraped up and carried to the upper end of the nearest sluice box.

It seems Tia Sing had a derrick, for there are some huge boulders in the Secret World, piled high.

Climbing the east wall of the World near Stone Cabin, we struck a certain secret trail across the Diggings and filed through a pass to the Indiana Hill Ditch, completed on September 13, 1852. Later, one Osmyn Harkness came into sole possession of the IHD; he also owned mines at Gold Run and Lost Camp. It is Osmyn Harkness's old patented hydraulic claim at Lost Camp (1872) which eventually fell into the hands of Siller Brothers Lumber Company. That is, in consequence of Osmyn Harkness's noble efforts, in the 1870s, to tear the living hell out of the land and pollute Blue Canyon and the North Fork with mercury and mud, Siller has now won approval for a drastic timber harvest over 560 acres of ridge and canyon.

Our secret trail crossed the IHD and plunged into the North Fork canyon. The roar of the river could be heard, far below. Winding through live oak woods, always descending, we intersected the old Lumber Slide, after which Trail never strayed far from Slide.

The Slide was used to drag big bundles of sawed lumber down the ridge-crest, and working the stuff all the way down into Canyon Creek and Indiana Ravine, to the east and west. Both these ravines carried tailings in quantity, and were worked as "tailings claims," all fitted with big sluice boxes, at least, between waterfalls. One can still see many of the monstrous iron pins and bolts set in the bedrock beside Canyon Creek; cables once connected the sluice boxes to these bolts and pins, and kept the boxes from breaking up or being swept away, under the tremendous mass and force of the streaming mine tailings.

Great views are had of the Big Waterfall in Canyon Creek, from along the Diving Board Trail.

After passing some impressive rock retaining walls, we reached the Diving Board itself. The ridge profile flattens to level, and a cute little flat spreads across the summit, all sheltered by Canyon Live Oaks, with overlooks nearby, one facing east, the other, west. We admired the views very much; they are extraordinary. One is so central to the axis of the canyon, when perched upon that promontory, that great distances unfold within its vista. Lovers Leap and the Pinnacles are silhouetted against the sky, and we watched cloud shadows chase across the ruddy cliffs and spires.

We had the time, over at sunny West Overlook, to indulge in sophisticated conversation, of the sort ordinary folk could never hope to understand, or how much less, attain to themselves. For instance: I suggested that, if one needed a sweater repaired, and one was mad at the sweater-repair person, one might well exclaim, "Darn it, darn it!"

My "Darn it, darn it" was swiftly and unanimously classified as the lowest form of all that which might imagine itself to be humor, but which could not now, nor ever in any future, any planet, nor even any galaxy, actually be counted as humor, at least, not by a sane and sentient being.

Well. I'm not so sure. I think it's funny.

Then Alex launched into a passionate exposition, or it might, I think, have been a diatribe, and his subject was 1919, and Versailles, and Lloyd George, and President Wilson's Fourteen Points of Light.

The fates of nations were being decided for once and for all, it seems, and Alex was building, building; building in intensity, and in fervor and intelligence, until, almost gasping, or even stuttering, under the burden of the Terrible Truths which sprang so relentlessly into his mind's eye, he deduced there could be but one way to "clearly clarify" the problem.

This brought a series of objections and raised eyebrows and remonstrances into play. If we were to allow Alex to "clearly clarify" any problem whatsoever, we must perforce allow Russell to say "Darn it, darn it" whenever he wished. And this was no easy thing to allow.

We had already strayed into a similar area, trying to compose a limerick about limericks.

So it was a very nice day, and we were really tremendously inspired by our own stimulating conversation. We could and did listen to ourselves well-nigh all day long.

Eventually we climbed back up the trail, and out and around and through the Diggings on a new and different line, and at last reached Ingrid's SUV. We were in good time; I would not be late picking up my son from school.

But the SUV's battery was dead, and no amount of clear clarification or darned darnings could restore it to life. That required the husky little Toyota 4WD and jumper cables of John Davenport, who lives in an old hydraulic mining reservoir, a couple hundred yards away.

So all was well and it was another great day in the North Fork. The tiny puffball clouds of morning had grown into many immensely tall and unbalanced giants of the afternoon, giants which put miles of land into shade at a time. These too-tall clouds were utterly and spectacularly beautiful. Finally they grew into so many Frankensteinian laboratories, so many dark hearts wrapped in brilliant white, where monsters were made all in secret, amid thunders and lightnings of every kind.

Of course, one never actually *sees* the monsters hammered out in those secret sky-factories; they are, after all, secret.

It's enough just to know they're there.

Visit to Canyon Creek

Happy New Year!

There's been a ton of snow around these parts, and scarcely an ounce of hiking. The last fair weather in December found me visiting Green Valley with friends, and packing out the last of the garbage gathered up from an old marijuana grower's camp last winter.

Then came the storms. Snow and then rain, snow and then rain. Heroics of shoveling snow. The building of igloos and arches and sculptures only to see them melt in the rain. The shoveling of hundreds of feet of driveway only to see it buried all over again. There came a final snow storm, with no rain afterward, a final igloo was built, with the visage of a wild and mighty mouse glaring from one corner (my igloos can have sharp corners, spires, windows of any shape, buttresses, and so on, including, perhaps, the hundred-times-life-size bust of a mouse).

And then there was at last one sunny day. Wednesday. So the intrepid Catherine O' Riley and I dared to hike through the snow into Canyon Creek and wander a mile or so down the old trail.

The Diggings were only lightly frosted with snow, and dotted with crystalline icy puddles, and walking the Paleobotanist Trail, we saw many interesting ice patterns, as we crunched along. Snow almost obliterated by rain had frozen hard under the stars, Tuesday night. Reaching the Canyon Creek Trail, we soon dropped below the snow, and continued quickly down past the little bridge to the sunny side of things, where first big waterfall comes into view, The Leaper almost hidden beside it.

The Leaper needs middling high water to even exist. Water surges into a narrow polished channel which plunges over the top of a cliff. The channel leads into a shallow pothole which makes the water shoot out and up with great force. It sails across a narrow chasm and hits another cliff before falling to a deep pool at the base.

Yesterday The Leaper was in good form.

We decided to visit the Blasted Digger Overlook, and took the side trail from Waterfall View. Arriving at the spur ridge dividing Canyon Creek from the North Fork, we followed down the ridge, which narrows to a single sharp blade of rock, and suddenly one is at this ancient lightning-struck Digger Pine, and Giant Gap is in view, and the river, and in fact, one can look far upstream and far downstream.

Gazing through the Gap, two snow peaks floated like clouds above distant dark forests. These were Monumental Ridge and Quartz Mountain. Rarely are they so white.

We explored some other viewpoints, cliffy spots where the sun beat hard on bare rock and a glorious warmth and light embraced us. This is California in the winter. One day after a snowstorm, and even at 2600' elevation, one gets a tan, or looks for shadows to hide in.

A bird appeared in Giant Gap, with small white things dropping away from it. After a moment, we realized these were feathers. It took a while to grasp what was going on. The feather-dropping bird flapped vigorously east, a thousand feet above the river, and behind it five, ten, twenty, who knows, fifty little feathers sparkled downward in the sun, easily seen against the shadowed cliffs of the far canyon wall.

Suddenly a second bird, much like a hawk, shot out from the side of the canyon and chased the first bird out of view, in the vicinity of Big West Spur. We realized that the first bird had been attacked just before we'd seen it, and had probably just been attacked again.

Retreating to the main trail, we walked on down in the sunshine, to the Inner Gorge and Gorge Point and the Six-Inch Trail. The rock doves or pigeons were circling about, perhaps fifteen in all, and I counted nine pure white. A couple of Brewer's Rock Cress were in bloom at Gorge Point, which is second only to The Terraces in priority of bloom.

We'd had a late start and while lazing around down there next to those wild cliffs and chasms and waterfalls, the sun slowly lowered toward Diving Board Ridge, to the west. The faintest hint of the ridge's blurred shadow-edge touched us, and that was all it took, we were on the trail immediately, slogging back up to the Diggings, and crunching across the snow and ice.

It was another great day in the North Fork.

Return to Canyon Creek

Yesterday morning I met Catherine O'Riley, at last returned from Europe and Jordan, and Patrick Kavanaugh, for a visit to Canyon Creek. This was Patrick's first experience of this remarkable place, so we decided upon the Grand Tour. However, these short days, so close to the Solstice, tend to reduce the scope of what may be done in the way of hiking, and we really only touched a few of the high points. It was to be, then, only the Semi-Grand Tour.

Under this winter fair-weather regime which brings day after day of fog to the Central Valley, and nothing but sun to the Sierra, we of course had nothing but sun. We stopped to see the giant drain tunnel of the Gold Run Ditch & Mining Co., nine feet high, twelve feet wide, which carried tailings from the hydraulic mines to Canyon Creek. We stopped at Waterfall View. The Leaper has now stopped its leaping, as less water flows in Canyon Creek than did a week ago, following the last storm.

Down the steepening trail past Gorge Point, we took the Six Inch Trail, one of the old sluice-box-access trails from mining days, into the Inner Gorge. To my astonishment, we scared off a passel of pigeons from the most recondite part of the chasm below. It is difficult to describe this twisting inner gorge, with its hidden waterfalls and polished rock sides. It makes a corkscrew plunging descent to the top of the Big Waterfall, where Canyon Creek leaps boldly into space, after being trapped in the dark caves of the gorge above.

An off-trail shortcut brought us to the creek just below the Big Waterfall, only just being touched by the morning sun. Then down the little waterfall trail to The Terraces, where the men who tended the sluice boxes which once lined Canyon Creek had their main camp. I had mentioned finding the Brewer's Rock Cress in bloom at Lovers Leap, and had carefully examined the cliffs at Gorge Point, where this species first blooms along the main trail. Nothing. I reminded Catherine of the yet-earlier-blooming species, the California Milkmaid, of the genus Cardamine, also in the Mustard Family, which we have often seen in flower at the Terraces in January, even early January.

So we kept our eyes peeled in case some further freak of nature might occur. We saw young Milkmaids, but no blooms. Leaving our packs at the Terraces, we took the side trail to the creek, crossed easily, and had a look at the three waterfalls directly below the Terraces.

Upon our return I noticed, right beside our packs, several Milkmaids in full bloom, and many about to bloom. So, a new record: the spring bloom in Canyon Creek has now been seen to begin as early as December 16!

Lower Terraces Trail took us back to the Canyon Creek Trail just above the hidden High Old Upriver Trail or HOUT, and we decided to ramble the HOUT on up the canyon, which was quite nice, in the full sun of the early afternoon. We walked beyond Bogus Spur to the fork in the trail where one can either keep to the HOUT or drop down to the river just west of Big West Spur. We chose the river, and had a long break beside the sparkling clear stream, so embossed with sunshine downstream, so bright, one could scarcely look at it. Just upstream, the river emerged from the shadows of Giant Gap, and a cool breeze wafted over us, heavy cold air flowing down the canyon, near river level.

This reversal of the usual fair-weather regime of (warm) up-canyon anabatic winds during the day, and (cold) down-canyon katabatic winds during the night, is interesting. I wondered whether this katabatic river of cold air, at midday, was continuous, all the way down the canyon, or just an artifact of the shadowed gorge upstream.

Whatever the case, it was pleasant to leave the cold air near the river, and make a scramble up the sunny slopes of Big West Spur to regain the HOUT. Just above the river of cold air lies much warmer air. It was likely all of seventy degrees at the HOUT, and probably below sixty degrees at the river. A classic temperature inversion (for usually air is colder with increasing elevation).

Then followed the long and intricate and delightful walk back west. When we reached the Canyon Creek Trail all was in the shadow of Diving Board Ridge. A slow slog up the steep trail brought us to the trailhead at about 4:15.

It was a perfect day in the great canyon of the North Fork.

A Walk on the Wild Side

I visited Lovers Leap with a few friends on Sunday. South of Dutch Flat and Alta on Moody Ridge, this tremendous cliff rises nearly 2400' above the North Fork American, at Giant Gap. The main mass of Moody Ridge trends northeast-southwest, dividing Canyon Creek from the North Fork, parallel to both--tho Canyon Creek bends south to join the North Fork, around the southwest end of Moody Ridge. And from the main mass of the ridge, with its nearly level cap of volcanic mudflow, a lobe of highlands extends south.

At the very southern tip of this lobe is Lovers Leap. Access is had from I-80 at the Alta exit. On the south side of the freeway take the frontage road, Casa Loma, east, turning right on Moody Ridge road, and then in a mile or so, left on Lovers Leap road, until it ends at a turn-around, elevation 4139'. A trail leads south down to the overlook. We instead turned aside to visit "Lazy Man's Lovers Leap," an east-facing clifftop near the turn-around. Snow peaks from near Bowman Lake on the north, to the Crystal Range on the south, were in view, along with the main North Fork canyon, leading up past Snow Mountain to Tinkers Knob.

Parenthetically, there are several "Lovers Leaps" in California, and no fewer than eight in Missouri. All kinds of crazy romantic legends are attached to these many Leaps; some say such fables go back at the least to Sappho, a poetess of ancient Greece.

A patch of public, BLM lands barely includes the rim of the canyon here, and for a half mile west. The usual contrast between a repeatedly-logged forest of smaller trees (private), and an unlogged forest of larger trees (BLM), is seen along the boundary.

The BLM built an ugly little concrete block building near the turn-around a few years ago. It houses a radio repeater, and some solar panels are mounted on a mast above the building. Perversely, the panels aim north, away from the sun. For some reason, a large Incense Cedar was felled just above the building, which now is much more visible than it had been.

High clouds covered most of the sky and a weak sunshine sometimes filtered through. I had hoped for full sun, for the complex architecture of Giant Gap needs shadows to evoke its stunning relief.

Our goal was to explore cliffy regions to the west of the Leap itself.

When seen in profile from the east or west, the great rock blade of Lovers Leap shows two large "steps" high on the blade, but below the overlook. First we aimed for the Upper Step. I knew that it was well-guarded by brush, and in years past had worked out the very best sequence of gaps in the brush and rocky ledges, to approach Upper Step from the west. Confidently I led us into the wrong gaps through the brush, and over the wrong ledges. We did eventually arrive. In the shade of the far-flung clouds a cool breeze made us shiver. A distinct edge could be seen bounding the cloud mass perhaps a hundred miles west. It could be hoped that the clouds would move to the east, as is their wont, and, in an hour or two, the unmasked sun would warm up our world of cliffs.

We could look right down on the white fog filling the Sacramento Valley and the Delta, an unusually deep fog ocean, lapping well up into the Sierra foothills, with only the very highest ridge crests peeking out, in the Coast Range north of San Francisco. Even Mt. Diablo, usually standing well above the winter fog across the Delta, was hidden.

A strange slot-like cave may be reached with all due difficulty by descending an impossibly steep and cliff-bound ravine to the west, and then circling around the base of a gigantic rock blade. One can see this cave from the Pinnacles, across the canyon. Then again, from the ravine itself, a deep crack in the cliff can be entered, and once with a friend I went deeply west inside the cliff, and reached another crack which led south and dropped into a series of narrow caves, before exiting to the south. In search of crack and cave we wandered west along the mossy ledges.

Entering the ravine high, we found ourselves on a steeply-plunging bear trail. Our local Black Bears take on some surprisingly steep terrain. Perhaps the exertion loosens their mighty bowels, for bear poop was abundant.

The ravine drops so steeply that out-and-out rock climbing is sometimes required. Cliffs pinch in on both sides. We were sheltered from the wind down there, and then the cloud mass did in fact drift past, and the pure sun warmed the cliffs rapidly. To my amazement we found the Brewer's Rock Cress, Arabis breweri, in bloom. I often see this species begin bloom in February, on the warmest cliffs along the Canyon Creek Trail. And once upon one sunny day, on January 1st, 1976, I found it in bloom on Lovers Leap itself, after driving miles through deep snow.

I remember crouching over the purple flowers, on the very edge of the eery precipice, with my old friend Greg Troll. "It's clearly in the Mustard Family," I was exclaiming, "but is it an Arabis, or a Draba?" And exactly then a diminutive Asian goddess leaped down from the rocks above to join us, a bright young sprite who knew wildflowers well; and she shared in our exclamations and wonderings. And that was Fate, and another story altogether.

And now, on December 12th? Brewer's Rock Cress? That's verging upon a Freak of Nature. The deep purple flowers were clearly brand new, not any kind of hold-over from the summer season. In fact, these Rock Cress flowers rather quickly set seed and drop away, after blooming.

Well. Microclimate is everything. And these past few days have been unusually warm, here in the Sierra.

Read, by the way, William H. Brewer's "Up and Down California in 1860-64," a true classic of the Golden State.

I never could find my mysterious crack cave. We lost a few hundred feet of elevation before following the bear trail right around the base of the rock blade, to a point below the main cave. An overhanging cliff rises on the west side of the thing, rather unsettling in appearance. A steep climb leads to the cave itself. We considered the matter carefully and decided that we could see it well enough from a distance.

The climb up and out was much easier, tho we had to pause for rest after especially steep sections. Hmmm. Come to think of it, they were all steep. We had great views into Giant Gap, with portions of the river visible, and could see Big West Spur, Bogus Spur, and the Diving Board, among the many many interlacing spur ridges flanking the canyon. Soon we were back at Upper Step and, after regrouping, and snacking, we headed west for what has been called Little Lovers Leap.

We noticed that quite a lot of firewood had been cut along the steep "fire road" leading west on BLM lands. As the road leveled out and bent north into Lovers Leap Ravine, we heard a chainsaw and found two men with a pickup truck gathering more firewood. They seemed to be taking only dead and down wood.

Dropping due west into Lovers Leap Ravine, we found the main bear trail down in its shaded forest depths, crossed the brook, and climbed though a stand of tall Ponderosa Pines, Douglas Fir, and Sugar Pine, to an old mining ditch. Following this south, we soon reach Little Lovers Leap, where little terraces had been blasted from the cliffs to allow for a wooden flume.

More fine views. The day was waning. Ron and I followed the ditch west, until we reached the end of the BLM lands and the first of about ten parcels of private property scattered along the canyon rim to the west, to Bogus Point and beyond.

This ditch would make for an especially fine trail, leading right along the canyon rim in Giant Gap itself. The trail could connect Lovers Leap to Canyon Creek. For many years I have proposed that efforts be made by the BLM to purchase all the private parcels along the rim above Giant Gap, in order to protect the viewshed, and to build the trail. This would take a ton of money and several minor miracles. Far more likely, a series of houses will be built, each arrogating its million-dollar-view.

The world-class, irreplaceable beauty of Giant Gap will be bent to the purposes of a subdivision. This, it has always seemed, is Placer County's vision for our future.

Regrouping once again, we admired the fog down in the valley, slowly gilding under the westering sun, the fog surface ruffled into waves here and there, as southwest winds drove it into the foothills. We then re-crossed Lovers Leap Ravine and slowly climbed to our vehicles, at the turn-around. Vagrant shafts of golden light lit up the leaf-strewn forest floor in patches of flame.

It seems to me that the BLM ought to carefully gate both roads (LL road and the western fire road) north of the turn-around, so that visitor parking is held farther back from the Leap, by a hundred yards or so. There's getting to be a bit too much firewood cutting, and too many OHVs are driving right down the foot trail from the turn-around. This is such a special place.

It was an especially fine day, high on the cliffs above Giant Gap.

Visit to the HOUT

Stormy weather, cold weather, and an episode of geometry have kept me off the trails in recent weeks.

Yesterday I broke away for a visit to the High Old Upriver Trail (HOUT), which leads away east into the fabled Giant Gap, from the Canyon Creek Trail, south of Gold Run. A warm air mass had drifted into California from the Pacific, chasing away the frost, and a gentle and genial sun blessed the Sierra.

At 10:00 a.m. I left the trailhead in Potato Ravine, swung out of the ravine on the Indiana Hill Ditch (1852) into the very canyon of Canyon Creek, and suddenly heard its rushing waters below. The waterfalls would be in good form. Down to the Old Wagon Road, past the great tunnel of the Gold Run Ditch & Mining Co. (1873), thence south along the often mossy and ferny east-facing slopes above the creek I strode, neither hurrying nor dawdling, and reached the tiny bridge at 10:16.

Is the word "bear" cognate with "berry"? The dung of foxes and bears was often seen along the trail, always full of berries, mostly manzanita from the looks of it. A bobcat had left its own messy contribution near the bridge.

For the entire hike I was as often in shadow as sun, and in these short days, with the sun passing so low in the southern sky, parts of any canyon in the Sierra will never even be touched by the day star. In such places everything remained wet, despite thirty-six hours without rain. To touch a bush or a young Douglas Fir was to unleash a miniature storm of droplets. My boots were soon wet, but with remarkable forethought I wore thick wool socks and never much noticed.

The creek was at only a moderate flow. I had hoped for more. Still, it made a long succession of cascades and low falls even above the bridge, and below, its rough voice suddenly deepened into the thunder of larger waterfalls amid cliff-bound chasms. In fact, as one walks the Canyon Creek Trail, the cliffs beside the trail sometimes reflect the hissings and roarings so well one might imagine creeks on both sides.

The Leaper, a waterfall which manages to arc upwards into space before crashing into a cliff and falling forty feet into a hidden pool, was in good form. At low flows it dries up, being fed through a polished trough in the bedrock well to one side of a larger, perennial waterfall.

The fall rains have already spurred new growth, new grasses and young sword ferns, the tiny beginnings of what will be Larkspurs, tall and brash, in six months. The Goldback Fern is common all along here, and over the dry summer months it curls up, revealing the light golden undersides of its fronds, and seems dead. But when water is plenty the fronds uncurl, and so they were yesterday, peeking out from rocky niches everywhere.

The awesome Inner Gorge of Canyon Creek took form below me, and as the trail increasingly was hewn from the cliffs themselves, and that strange and wonderful twisting chasm with its hidden waterfalls appeared, those pure white racing pigeons which began roosting near the Big Waterfall last winter flocked into view. They flew vigorously in large circles. There seem to be seven of them now, where only five were ever seen last winter, and now two darker pigeons had joined them. Native Band-Tails? I could not tell.

The pigeons landed on a sunny and noble rock directly above the chasm, directly across from Gorge Point. Suddenly the North Fork canyon lay before me, and I could look across to the vicinity of Roach Hill and Iowa Hill. Now I had nothing but sun, the sweater came off, and down and down steeply the trail led, past the two side trails to the Terraces, to the unmarked and almost invisible HOUT. It was 10:35.

This trail follows the line of the Giant Gap Survey. In the late 1890s a scheme was floated to make the North Fork American the principal water supply for the city of San Francisco. Men were hired to eke out the line of a large ditch leading through Giant Gap from Green Valley; not to actually build it, but to "break grade" and set the stage for the main work. This seems to have been done to show The World at large, and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in particular, that the principals of the project meant real business. So the line of the thing was surveyed and marked and a tenuous trail constructed, with little ledges blasted out of cliffs here and there, and two hefty tunnels were driven though giant rock blades in the very heart of Giant Gap. Well. One of these two never quite penetrated its blade.

The amount of work done was quite respectable, but the Supervisors never bit, and the ditch was never built. Yet enough work was done that, simply to gain access to the more recondite and difficult areas in Giant Gap, the line of the Survey was made a trail in its own right.

Not much of a trail, not then and certainly not now. The wooden bridges and catwalks they used to span difficult areas have long since been erased by wildfires. Still, one can follow the thing readily enough, and although it does not hew perfectly to the line of the ditch, and has any number of awkward sections, in the larger view of things it amounts to an almost level trail leading into Giant Gap. Near Canyon Creek it stands about 300 feet above the North Fork.

This was high enough to be in the sun and above the chilly shadows which hugged the river below. The North Fork was rather large for this time of year, and boiled and roared in many reaches of white water. It even had a slightly muddy cast to it, quite a rarity, except during heavy rainfall events.

I did not anticipate that the HOUT itself could lie in shadow, even so close to the solstice. Yet soon enough I passed from the warm and bright to the cold and dark. This eroded my desire to wander very far. Passing Bogus Spur, a half-mile east, I had fine views of Lovers Leap and the Pinnacles, framing Giant Gap, but could also see that much of the HOUT might remain dark and chilly for a good while. Sunshine lit up the slopes a few dozen yards above me.

I made some minor explorations and found a sunny spot to have my lunch, a single scrawny sandwich, before retreating to Canyon Creek. I visited the Terraces, one of the camps constructed by the miners who tended the huge sluice boxes in Canyon Creek, in the hydraulic mining era, pleasant little lawns hemmed by massive stone walls, and then continued up the Big Waterfall Trail, the most well-built of all old trails giving direct access to the sluice boxes.

The Big Waterfall was lovely, as always, and a fragment of rainbow glinted in the spray, near a hundred feet above the base of the fall, the rainbow proportionately high above me, as the sun lay low, behind me. I saw two pure white pigeons perched on the cliffs beside the falls.

A steep trailless climb led me back to the Canyon Creek Trail, where I rested in the sunshine and gazed around at the awesome cliffs and canyons. The pigeons suddenly appeared, flying with great strength and purpose, circling, climbing, circling, climbing, then shooting into the chasm below me.

"Ah ha," mused I, "their old perch lost its sun, hence they must needs climb higher, and escape the gloom building below. Now they surely roost in the sun, all warm and safe from The Shadow."

However, continuing up the steep trail, I soon saw them, not in the sun at all, but clinging to a cliff within the all-dark Inner Gorge. Who can predict what pleases a pigeon? It seems that I can't, at any rate.

So I left the pigeons and the waterfalls and chasms for the easier upper reaches of the trail, and soon enough was at my car. It was only 2:45. I was in good time to pick up the kids from school and bus.

During most of the day I had worried about how this most beautiful of all local trails can ever be brought into public ownership, as Congress directed in 1978. I remembered with pleasure so many wonderful hikes in the trail, often in the company of Catherine O' Riley. Would it all, in the end, be so much trespassing? For after all, most of the trail is on private property. The property is for sale. Signs could go up any day of the week, forbidding access.

But to sift through and record the gist of a pretty day's discontented musings would add several thousand words to my story. I only know that a way must be found to buy the Gold Run lands now for sale.

It was an especially nice day in the North Fork and along Canyon Creek.