CALIFORNIA’S SALMON RIVER BY-WAY

… by not taking a favorite route, 

I discover a new favorite route…

There are many, many ways to cross from California’s I-5 corridor to the coastal US 101 corridor.  Each is engaging.  Each is repeatable.  Each can become a favorite ride.  State Route 96 from Yreka to Willow Creek can be traveled over and over because it is one of those  favorite rides.

This day – exploring with a riding buddy – I chose an alternative…

After heading south out of Yreka through Fort Jones and Etna on State Route 3, also a favorite route, we head west at Callahan.  Cecilville Road begins as a luscious ribbon of nice pavement, glorious curves and second-gear switchbacks as it winds to a Pacific Crest Trail trailhead at Carter Meadows Summit.  

The view back toward Scott Valley is spectacular and the rugged ridgelines recall alps somewhere in Europe.

An easy descent drops us from alpine forests into mixed deciduous pine and oak along the south fork of the Salmon River.  

Thirty miles and more than an hour on, we arrive in Cecilville…

… where the gas is self-serve…

… and so are the groceries.

Note the box for 'honor system' purchases at the bottom of the chill box which is located just outside the locked front door of the store.

Don’t leave your child unattended!

Also just outside that front door.

Disk golf is available, but we didn’t pack a frisbee.

The stretch between Cecilville and Forks of Salmon gets little use, I suspect as for the entire nineteen miles, we encountered no vehicles.  Which was a good thing.  Even on a motorcycle, passing an on-coming anything would be harrowing.  

The road narrows to perhaps three paces wide except where the gnawing south fork – maybe 300 feet below – has undercut the canyon wall and collapsed a few yards of blacktop.  There, it’s narrower.

Then there’s the rock fall littering what’s left of the pavement.  The drive becomes a delicate, slow dance.  Getting pitched from the saddle after hitting a chunk of schist or quartzite would prove calamitous and, as Butch told Sundance, “The fall’ll kill ya!” 

Forks of Salmon is an even smaller berg with a post office, a campground and, to my view, no mercantile of any kind.  

Horses might be seen loitering in the street – though none this day…

… and near that campground, preserved is evidence of the area’s gold mining past.

Forks is where the two branches of the Salmon meet.  

The main intersection offers a chance for one to follow the north fork of the Salmon east back through Sawyers Bar toward Etna.  

I’ve heard the road is a good one, but it will have to wait as we hold reservations at the historic Eureka Inn out on the coast.  Bucket list it.

West of Forks, the stream carries twice the volume, the canyon is broader, but deeper and the remaining route out to CA 96 is less daunting.  

Latter-day prospectors dredge for gold, fisher people fish and I’m sure the huntin’ is good in season.  I am reminded of this as I round a bend to be stared down by a four-point buck standing in what turned out to be his roadway.

I like remote areas and the roads that carry me there.  I like the echoes of history and admire the rugged people who live in and care for the environs – be they the native Americans of yesteryear or ranchers or miners happy to live off the grid keeping a pocketful of quarters handy in case they need to use the phone.

My imagination wanders and fantasies about the romance of the past abound.  And I think I’ve discovered a new favorite ride.

© 2019

Church of the Open Road Press

DESTINATION: BUCKS LAKE

…a glorious childhood haunt…

I wasn’t expected to show up.  Barbara was the last of the three great moms who cared for a bevy of neighborhood youngsters – myself included – in 1960s Chico.  The memorial gathering for her was to be held some four and a half hours away from Cloverdale.  But it was a summer weekend; Enrico, the Yamaha was due for a road trip; and the canyons and ridges, rocky outcrops and pristine lakes of Plumas County are to travel what whipped cream and a cherry is to a sundae. 

California’s highway 70 traces the rugged Feather River Canyon between Oroville and Quincy.  Pioneered by James Beckworth in the mid-1800s, it is the lowest of the Sierran crossings, though the last to see a railroad.  The highway and the old Western Pacific swap sides of the canyon as both routes pass small hydro facilities, historic whistle-stops and bergs all under gleaming granite cliffs and cool pine forests.

Bucks Lake, itself, is a high-country reservoir dotted with forest service cabins – a little known playground for residents of the northern Sacramento Valley and beyond.  

Kayaks and canoes co-exist with jet skis and fisher-boats while bald eagles and osprey circle above and black bear roam in the woods.  

The road I remember as graded dirt is now long-ago paved. Camping and day-use spots are abundant. The dam I once crossed on foot is now gated off.  I park nearby and walk back to the cabin I’d last visited decades ago.

Barbara, the neighborhood mom, had battled dementia for quite some time, but family made efforts to see that she would spend weekends at “the lake” almost until the end.  It was her happiest place.  

Looking out a picture window, I recalled splashing on the beach, the smell of Sea-n-Ski, sandwiches wrapped in wax paper washed down with Cragmont sodas, and my failure to master the sport of water skiing.  Barbara was laughing and splashing and skiing right along with all the kids.  Happiest place, indeed.

My return home would be a different route.  East of Quincy, a the LaPorte Road winds from Route 70, crossing a diminished Middle Fork of the Feather then climbs Buzzard Roost and Gibsonville Ridges, past the alpine head waters of the South Fork. Each turn offers another breathtaking view.  

August-spring wildflowers carpet the high, cool meadows and it feels as if I am riding through the ground floor of heaven.  

Further west, the LaPorte Road routes past historic mining and lumbering villages – some little more than place names.  Sixty miles on, I am driving through the dry, 95-degree grazing land of the Yuba foothills outside of Marysville, wishing I were back at Bucks Lake reveling in the cool breeze rising off the water.

The day before, when I had entered the cabin, I worried that I wouldn’t be able to identify the neighbor-kid-now-cabin-owner I hadn’t seen in perhaps forty years.  He stood and called me by name.  “Greg,” I said, a bit breathless from climbing the granite stairs to the house, “this still is among the most beautiful places in the world.”  Greg took my shoulders, turned me around to look out that picture window with the stunning view of water and forestlands crowned with fair-weather clouds.  Then he pointed to the hand painted sign above.  It read: “Welcome to the most beautiful place in all the world.” 

© 2019

Church of the Open Road Press

MR. MET AND MR. MILLER

A tribute to teachers

Last February, while visiting New York, I slipped into a souvenir shop and picked up a Mets t-shirt off the sale table.  The other day, I was wearing it on the trail out behind our house when an on-coming hiker said, “Hey, we beat you guys last night.”

I looked down at the logo.  “I’m not… I’m… Well, I used to be…”

In 1960s Chico, everyone was either a Giants fan or a Dodgers fan.  I didn’t want to be an everybody, so when, in 1962, New York was granted an expansion franchise, I decided I’d pull for the new New York Metropolitans. Their uniforms were old school and even recalled the two teams that had departed five years before: blue coming from the old Brooklyn Dodgers and orange from the Giants.  

Fast forward seven years and I’m a senior in high school laboring all the while with cellar dwelling Mets.  Only once in their entire existence had they not finished last in National League East.  Occasionally, I’d wear a blue and orange sweater my mother had knitted – one with the word “Mets” scripted on the front and back, only backwards on the back so I could see it when I backed up to a mirror.  I suspect that my choice of this attire had much to do with my lack of dating prowess as a teen.

During that senior year, a young Mr. Ken Miller, was my Civics teacher (they taught Civics back then – and they still do, Frank Zappa).  Mr. Miller had, at one time, roomed with Tug McGraw.  Country heart-throb Tim, Tug’s son, probably hadn’t been born yet when Ken and Tug played for the Buffalo Bisons, the Mets’ AAA affiliate.  (Or maybe it was the Binghamton Mets in AA.) Tug, with his tick-tock wind-up would become a go-to reliever with a team former manager Casey Stengel called “Amazing.” 

Ken would go on to teach high school civics.

In late September, the Mets were locked in a grueling – and, yes, Amazing! – divisional race with their rivals the Chicago Cubs who had been in first place for 156 games.  With a week left to go, the Mets were a few games out of first but within striking distance and the Cubs’ gas tank was near empty.  That week, each day before first period, I snuck into Mr. Miller’s classroom and chalked a headline onto the board.  The next morning, whatever comment I written the day before would be dutifully erased by the night custodian.  The last Friday before the end of the season, I pulled on my sweater, snuck into the room and wrote: “Mets Cop 1^st from Fading Cubs!” Mr. Miller looked from his desk – surprising me – and said, “Well, if it isn’t Mr. Met.”  Then he walked over to the board and scribbled the word “save” next to my headline. 

It was a good long time before that corner of the chalk board was erased.  Certainly, it was up there the night Tug McGraw and a bunch of Ken Miller’s former pals whooped it up on the pitcher’s mount at Shea after a decisive and historic game 5.  

I shipped the sweater off to the Mets organization because I knew I didn’t need it any longer, though I didn’t tell Mom. Tug McGraw went on to pitch for the Phillies and Ken, I think, moved from the classroom into administration.  

Since my encounter on the trail, I’ve thought about the ’69 Mets some, but I’ve thought a lot more about Ken Miller and the countless other Chico teachers who, in spite of my geekiness, helped me to become.

And as my teacher buddies enter the 2019-20 school year, I, again, offer my admiration and encouragement to the many who, like Ken Miller, will help our young people to become.

© 2019

Church of the Open Road Press

SUMMITTING BEARTOOTH PASS ON A ROYAL ENFIELD HIMALAYAN

This one is not to be missed!

The task was daunting.  Ride my Yamaha Super Tenere from California to Red Lodge, Montana, cross the glorious Beartooth Pass and return home all within seven days.  Or…

...Rocky Mountain Motos is a new (circa 2019) Red Lodge outfit that rents motorcycles – but not Harleys or BMWs or any of a number of other major makes.  No, owner Richard Barnett has a half dozen new Royal Enfield Himalayans to let at a very reasonable price.  Intrigued, I e-mailed: “Would a 24.5 horsepower mount haul my 220+ pound carcass over an 11,000-foot pass?”  

“You’d be amazed.”

We’ll see.

Beartooth Pass is recognized as one of America’s great scenic motor-routes.  Having done it once on a GSA, I was eager accompany my riding buddy on his first ascent.  I picked up the black RE and took an orientation spin up out Montana Route 78 toward Roscoe.  Finding a graded, gravel secondary road, I tooled over washboards mightily impressed  with how effectively those bumps were absorbed by the little machine’s suspension.

Regaining pavement as I circled back toward Red Lodge, I opened the throttle and easily achieved 65+ miles per hour.  Then came a rise in the pavement.  Here I discovered that 410cc Royal Enfield will go 65 mph and it will go uphill, but it won’t necessarily do both at the same time.  At least, not when carting me around.  The true test would be tomorrow.

Montana Route 212 out of Red Lodge is a predominately uphill run for about 35 miles.  But it is not an autobahn speed route.  Guide books tell us to plan on at least three hours for the 63 miles from Red Lodge to Cooke City near Yellowstone’s northern gate.  I did some mental math.  I’ll do fine on the Himalayan.

The highway quickly climbs out of Rock Creek Canyon.  Looking west, the “U” shape of the valley below and sharp, saw-toothed aretes on the horizon verify the canyon’s rugged history of glaciation.  Carving the switchbacks up this canyon wall using only 1936 era prowess… er… dynamite, must have been a monumental effort.

Pausing at a viewpoint/rest stop about 18 miles in, I encounter my first “issue” with the Royal Enfield: everybody wants to ask me about it!  Even those on big V-twin cruisers.  I tell ‘em it’s a rental but that I’m really smitten with it.  

Then, just before I thumb the starter, I warn the crowd to stand back because “this thing’s gonna make a little noise.”  They cautiously back away as the motor putters to life.

The highway leads us through several forest zones from cottonwoods and oaks at the bottom to alpine meadows carpeted with July-spring wildflowers and blotched with snow.  From top of the Beartooth Plateau strings of paternoster lakes reveal where glaciers crept down the mountain pushing debris, then melted back, only to push down again, though not as far.  Four, five and even six icy ponds may be found in any of the canyons carved into the plateau.  

At the summit, a marvelous skyscape of fair-weather clouds is almost close enough to touch and although this isn’t Iowa (apologies to ‘Field of Dreams’ fans) it does feel a lot like heaven.

West of Beartooth rest the Absaroka Mountains, a collection of volcanic peaks and fields that invite further exploration.  At our feet, the highway (now in Wyoming) lays before us like a ribbon just torn from a holiday present, twisting past outcrops and shallow lakes and acres of green meadow grass that may never see summer.

Automobiles snake along, motorcycle rumbles are lifted by the breeze and every half-mile or so, there’s a turn out for pictures.

Lunch would be in Cooke City where I come across that same group of bikers from two hours before.  Sheetmetal workers, it turns out, from New Jersey and Pennsylvania.  Their boss, himself a rider, organizes an annual trip, stuffs a dozen motorcycles and a bunch of gear into the company semi and leads the group to someplace challenging and beautiful for a week.  I wanna work for that guy.

We have a choice for our return: take the Chief Joseph highway, Wyoming 296 to Cody and loop back to Red Lodge or retrace our steps over the pass.  Given that every road driven the other direction is a different experience, we head back over the pass.

The long descent from the summit is a relaxed unfolding of light and shadow, rock and wildflower and waves from oncoming riders.  The Royal Enfield hums along and I realize I’m having just as great an adventure on this little machine as I had on the big BMW years ago.

Pausing for a second time at the rest area, and again getting caught up in conversation, I find myself with two wishes: One, that this ride could go on forever and two, that a Royal Enfield Himalayan might one day end up in my garage.

Had I been amazed?

Boy Howdy!

o0o

Note:  Rocky Mountain Motos is run by enthusiast Richard Barnett.  Each in his collection of Royal Enfields runs flawlessly and possess all the power, nimbleness and durability needed to explore this section of the Rockies with confidence. Richard knows the area and can point customers in the right direction.  (There may be no wrong direction, come to think of it). If one is pressed for time – or even if one is not – the Himalayan experience is too good to pass up.  Check Rocky Mountain Motos out at  https://www.rockymountainmotos.com

© 2019

Church of the Open Road Press

VENTURING OUT TO BLOODY ROCK

A tale of either or

My transgression this day would be nothing compared to those visited upon this place a century and a half ago. The Bloody Rock trail is closed: I hiked on it anyway.

The Eel River commands the third largest river drainage in all of California.  Several Native American groups called specific tracts of this remote, beautiful and largely overlooked region of the Coast Range home.  Skirmishes and scuffles broke out from time to time, but rarely, historians report, were casualties massive.  Issues related to territory developed only after European settlers found value in grasses for grazing cattle and sheep; and that damned gold a bit further north.

A trail guide informs me that the Bloody Rock trail is a 2.4-mile path linking the parking spot on 20N01 to a wide and cool Eel River.  

Initially, the trail is a poorly used slit in a huge field of knee-high wild oat – it’s officially closed, after all.  The seeds and stickers of these grasses lodge in my long pants.  

Into and out of a stream course, I venture into the northern-most scar of last year’s Ranch Fire – the largest, acreage-wise, in California history.  While I’m seeing the footprints of other transgressors who ignored the trail closure, I’m not seeing the outcrop.  I’d read that the rock itself is a mere .5 mile from the trail head. Some 45 minutes on and descending to where I could hear the rapids of the Eel, I realized I’d missed a stitch along the way.  

Mounting a hill, off-trail, I gain a view of the river canyon and see a rock outcropping, but at only about 20 of 30 feet in height – a jumper might end up with some bruises or broken a leg – it doesn’t look like my quarry.  

Backtracking, I figure I’ll need to engage in further book-learning and come back another time.  Cresting a rise and looking through the scorched brush and naked oaks, a basaltic monolith appears to jut out from the edge of the ridge a few hundred yards west.  I clamber off-trail to get a better view: Aha! Bloody Rock, just as it appeared in some old-time photos.

There’s a rugged little stream course between me and the rock; along with a field choked with wild oat and dense with spiny thickets eager to rip at my clothing and flesh.  The fire-scarred ground beneath my feet is pocked with holes in which once grew oaks and digger pines; their stumps reduced to ash even well below the surface.  Each hole is an ankle waiting to be twisted and I’ve only got two ankles.  I’m hiking alone and it’s a mile back to the Subaru. This is why the Forest Service wisely closed the area.

Enough people died in these parts, I reckon, and after a couple of snapshots, I resume the trail and find my way back to the road. Any spur leading to the top of Bloody Rock must have been obscured with weeds, thus invisible to passers-by such as myself.  My exploration was not a failure, this day, but it wasn’t a great success, either. I’ll return some spring when the trail is open, the grass green and the temps more moderate.

The story of Bloody Rock is this: In the fall or winter of 1859, deep in Eel River territory, a group of Yuki – self-exiled from the Round Valley Reservation – tried to befriend and enlist their ancestral foes, the Pomo, in common cause against what was perceived to be a bigger threat: the influx of whites.  The Pomo rebuffed the offer and, in turn, shared their chumaia (enemies’) plans with the European settlers.  The Americans sought to quell this insurrection and, according to Stephen Powers (1873?), chased the band the over the hills and through the Eel’s canyon, killing many.  A group of 30 or 40 (some say about 65) took refuge atop a basaltic promontory overlooking the river.  A dozen or so settlers cut off the Yuki’s retreat and… 

“…Hemmed in on one side, headed off on another, half-crazed by sleepless nights and days of terror, the fleeing ‘savages’ did a thing that was little short of madness…”. They were offered three alternatives: “Either continue to fight and be picked off one by one, continue to truce, return to Round Valley and perish from hunger, or lock hands and leap down off the bowlder [sic]”

“They advanced to the brow of the mighty bowlder, joined hands together, then commenced their death song…” ultimately, “with one sharp cry of strong and grim human suffering,” leapt down to their death.

Source: Stephen A Powers, The Tribes of California, 

originally published 1876 (?), page 138.

Quoted in: Frank Baumgardner Killing for Land in Early California, 

Algora Publishing, 2006, page 259-60;

 (out of print, but available to the persistent)

While websites such as Find a Grave suggest that “many years later the bones of the Indians were still in evidence at the bottom of Bloody Rock,” some others – archeologists and paleontologists – report that no such remains were ever found.  It is known that none of these Yuki ever returned to the reservation at Round Valley leading to one of two conclusions. Either:

a)   The Natives chose the course of the “noble savage” [that term from Powers] and engaged in mass suicide, or

b)  The people were coaxed down from the rock and executed at various, undisclosed locations throughout the wilds of the Eel.

The former offers good theater; the latter, an example of how a culture of superior weaponry and technology can overwhelm and eradicate a culture with lesser tools. *  

Notes: 

The Church of the Open Road discourages folks from hiking on closed trails.  I shouldn’t have engaged in this activity.

Although I chose to take the Subaru, the Mendocino National Forest maintains miles of delightful dual-sport and/or adventure touring roads: nicely graded, wide, gorgeous views and little traveled.  Next time I’m bringing Enrico, the Yamaha.

Here is a link to a Bloody Rock Trail guide:    https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/california/bloody-rock-trail  Their “getting there” tab serves as my “Today’s Route.”

Here is a link to the “Find a Grave” listing of Bloody Rock:    https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/104167874/65_yuki_indians-killed_at_bloody_rock

*  This little journey prompted me to ask myself: As human history repeats and repeats itself, is it any wonder that countries like Iran and North Korea seek membership in the club of nations armed with nuclear weaponry?

© 2019

Church of the Open Road Press