FOREST ROADS AND FIRE TRAILS

 …the urge to explore continues…

 

After calisthenics we were told to jog from the old gym out to Warner Street, tag the fence and run back.  “That’d be about a half a mile,” Coach McDonald said.  I didn’t much care for jogging – still don’t – but did enjoy the run back.  Over the roof line of

Chico High’s gymnasium I could see the foothills and the mountains where the Sierra and the Cascade met.  Feather River country.  In the fall, those far away hills were streaked with the color of changing leaves.  In the winter, cloaked with snow.  Spring would bring a greenness that highlighted the roads scratched through the forests and meadows and into the high country.  Roads I so wanted to explore.

 

A seven horsepower Honda Trail 90 served as the Golden Hind I’d use to discover the world in my geographical back yard.  Endless summer days were spent putt-putting along forest highways and fire roads in the Plumas and Lassen National forests.  Each day I’d turn at a junction just to see where the dirt track led, and when darkness gathered, I’d make note of the routes I hadn’t opted for and promised to do them next time, perhaps as soon as tomorrow.

 

Fifty years have passed since those days jogging back to the old gym and mind-wandering about the adventure of an unexplored forest road.  But the fantasy still exists.  

 

No longer living in Chico – we’ve enjoyed several interim addresses – now I find myself in a small berg in California’s Alexander Valley toward the northern reach of the Russian River.  Looking across to the hills, I can easily see routes and trails carved into the chemise and woodlands of the Mayacamas east of town.  Standing in the driveway after having picked up the morning paper, my gaze toward the rising sun transports me back to those high school days when I wondered, “Where does that one go?”

 

 

A paved route called the Hopland Grade traverses the Mayacamas north of us.  We’ve driven it several times.  Like a carnival ride at Disneyland, several signs warn that

if your vehicle is longer than this length, you are prohibited from the route.  Hopland Grade is windy, steep and not quick.  Great fun on a Ducati Monster, not so much on or in anything else.  Near the base of the mountains we choose an intersection with the primitive The Old Toll Road.  Winding along the east side of the Sanal Valley, past industrial strength wine vineyards, the crumbly asphalt soon snakes into the hills, over and back over a seasonal creek, and through stands of black and live oak and madrone. 

Hog wire and rotted-post fences trace the road’s edge. There’s even a point where a metal gate appears – one that if one passed through it, one would soon be hurtling over a cliff.  Pavement gone, the surface is graded to a certain extent, washboarded some and dotted with puddles from a two-nights ago late-autumn storm.  The Subaru takes this road is stride.  As did the Yamaha Super Tenere the other time I was up here.  But something makes me long for my old Trail 90.

 

The map tells us that atop the spine of the Mayacamas we’ll find Adobe Creek Road, and we do.  The trouble is that at the intersection with Old Toll, Adobe Creek is gated allowing access only to the rancher with the appropriate key – and Cal Fire folks, too, I assume these days.  I suspect the secured road is one I might see from my driveway, several crow-fly miles to the southwest.  We had hoped to head south and join up with Pine Mountain Road which loops back to the Alexander Valley, but that won’t be the case today – if ever.  Ahead a bit, Adobe Creek Road will take us north affording a view of Clear Lake to the east.  At several minor junctions, each fire road is gated and locked. I’m beginning to get the picture that, unlike in our national forests, a lot of these roads-begging-for-exploration are closed to lookie-loos like me.  In these lands of steep hills and dry brush, I can’t fathom what a landowner might be securing behind these barriers – cattle surely wouldn’t do well amongst these thickets and I’m sure there are easier places to grow pot now that it’s legal. 

 The map tells us that Adobe Creek Road traces the line between Mendocino and Lake counties, and that six or seven miles north, we’ll intersect with the Hopland Grade – which we would have had not another damned gate barred our way about three-quarters of a mile on.  Here, we course east on Highland Springs Road, a Lake County thoroughfare that winds down the lee side of the Mayacamas.  The trees are more sparse on this side of the summit and those that dot the hillsides are primarily blue or valley oak.   The road is wider and far less steep owing to the fact that the rains that tear away at these mountains are more prevalent on the other side.  

 

Twenty minutes further we arrive at a lovely – but rather primitive Lake County public park.  Centered on Highland Springs Reservoir is a rod and gun club, an extensive Frisbee golf set up, tons of picnic spots and a four-mile trail that winds up the canyon then circles around the lake.  Edward the lab-mix was ready for a walk and so were we.  Up the draw, the woods are silent, dark and deep and frost (though not Robert Frost) still glazes the mid-day ground in the shaded areas.  

Gray squirrels leap from branch to branch, taunting the dog, and a lovely pink and brown salamander wriggles across the trail barely escaping my footfall.  Tracking back to the lake, great egrets wade the shore waters, redwing blackbirds flitter amongst the rushes and osprey and red tails circle overhead.  Mallards and coots discuss the problems of their world as they paddle across the surface.  We wish we’d packed a lunch. Edward wishes we’d packed a Frisbee.

 

Our exploration of the enchanting back roads and dirt tracks seen from the house wasn’t exactly a bust as we learned a lot about the lay of the land.  Clement Salvatore, until recently an entertaining and insightful staple at Rider Magazine, shares that there are at least ten times as many miles of dirt road as there are paved this side of the hundredth meridian.  I wouldn’t disagree.  But many of those miles of roads are unobtainable because they cross privately held stretches of heaven.

 

Still, there is much to explore.  Perhaps again tomorrow?

 

 

There are times when I haven’t been out much on the big Yamaha that I think about a different – smaller, lighter two-wheeler.  My range of interest goes frothe adorable Vespa 300 HPE to the spartan Royal Enfield Himalayan to the newly re-issued Honda CT 125, a descendent of my old Trail 90.  Likewise, I sometimes think the Subaru Forester is a bit stodgy and wouldn’t I prefer a Mini Cooper Convertible or maybe a rugged Jeep Wrangler forgetting what a nightmare my 1990 Wrangler turned out to be.

But, for exploring the high and lost fire roads of Sonoma, Mendocino, and Lake Counties, and for getting me safely (read: “at highway speed”) to and from those dirt roads, it’s tough to beat the two vehicles I have.  Dependable, economical, rugged and fairly comfortable, I recall that many times when I’ve answered the siren song of something more stylish, I’ve been disappointed with the result.  Reference here – along with that Jeep – my short-lived but gorgeous Triumph Thunderbird.

 

Then there’s this unavoidable positive: Both the Yamaha and the Subaru are paid for. 

 

 

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Church of the Open Road Press