SUMMITING CISCO BUTTE

Courtesy: T R Stewart

In the comic thriller, The Curious Demise of Pug LeBreaux, protagonists Stephen and Jane Meyer hopscotch from public to private to public land while climbing Cisco Butte near Interstate 80.  A helicopter pilot (hopefully played by Tommy Lee Jones in the movie) has spotted them traversing real estate supposedly closed off to the public.  He sets down and they are immediately detained.

Brother Tim and I decided to test the premise of the novel by scaling that same basaltic dome.  Having examined a few sources, we found – as did Stephen and Jane – that a marked route to the summit crossed sections printed in white (privately held) and sections printed in green (public) on the map.  A long time ago, I recall that someone in a gray-green uniform, wearing a badge representing either state or federal authorities quietly confided to me: “As long as you stay on the marked roadway, you should be okay.”  [Stephen Meyer had heard the same thing I’d heard regarding access.  Apparently the fellow in the helicopter and the folks he worked for, had not.]

A brief stop at the gate to a nationally franchised private campground, and checking with the “ranger” there, told us something a bit different.  “If it was before the end of October, I could have you pay a fee and you could head through the campground, but we’re closed right now, ‘cept for members.”  Then he added, “The guy who owns the property on t’other side is kinda nasty, so you prob’ly wouldn’t be able to get up there anyway.”

With a degree of dejection similar to Arlo Guthrie looking for another place to dump his half a ton of Thanksgiving garbage some fifty-plus years ago, we sought an alternate trailhead.  We came to the side of a side road where a steep and rocky Jeep trail…

…noted on the USGS map, seemed to lead us in the right direction.  Coincidentally, the map also indicated that on top of Cisco Butte, along with a couple of microwave towers, there was an historic airway beacon.

The Sierra Nevada is checkerboarded with square miles (or sections) of both private and public land.  This circumstance dates back to the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad when, as incentive toward its construction, the government offered a square mile on alternating sides of the right-of-way to be used for the procurement of materials necessary to build the line: timber and ballast. 

(c) Howell North Books

Through a bit of skullduggery, the railroad men were able to claim more than one section for each mile of track laid.  The result is that sites for towns and private campgrounds, grazing land and hydroelectric facilities would ultimately be sold to folks, enriching the coffers of the Southern (nee: Central) Pacific.  Those of us who like to explore the mountains would ultimately need to be cognizant of where we set foot. 

We heeded this sign.

On the Tahoe National Forest map, the entirety of Cisco Butte’s summit is within a green-tinted (public) section.  Signs on either side of the Jeep trail indicate that the land through which we were crossing was not.  Still, if we didn’t stray, we’d be okay.  We hoped.

Our forestlands are crisscrossed with once-graded roadways. Some lead to forgotten somewheres like gold mines, cattle camps, timber yarding areas or pioneer graves.  Others provide access to power lines for inspection and service.  It turns out, that “kinda nasty guy” owning property up this way might well be named “Pacific Gas and Electric.”  (I don’t know, but because I enjoy heat and light now and then, I kind of like PG&E.)

Using the GPS feature of Brother Tim’s Smarter-than-I-phone, we were able to wind about two miles through forest floors, 

beside paternoster lakes and ponds, and across stretches of granite to intersect with the road that had run through the closed-for-winter campground.  

The last half-mile spirals to the top of the black basaltic bluff past a facility maintained by a multi-national telecommunications provider, a solar powered weather station and…

…finally, to a pair of towers sporting those elliptical antennas that allow calls to travel from point A to point X without wires.  It’s pretty clear why “they” don’t want a bunch of yahoos traipsing around these parts.

Atop the butte, the view is 360 degrees.  Such is generally the case where an airmail beacon was placed in the 1920s or 30s.

Those beacons were planted on huge concrete arrows so that airmail pilots could navigate west to east and back again.  They still exist in Nevada and eastward.  However, in California, at the dawn of World War II, they were obliterated. 

This was done to prevent an overzealous Japanese pilot from wandering into our country’s midsection to, perhaps, strafe Salt Lake City or Omaha or Dubuque.  Our hiking companion sits atop the beacon’s arrow’s crumbling remains.

From our vantage point at 6600 feet, we see the freeway running east and west to our north while a recently snow capped Sierra crest gleams in the low November sun.

(c) Howell North Books

The Union Pacific now owns the old trans-Sierra route.  As we reach the summit, a trio of monster locomotives tugs a mile and a half of freight cars through a century-old snowshed.  The roar of their engines echoes throughout the canyons and hillsides as they have echoed for over 100 years.

Courtesty T R Stewart

While enjoying the sandwich I packed, I gaze west and, over the interceding ridges and lakes, enjoy a view of the far-off Sacramento Valley, all the while, hoping that some Tommy Lee Jones look-alike doesn’t spot me from the air.

o0o

Notes and Resources: 

The Arlo Guthrie reference regards his counter-culture epic “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree.” (Warner Bros., 1967) Folks of a certain age will recall.

A previous post regarding historic airway beacons may be accessed at: http://thechurchoftheopenroad.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-forgotten-arrows-of-early-air-mail.html

o0o

Special Note:  The Church of the Open Road in no way suggests, sanctions or encourages trespass onto private property.  The Church believes the property rights deserve and demand our respect.  Therefore, on the off chance that the long ago advice received relative to crossing through private property on an established road is bogus, the Church will forego specific directions to this locale.  Savvy readers can look it up, anyway.

© 2015

Church of the Open Road Press

ANOTHER VISIT WITH “POMP” CHARBONNEAU

How close we are to our distant past…

Jean Baptiste Charbonneau was the child carried by Sacagawea across the span of the continent while accompanying Lewis and Clark in 1804-06.  Captain William Clark is said to have nicknamed him “Pompy” or “Pomp.”  We learned about him as grade school kids, remember?

[Note:  Clicking on any image accompanying this post will enlarge the photo and render most print therein, readable.  It might be worth doing.]

In May, a few years ago, I found myself at Pomp’s resting place at Inskip Ranch on the Owyhee River near Danner, Oregon.  There, he’d fallen from a horse, taken ill and died at age about my current age: 61.  He was en route to the Idaho/Montana gold mines. 

Later that summer, I visited Fort Clatsop, the spot on the Oregon coast where Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery wintered with Sacagawea and her son in 1805.

Curious about the man this child had become, I did what all great students of history do:  I Googled his name.

While crossing the continent to find the Pacific Ocean was a spectacular discovery, what I found was pretty neat as well.  Charbonneau spent about a dozen years rooting for gold at a sinister sounding place called Murderers Bar and clerking at an Auburn  hotel - both within a day’s walk of my suburban Placer County home. http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?MarkerID=44067

A favorite area walk has been following the grade of the old railroad past the confluence of the north and middle forks of the American River to the Mountain Quarries limestone quarry. 

Along the route, the Mountain Quarries Railroad Bridge, built in 1911, was the longest concrete railroad bridge in the world at the time. 

A mere half-mile beyond, the USGS has located Murderer’s Bar.  The pin is on the south side of the Middle Fork. What may be a rather conflated story about an incident at Murderer’s Bar - perhaps prompting its place name - is shared by the Seaside (OR) Historical Society Museum http://seasidemuseum.org/murdersbar.cfm. Locals share that Charbonneau may have established a hostelry or way station here with, perhaps, James Beckwourth. 

Hiking past the quarry and scrambling through thickets and over boulders, a concrete post (probably from the quarrying era) is found here…

...and a bedspring (perhaps from the hostelry?) there…

...but not a lot of flat ground for any type of establishment.  Perhaps it is lost to the slagheap from the limestone quarry. 

Still, I can’t shake the feeling that I am walking in Pomp’s footsteps.  I go home happy.

Months later, I am exploring Mammoth Bar, a spot on the north side of the Middle Fork. 

Annotated photo. Click to enlarge. 

Located in the Auburn State Recreation Area, several old trails and roads once frequented by miners, foresters, squatters and those just passing through are now enjoyed by mountain bikers, equestrians and hikers.  They are well marked. 

Halfway down the paved stretch to Mammoth Bar is a sign indicates a trail leads to Murderers Bar.

The several hundred yard walk is much easier – no thickets or boulders - leading to a sweeping, gradual slope on the depositional side of the river's curve, much more suitable for building a rustic townsite.

A survey of the lay of the land just a few feet about river level indicated crude foundations and a bit of land leveling may have taken place a century or more ago.

Rusted detritus from those earlier days protrude from rocks along the river’s edge. 

The Middle Fork provides a springtime soundtrack is quite pleasant.  The pooling water, on a warmer day – and there are many quite-a-bit warmer days in summer – invites a swim.  Fishing trails lead both up and down stream until blocked by rocky bluffs.

Not a bad place for Pomp to reside for a while, pan for color and help out his fellow Argonauts.  

I clocked the distance from Murderers Bar to home.  Eighteen miles and change. 

On that journey home, the grade-school boy in me realized: I’d hung out where Jean Baptiste Charbonneau had hung out.  I’d walked where he’d walked.  I was only, like, two or three degrees of separation from him, from Lewis and Clark and another degree from Thomas Jefferson!

Then I did something no legitimate seeker of truth might do.  I checked Wikipedia.  Here I discovered that “Charbonneau lived at a site known as Secret Ravine, one of 12 ravines around Auburn.”  Secret Ravine runs just behind our house.

Well hell!  I think.  I probably cross Pompy's footsteps just gettin' to the mailbox.

o0o

Additional Resources: 

The previous Church of the Open Road entry about Pomp Charbonneau may be found here: http://thechurchoftheopenroad.blogspot.com/2013/05/pomps-circumstance-locating-jean.html

About the life of Pomp Charbonneau and some folk’s belief about his impact on Oregon history, please see: http://www.offbeatoregon.com/o1107d-life-of-sacagaweas-mountain-man-son-charbonneau-tantalizing-mystery.html

Under the heading “Who was Jean Baptiste Charbonneau?” the lewisandclark.com omit specific mention of his time in California’s Gold Country or his life on the American River: http://www.lewisandclark.com/facts/factspompy.html

Thankfully, the Placer County Historical Society fills in some gaps with this: http://www.placercountyhistoricalsociety.org/histories.htm
(Note: To navigate the PCHS site, in the left hand column, you'll need to click on the word "Charbonneau.")

Auburn State Recreation Area Trail Information: http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=1345

© 2015

Church of the Open Road Press

A THOUSAND TINY LAKES

Common “Church of the Open Road” Question:

Where do you suppose that goes?

Best Possible Answer:

I don’t know.  Let’s find out.

We knew we wanted to get to the high country.  We just didn’t know quite where.  We perused one of the Church of the Open Road’s bibles:  DeLorme’s California Atlas and Gazetteer, but with an overwhelming number of options, we simply drove.

Let’s find a lookout, came the suggestion.  There’re always good views from lookouts.  Duh.

Grouse Ridge is a lesser-traveled area in the Tahoe National Forest.  The lookout perched there affords a 360 degree panorama that includes the Coast Range and Sutter Buttes to the west, the Sierra Buttes to the north, the Crystal Range rimming Lake Tahoe to the south east and ridge upon ridge of rugged granite and basalt in between.

Dotted here and there like remnants of God’s tears are tiny puddles, pools and lakes.  You see thousands of them as you fly east out of Sacramento on your way to Chicago or Denver.

Walking down from the trailhead – the problem with any trailhead at the top of a mountain is that you know it will be an arduous up hill getting back to the vehicle – a careful survey through the twisted pines, one sees a blue diamond here and a turquoise one there.

A trail forks off to the right.  Where do you suppose that goes?  I don’t know.  Let’s find out.

Ten minutes on, we arrive a jewel surrounded by granite but curiously sporting a bathtub ring. 

Circling, we find that someone, at some time, felt that industry downstream would be enhanced by governing the flow of water out of this lake.  A dam was constructed.

By regulating the flow, the hydraulic miners of the 1870s could use the power of falling water to blast the overburden off the gold deposits on the Yuba drainage year round. 

Wading through pine mat Manzanita and scaling some granite slopes we come to a view of the Sierra’s crest, but at our feet lay another lake.  Tiptoeing down to it, we circle to where its outlet courses through broken rock and duff.  A few yards further down stream: another pool.

Geographers call these paternoster lakes.  As glaciers scoured round-bottomed canyons, they pushed in front of them cubic yards of rock and dirt and overburden.  When the weather warmed, the ice retreated.  At the endpoint of its descent, the stuff pushed ahead of the ice formed a dam or a terminal moraine behind which a pond formed.  As the cycle repeated, if the ice didn’t flow quite as far down the course, another moraine was formed upstream from the first.  And, along with it, another little lake.  

The high Sierra is ribboned with these strings of lakes.  Some have, by this time some 10,000 years hence, silted in to form meadows, which, in late August, are quite dry. 

Some still rest as clear, cold opalescent gems inviting a wade or a swim.  Each makes a delightful end point for a day hike or an overnighter.

Over any granite rise, as we boulder hop here and there, we might find another little lake and several of her sisters.

Intersecting an established trail, we follow it easterly about three high-country miles to a named lake.

Pines and Manzanita take roothold wherever possible along the shore. 

Granite forming the opposite side thrusts upward. Chunks broken free had tumbled down the steep embankment showing us that nature wasn't quite finished forming the Sierra.

We wore ourselves out this day.  We wore out the dogs, too.  That last two hundred yards up to the parking area damned near did us in.  But in the sound night’s sleep that followed, a videotape of what heaven must be like played in an endless loop.

o0o

Today’s Route: 

From Sacramento east on I-80; West on CA 20; Right turn onto Bowman Lake Road.  (Check out the Sierra Discovery Trail about a mile in.)  After eight miles, right on Grouse Ridge Road; Six miles of quite passable dirt to parking area.  Return:  Retrace route to CA 20 then west to Nevada City/Grass Valley, Auburn and I-80.

Resources:

Sierra Nevada Natural History by Tracy Storer and Robert Usinger.  (I’m on my third or fourth copy.)  University of California Press.

DeLorme’s California Atlas and Gazetteer.  Complete set of topographic maps for the entire state.  DeLorme has a volume for most states.

© 2014

Church of the Open Road Press