January 3 (1981, 1989, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2008)
Big Valley Bluff ~ More on the “Blasted Trail”

January 3, 2021

Several holes, dug through the duff by one of the resident critters... was it fungi or insects it was after? Is this why I am not finding mushrooms in this area? Yep, probably.


1/3/81   Way before dawn... went to the Bluff* yesterday and hiked down to the edge of the canyon. McClungs, anxious about heights, stayed above. I got hungry for quartz crystals and climbed down the cliff in search of quartz veins; I found many veins but few crystals. Clouds came in while we were there. We left after an hour or so.

It sprinkled lightly last night, the first precipitation in weeks. Incredible weather most of December—sunny, over 70° in the day, above 40° at night.”

[Russell Towle's journal]


*The "Bluff" is Big Valley Bluff, a point on the north rim of the North Fork canyon west of Snow Mountain. It is quite unusual to have been able to visit that spot on January 2nd, since the access road would normally be long blocked with snow by this mid-winter date, being over 6000' elevation. The warm, sunny December he describes in the second paragraph explains how it could be.

View to the east from the Bluff
(Click to enlarge)

View to the west from the Bluff
(Click to enlarge)

View south across to Tadpole Canyon
Straight down over "Falcon Perch" high above the river
Taken August 2, 2008, after the "American Fire" finally died out, from the Iowa Hill Ditch trail near the head of Tadpole Canyon, looking north across the North Fork to Big Valley Bluffthe highest point on the right.
(Click to enlarge)


January the 3rd, 1989

[...]

I cried while skiing up the meadow and out from my cabin today. It really seemed like good-bye. The water line is frozen, pipes are broken inside the bathroom wall, it is all a mess and a clutter and a thousand memories of so many many prayers for someone to share that incredible beauty with. So many unanswered prayers. And there comes a point when it is just too much, it has gone entirely too far, and yet the sun lights it all up as always and I cry to think of so much loneliness. It is so less than fair. Then for my father to move out there. It's over. I'm gone; if I am seen around here now, it is only my ghost. I'm out of here.

Or so I say.

The sun sets, after another clear day, so blessed after too many storms.

[...]

[Russell Towle's journal]


Date: Fri, 3 Jan 2003 08:39:41-0800
To: North_Fork_Trails
From: Russell Towle
Subject: Blasted Trail? Uhhh ... No!!!!

Hi all,

Terry Davis of the Sierra Club wrote, of Supervisor Rex Bloomfield's proposed Capitol-to-Capitol Trail,
"Bill & Russell & others, I've been horrified by Rex's trail concept ever since he started talking about it a couple of years ago. Wide, even grade, close to the river. He refused to even talk about using existing trails. He seemed to have in mind a mini super-highway, off limits only to motorized vehicles. I think that the Sierra Club, PARC, CNPS, Audubon all need to make it clear that we will not support the trail he has in mind—can you imagine blasting through the Giant Gap and the Royal Gorge? I wouldn't be so sure it's an impossible dream. Once the EIS/EIR is approved by the agencies, the grants will just roll in. We need to strategize on stopping, or modifying, this atrocity. I hate to wait until the environmental docs are out. We need to make this controversial now. Terry"
Now, others on this list have made some inquiries, and been assured by people involved in the actual planning of the trail, that:

1. It will not go through the Royal Gorge.
2. Its actual course has yet to be determined.

Hmmm. Then why did the map in the Bee article show it going right up the river?

I agree with Terry, we need to figure out how to stop this trail.

One thing we can do right now is let District Five Supervisor Rex Bloomfield know we are opposed. Perhaps the simplest message would be, "no new trail in the North Fork American canyon." That is least open to misinterpretation. His email address is:

Rex Bloomfield [no longer relevant]

He gets all these "North Fork Trails" email list messages anyway.

Cheers,

Russell Towle


Date: Fri, 3 Jan 2003 11:20:12 -0800
To: Deane_Swickard
From: Russell Towle
Subject: Re: Blasted Trail? Uhhh ... No!!!!
Cc: North_Fork_Trails


Hi Deane (Deane Swickard, Area Manager, Folsom Area, BLM),

Thanks for your reply, in which you wrote,
>
>Relax, there is no way a trail is going to be blasted up the North Fork
>American.
>
> First, it will never pass muster on environmental grounds.  It's
>inconsistent with wild river management.  There will be no blasting a trail
>along BLM or Forest Service land in the wild river corridor.  Since most of
>the river is publically owned from 1000ft above the Iowa Hill Bridge
>eastward, a trail within a quarter mile of the river doesn't have a prayer.
Yes, this seems only what good sense would imply.
>Rex has good intentions.  Trails are very popular and there is need for new
>trails throughout the state.  In this case, he seems limited a bit by his
>knowledge of the geography, the protections afforded wild rivers and the
>difficulty and cost of trail building in steep terrain.
Yes, Rex has good intentions. But the Road to Hell should by no means proceed up the North Fork of the American River!

Although it seems to me that no new trail would be allowed to be constructed within the North Fork American Wild & Scenic River corridor, nor, for that matter, within the canyon at large, this idea has been kicking around for a few years now, has not gone away, and in fact, has attracted a grant of $1.5 million from the CA Resources Agency, and a grant of $400,000 from the Placer Legacy.

It could be that Tahoe National Forest District Ranger Rich Johnson, of the Foresthill Ranger District, has provided encouragement to Rex Bloomfield, about the prospects for building a new trail, suitable for horses and mountain bikes, up the river, within Tahoe National Forest. For, Rich Johnson has said to me personally that he envisions opening up a trail from Mumford Bar, downstream to Italian Bar. Such a trail, I believe, existed in the 19th century, since I seem to recall that, in his diary, I.T. Coffin records going from Italian Bar up to Mumford Bar in 1863, along the river, which would be quite a strenuous exercise without some kind of trail to follow.

So, in this one reach of the river, it could be maintained that a trail already exists.

Similarly for the reach from Euchre Bar, upstream to Italian Bar.

I have been scouting out some of these old trails, now abandoned, but hesitate to bring them to the attention of Tahoe National Forest, lest they become mountain bike trails. I have about had it with mountain bikes in the North Fork American, especially within the Wild & Scenic River corridor.

Thanks again for your remarks, which tend to quiet my extreme terror.

All the best,

Russell Towle


January 2 (1977, 1981, 1984, 1985, 1987, 2006, 2007)
Miscellany

1/2/77   well. a rainy day here in the sierra, clouds right here upon us, winds, a real storm. the Big Window is in, lynn and steve and steve helped me.

seeing the big window in has inspired me, i would like to have the time and money to finish it right away, the cabin i mean. but i don't. should go down to año nuevo soon—pescadero rather—and get back to work.”

Russell Towle's journal


1/2/81   Before dawn. Waning crescent moon hangs low in the east. Venus not up yet.

[...]

Today I'm going to take Charles and Charlotte and Jim and Mindy up to Big Valley Bluff.”

Russell Towle's journal


1/2/84   Life is rich, and I am left-handed. Not rich myself, there is only one 12-volt light in this small cabin. So I am askew, trying to keep the shadow of my left hand at bay while I write. A cunning paradigm of my psychic stance these days? At any rate, the morbid depression (shadow of the left-hand, sinister somber) I used to dread in the winter has been kept at bay by Lovers Leap.”

Russell Towle's journal


January 2, 1985

Morning, foggy and cool. Yesterday I went into Alta for breakfast and found Charles and. Char engaged in the same; later I joined them at their house and got involved in grading out the basement driveway with Charlie. Then we proceeded to get his truck stuck and spent about an hour extricating it.

From there I went to Shelley Yamamoto’s New Years party and gorged myself on sushi etc. I hung around for the rest of the day and watched a movie with Shelley and Carla. Carla is still living at the Rawhide. She is such a strange woman. An artist, a recluse, an attractive woman but never a boyfriend. Now her life is lived in much different terms. Without Jim, her father, she is faced with suddenly being on her own. The situation at Rawhide is not a good one for her; she never bothered to learn to drive until recently, and now must negotiate that horrendous jeep trail winding for miles along the rugged canyon wall. Yesterday she walked the five miles into Shelley's for the party rather than drive.”

Russell Towle's journal


1/2/87

1:55 A.M. Contrary to what I wrote above [on 1/1/ 87], I mounted the bicycle and went into Shelley's and had sushi after all and then rode to the McClungs [...]

I have been starving, and a sort of hole is in my stomach, it's as though I can never really fill it. I did eat well at Shelley's tonight. Skies have cleared; maybe go skiing tomorrow with Charlie.

Night. Skies clouded back over, and I never went skiing today. No. I rode Bill's bicycle into Bill's and drank some coffee with him, showed him Larson's letter, […]

Bill gave me a ride down to Colfax today to get the rebuild kit for my slave cylinder, and kindly brought me home and waited until I fixed it; he's really been very friendly to me lately, so nice.

A big storm is said to be on its way. I cut a little firewood today. So, car is parked out on the road today.

After fifteen minutes on the stove [referring to the typewriter], the "a" has stopped sticking. If it's a lubrication problem this could only make it worse, by further drying and outgassing of the lubricant; but for awhile, the decreased viscosity compensates…”


Date: Mon Jan 02 2006 04:58:24
To: Michael Joyce
From: Russell Towle
Subject: North Fork Dam


Have you ever visited North Fork Dam?

Take Foresthill Road across the bridge, in a mile or less you reach hard left onto Lower Lake Clementine Road, follow it until it bears hard right and down towards the boat launch.

Park as soon as you can and look into the canyon beside you. You will see the dam.

Then find use trails which lead down to the viewpoint.

It is like Niagara Falls, right here in Placer County!


Date: Mon Jan 02 2006 05:13:47
To: Dan
From: Russell Towle
Subject: Re: Sailor Meadow
Cc: Patrick Kavanaugh
>I bring this up because the County is agressively building at Dewitt and I am not sure this site is safe. Just want it to be set aside if possible  but My name is "mud" at the County. Any thoughts?        Dan
My thoughts? We are paving over Indian sites every day. I made my own efforts to get the County aware of Indian sites, in the mid-80s. I failed.

I understand that new state legislation, tho, is far more protective of arch sites than anything before. I have cc'd this to Patrick Kavanaugh, who knows a lot about these issues.

However.

Most people don't know history. The whites (Europeans) stole California from the Indians. We even admitted it in 1852 when we (Europeans) negotiated treaties with the CA Indians, called the Barbour Treaties.

Among these is that negotiated with the Maidu and Chief Weimar, who made his mark on the 1852 treaty at Storms Ranch, over by what would become Chicago Park.

These treaties would have made the theft of California legal; the Indians would trade title to most of the lands in exchange for big chunks here and there ("reservations"). The Maidu reservation would have been huge, from the Bear to the South Yuba, from the Valley to Storms Ranch. Roughly.

But the U.S. Senate put the Barbour Treaties in a sealed secret archive not to be opened for fifty years.

So legal title was never obtained from the CA Indians. The treaties were forgotten as most of the Indians soon died from disease.

Finally, in 1938, the BIA renegotiated treaties with surviving CA Indians and they signed away title.

In theory, that was the legal instrument by which the theft of CA became legal.


Miscellany
[North Fork Trails blogpost, January 2, 2007:
http://northforktrails.blogspot.com/2007/10/miscellany.html ]
Happy new year, 2007 should be a good one!

The other day I approached my teenage son with an excellent idea: "I will first put the chainsaw in my old backpack; next, I'll put that old backpack on your broad shoulders; then, away we will go, down and down and down, into the depths of Green Valley, there to clear brush from the High Ditch."

To which he replied in a series of rather emphatic and mostly monosyllabic negatives, scarcely comprehensible, exclaimed in his curious teenage slang.

I decided not to press the issue, just then. Perhaps a negative would ripen into a maybe. A day later I recalled that the Green Valley Trail itself is getting so badly overhung by manzanita, that this business of carrying chainsaws in backpacks is maybe not an idea worthy of the brightest star in the heavens. So I rephrased my Plan: now he would carry the chainsaw a short distance, very short, really, and I would cut the gnarled deep red branches, and he would toss them off the trail.

Another series of foreign-sounding exclamations, all negative. Sigh.

So this morning I put the damn saw in the damn pack, and carried it down to the uppermost bad section all by myself. I worked over a reach of about two hundred yards and achieved something, less than I had imagined, better than nothing. The day was grey and cool and good for trail work.

Ron Gould suggests that we should round up a real work party and hit the whole trail. A good idea. The manzanita is getting worse and worse in a number of different trail reaches. Supposing we were to carry some of the dratted garbage up and out, from the end of the West Trail, down by the river, well, a frame backpack is the best tool for garbage, and the manzanita would drag and catch and claw at our packs and turn an already tiresome task into a bitter fight. So a bit of manzanita trimming is definitely in order. There are, also, one or two new trees down on the trail, which need cutting into pieces before they can be moved.

Life is more than trails and saws.

Music, music, music. Antonio Carlos Jobim! I rec'd a CD for Christmas, titled "Elis & Tom," the amazing Elis Regina singing the songs of the amazing Tom Jobim. One song especially excited my interest, Águas de Março, or Waters of March; here Jobim joins Elis in a duet. I Googled around in search of more information, for it seemed such an exceptional performance, and found a video of the actual recording session, in Los Angeles, in 1974!

What? How could that be?

It was on YouTube, of which I had heard but not seen. I naturally avoid such sites because I have such a poor internet connection, it takes forever to download content. For the Waters of March, however, forever was fine. I waited, I waited, I waited, and at last I watched.

Really really great!

So. I saw that anyone in the world can upload videos to YouTube. I quickly assembled a few short pieces of geometrical animations I had made years ago. See

https://www.youtube.com/user/rufus16180339887


 Links
Elis Regina and Tom Jobim recording Águas de Março (Waters of March) in Los Angeles in 1974: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYLoxMtnUDE

About the song on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waters_of_March

Jobim's own beautiful re-write of the lyrics into English can be found about 1/3 down this page, (after the parallel version):
http://www.brazzil.com/p08sep01.htm