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

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“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

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“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

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“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

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“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…”

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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!

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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.

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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

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 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

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January 25 (1977, 1982, 2006) Pristine Visions, and Less-Pristine Realities

“1/25/77   [...]  the past few days, images of the granite domes of the yosemite area have been crowding in the edges of my mind, past all the sawdust and people and music that wander there. i see a swell of glittering granite rising out of the forest, and breathe the crystalline air at its summit. i feel that shiver of reckless glee and expoloration tug at me, urging me to swiftly make for the summit of one of the domes, and to wander around its base... well, i hope i can take a month or so this summer.”

[Russell Towle's journal]

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“1/25/82   Morning, a bit before dawn on Monday. The snow is still a foot deep around my cabin, and a couple feet up in the meadow. I've been parking out at Casa Loma road and skiing in. Moody Ridge road is a horrible mess.”

[Russell Towle's journal]

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A New Old Trail (Stevens Trail)

["North Fork Trails" blog post, January 25, 2006:
http://northforktrails.blogspot.com/2006/01/new-old-trail.html ]

Tuesday morning Ron Gould and I drove into Burnt Flat east of Colfax, and took a tour down the Stevens Trail. It was my first time, since the wildfire of 2004.

The day was sunny and clear, verging upon warm.

The Stevens Trail connected Colfax to Iowa Hill, crossing the North Fork American on a bridge near Secret Ravine. The bridge is long gone, but the Stevens is one of the most popular trails in all Placer County. From the Colfax exit on I-80 one proceeds east on the frontage road, Canyon Way, to the parking area. It is about four miles to the bridge site; and there is an idea at large, I hear, to build some kind of bridge there, again.

Red shows the route followed; I-80 is at far upper left.
(Click to enlarge.)

One can also walk the Stevens from Iowa Hill, west.

All this part of the North Fork is a Wild & Scenic River.

Ron Gould, on the Stevens Trail, 2006.

We aimed to explore an old trail beyond Secret Ravine, on the north canyon wall but low to the river, being about 200 feet above. I know I have this trail on at least one of my old maps, but an external hard disk has gone silent, and I can't find it. The Stevens Trail is the fifty-sixth trail described in the abortive 1953 Placer County Trails Ordinance, and its description mirrors an error in map-making itself, an error propagated across more than one map, namely, the mislabeling of Secret Ravine as Robbers Ravine.

I had made a few explorations beyond Secret Ravine in years past, and picked up traces of the old trail, without ever reaching the "good part" so plainly visible from the Stevens Trail on the southern, Iowa Hill side of the river. A maze of game trails on steep terrain had made me scout high and low and every which way, finding only scattered remnants of dry-laid stone walls, at what seemed the right elevation, around 200 feet above the river.

View west from the Stevens Trail, Colfax-Iowa Hill Rd. bridge in  the distance.
(Click to enlarge.)

It was interesting to see the effects of the 2004 wildfire. It had burned hot near Robbers Ravine, with its pretty waterfalls, and nearly all the trees had been killed, conifers and live oaks alike. But the root systems of the angiosperms were vigorously stump-sprouting, especially notable in the Bay Laurel, with clumps of a dozen or more sprouts spearing six feet high already.

Crossing Robbers Ravine—one is tempted to ascribe the name to the botched 1881 train robbery at Cape Horn, high on the cliffs directly above, but a check of the diary of Steven Allen Curry, a CPRR surveyor, reveals it already had its name in 1865—we broke out onto the sunny open cliffs, with fine views down the canyon to Mineral Bar and the Iowa Hill Road.

To my horror, a large house has appeared on a ridge crest above Mineral Bar, a house which, like too many others, at Lovers Leap and Bogus Point and Iron Point and Lime Point and above Ponderosa Way, should never, ever, ever have been built. Sensible societies do not sacrifice the best of their scenic heritage to the whims of a few egomaniacs.

A ‘vulture house’, above Mineral Bar, mars
the wild ambiance of the canyon.

This is just what noted educator David Starr Jordan meant, when he suggested a "hilltop ordinance" was needed in Auburn, to protect the scenery. He made the suggestion around 1904!

But this is Placer County, a name fated to suffer anagramation into the word, “parcel,” so that I often bitterly ask myself and The World, during my interminable internal private rants, "So, which is it going to be? Placer County, or Parcel County?"

And unfortunately, the answer always is, "Parcel County." Supposedly our Republican Supervisors have such a strong belief in private property, they will sacrifice any trail, any swimming hole, any breathtaking canyon view, to the short-term interests of any individual. The sanctity of these private property rights is such that a kind of religion, based, one expects, upon a foundation of shopping malls and subdivisions, holds our Supervisors in its loving thrall.

Oddly, quite strangely, when I pause to think of the thing, these same Republicans cease crowing about the inviolable sanctity of private property, just about the time one asks how legal title to Placer County lands was obtained from its original inhabitants, the Southern Maidu, and the Washoe.

For no legal title was ever obtained, away back when; a few Euro-Californians with consciences made certain that treaties were negotiated with each tribe, exchanging large reservations for a quit claim to their title on all remaining lands. The Indians duly made their marks, and the generals and bigwigs signed the treaties too, and off to Congress they were sent, in 1852.

It was the last chance to put a decent face upon the theft of California from the Indians.

But when the treaties reached our Senate, in far-away Washington, strange to say—who could have guessed such a thing might happen?—the treaties, with their scratchy little marks and squiggles, made by Chief Weimar and so many others, were placed in a sealed secret archive, not to be unlocked for fifty years.

My friend Jay Shuttleworth, who represents the very best spirit of volunteerism in his long-sustained efforts on behalf of the Stevens Trail, my poor poor friend—how it will hurt, when he sees this new house on the hill. Here is scenery celebrated, admired, gasped over, by every person who ever walked that trail. And now Lord Smith has crowned himself King of the Hill and no person who walks the good old Stevens Trail can walk it, now, without paying a perverse kind of homage to this Lord Smith: you avert your eyes.

North Fork American River, below Cape Horn

It is just like going down the old trail to Green Valley, or walking around in Green Valley: one learns not to raise one's head the wrong way, not to lift one's eyes to Moody Ridge, for the Vulture Houses on Lovers Leap Road will strike one dead in one's tracks.

Well, not quite dead. What is hurt is one's faith in human nature, and one's hope that the best and most beautiful places we love, will remain for our children and their children, to love as well. To be caught in the Medusa glare of the Vulture Houses, as they lord it over the Giant Gap of Thomas Moran, and force themselves upon that quintessential scene of all Placer County scenery, is to have one's living hoping trusting heart frozen, into an ugly little rock smelling of ashes.

But this is Parcel County.

Again and again the horrible new house reappeared, as we followed the winding Stevens Trail south and east up the American River Canyon.

We were quite struck by the record the recent flood event left; patches of grey sand twenty feet above normal river level, driftwood stuck on cliffs, willows and alders flailed prostrate and skinned of their bark, under the boiling storm of sand and mud and cobbles and boulders. It was very impressive and I recommend a hike on the Stevens if only for that reason, to see the marks of the rarely high water of a few weeks past.

 A few flowers were in early bloom here and there, notably, Houndstongue, with its pretty forget-me-not, blue and white blossoms.

At Secret Ravine, about three miles in from where we left Ron's truck, we found a faint fog hovering over the shadowed creek, and frost on the fresh flood sands. There were some thousands upon thousands of ladybugs clinging to tree trunks and so on, in nearly frozen, motionless masses of shiny red hemispheres.

The 2004 wildfire had not crossed Secret Ravine, at least, here at river level.

Soon enough we were repeating the same old exercise: following various roughly level game trails across steep slopes, alert for signs of lopping, or old rock work, or anything to show the line of the trail. Eventually, in somewhat more than a quarter-mile, I should say, we reached the intact portion of the trail. Suddenly we saw signs of lopping, and guessed our compatriots, Evan Jones and Co., had been at work, by the looks of it, two or three years ago. It was quite easy going on a nearly level line in the full sun with incredible views and all I can say is that it is one of the very nicest trails in the North Fork—yet—yet it is reduced to a ghost of a ghost of a trail for that first quarter-mile east of Secret Ravine.

We fully expected to find and follow the main line of the trail back to Secret, on our return, but such was not at all the case. This trail is very seriously disrupted, over a fairly long distance.

There are indications that this old trail—I shall call it, here, the Meta Secret Trail (for it leads up the canyon, beyond Secret Ravine)—was a mining ditch, originally. It is often very suspiciously level. If true, this may supply the answer as to why the trail is so faint, near Secret Ravine itself: that whole section might have been a wooden flume, thus, no very large bench cut was needed, just a few bits of rock wall here and there to bolster the flume.

Then, let a few wildfires come through, and burn the wooden flumes into oblivion, and one has a somewhat discontinuous trail.

That's the good old Meta Secret Trail.

Across the river one sees the Stevens Trail, with huge stone walls, crossing a mossy cliff. It is quite a lovely view.

The mossy, Iowa Hill side of the Stevens Trail, a north-facing slope.

Unfortunately another Vulture House came into view, away west in the fire area; clearly the firefighters had made noble and successful efforts to save it, despite its perilous position on the canyon rim. Good for the Vulture Family, bad for the North Fork and the rest of us. As a result of the fire and the firefighting, all screening vegetation was gone, and it is just as though a brand new house had been plopped down on the canyon rim.

I became nauseous thinking about the two Vulture Houses lording it over the North Fork and the Stevens Trail.

Wooly Sunflower 
Eriophyllum lanatum)

Aster Family (Asteraceae)

Also across the river I observed a large bluff-like mass of glacial outwash, forming a terrace about 100 feet high. The whole face looked fresh and raw and recently eroded, and clearly, the North Fork had chewed at the base of the steep gravel bluff, during the recent flood event. However, I was almost certain that that raw steep face had been left by mining, either ground sluicing or hydraulicing, a century and some ago. It is even possible that the Meta Secret Trail began as the very ditch which served that particular mine; in which case, a flume would have crossed the river.

An old tunnel, possibly dating to the Gold Rush itself, had been exposed by the flood. It was driven into the glacial outwash low down towards the bedrock underneath. Probably many tunnels had been driven into the base of that bluff. They have since collapsed or been buried by cave-ins around their entrances. The coarse gold was found on the bedrock at the bases of such glacial outwash terraces, more commonly known as "bars" or "gravel bars."

A calm stretch of the North Fork American River
(Click to enlarge)

But these gravel bars are artifacts of the high flows and high sediment loads of the glacial periods; current flood events do little more than nick the bases of such terraces.

We reached an unnamed ravine, with a pretty stream, crossed, and found an old mining ditch trail on the far side, at a slightly lower level. The Meta Secret continued!

After a time, the Meta Secret dropped down to river level, and we saw sunshine just upstream, and worked our ways up to the place, at a sharp bend on the river. We had lunch and, scouting the area, found some miners' camps with much in the way of garbage strewn around, five-gallon buckets and sleeping bags and tarps and just plain garbage. I grabbed an aluminum frying pan and returned to the river.

Wresting clumps of moss from boulders near the water, I washed them into my frying pan and panned the sediments down to black sand. Swirling, some respectable flakes of gold appeared. So Ron and I washed a few more clumps of moss into the pan and found, I don't know, about fifty or a hundred "colors" of gold, among them, some pieces almost big enough to just reach in and pick up. So, it was a little exciting to see all that gold. Probably at least a dollar's worth!

The winter sun, never high, was clearly lowering, we were over a mile east of Secret Ravine, and had another three miles beyond that, to reach the truck. It was time to go, past time, really, and I ended up forty minutes late, picking up my kids at their school bus stop, in Alta.

Camera looks east, upcanyon, between Robbers Ravine and Secret Ravine, directly below Cape Horn.

On our return we followed a higher line at first, following a faint trail climbing west from some ancient cabin terraces. At times this tiny thread of a trail seemed to disappear, but we held the course and found large cairns of slaty slabs where it crossed a rocky spur, and then other ducks and cairns along the way, and found ourselves back on the main Meta Secret just where it had seemed to drop down to river level, on our way in, a couple hours before. So there is actually a fork, at that point, and a steep climb to the left, as one is going in, will make the safest route on to that sunny bend, where Ron and I found so very much gold.

But this left-hand upper trail is extremely hard to see, from the fork. That is, the fork does not by any means look like a fork. It is just the spot, it seems, where the trail suddenly drops to river level.

This last bit of high trail, and the ancient cabin terraces near Gold Strike Bend, may date to the Gold Rush itself, and likely were also in use later, by the Chinese, in the 1860s.

Such was another nice day in the North Fork. I learned some new lessons, too, about how to avert my eyes properly, while walking the Stevens Trail. With a little practice, I may one day walk the Stevens Trail, and find it as beautiful as I did, way back in 2004.

Perhaps if I cup my hands around my eyes, to reduce my field of view?

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Links: 

“Cape Horn” information, and a clickable map with photos is here:
http://cprr.org/Museum/Sierra_Grade_8-2003/Cape_Horn/index.html


Scroll down that page to find a 360° panorama of the western portion of this area taken from the level of the railroad tracks in the middle of Cape Horn.

The entire newswpaper account (Sacramento Record-Union) of the aborted train robbery at Cape Horn can  be read here:
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82014381/1881-09-02/ed-1/seq-3/ 

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January 15 (1976, 1977, 1978, 1987, 2003, 2007) Heroes

“1/15/76   another warm, sunny day, more of wren's excited spring song.

the trip to auburn was worthwhile, as i finally laid to rest my fears of the future reservoir inundating green valley—the high water level in the reservoir is only 1135 ft. in elevation, and probably will not even be visible downcanyon from lover's leap. the federal gov't drowning more sierran canyons, the stanislaus, the american—i am despondent to think of these canyons, lost forever beneath tons of water—the foothills of the sierras have been getting raped—it's terrible to behold.

visited the library but found nothing on green valley or moody ridge, except that there was a moody hotel in nearby 'gold run'—possible source of name. and that quartz crystals may be found in the hydraulic diggings north of dutch flat.”

[Russell Towle's journal]

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“1/15/77  [...]

i've been shocked to realize lately that i am really getting into a serious commitment with my land. i've gone and built a cabin ~ now it's there to stay, on that spot! wow. and there is so much work to do! and so many payments to make!”

[Russell Towle's journal]

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“1/15/78 ~ it's snowing! the day before yesterday, it rained and rained and rained; yesterday, it rained and rained and rained; and around midnight it snowed and snowed. but the temperature is a bit above freezing (around 34°) and though snow continues it is not sticking. a couple inches on the ground. barely made it in last night in the volksy.

many things to write about, that happened last week. ... i rented a post office box and sent my money in to join the sierra club while in dutch flat tuesday. ... as i drove up the moody ridge road i saw an older couple walking with their three dogs. they were wearing ponchos as it was raining lightly. for some reason i knew they'd be hiking out my road to the green valley trail so i waited for them at the cable. i asked them if they were going to hike down to the river and they said no, only to a creek along the way. I asked them if they were members of the sierra club, and they said yes, they were. then for some reason i mentioned norman clyde. the woman ~ ruth elwonger ~ had known norman clyde, and beginning around 1930 ~ when she was twenty ~ went on many hikes and mountain climbs with Sierra club groups that clyde led. this excited me and as it turned out, they stopped by my cabin so i could show them a book of clyde's writings that i have.

the man's name was martin thomas. we had a nice chat and then they continued down towards green valley. this, the day after i joined the sierra club. they mentioned a rumor concerning a knoll in green valley ~ that it is actually a pyramid built by the indians. i have hiked that knoll and it is solid serpentine bedrock. it turns out that ron and neil have heard the same thing.

so it seemed a bit of a coincidence that the day after I joined the sierra club i should meet two old time members, one of whom knew my hero, norman clyde!

but to follow that up, yesterday at the library in grass valley i was sitting at one of the tables reading some placer county history, and noticed that a middle-aged woman sitting across from me was writing a report of some kind while looking at a geological map of this area. intrigued, i awaited and finally found an opportunity to speak to her. the clock struck twelve noon and she glanced up. i mentioned that i too am a student of sierran geology, and live in the dutch flat area. as a response she pushed a piece of paper across to me; it was a map of the extent of ice cover in the sierras in glacial times, with a partial list of present-day glaciers and the mountains they nestle on. she had underlined one of the mountain names: mt. bolton brown. with an excited whisper and a gleam in her eyes she told me that bolton brown is her grandfather!

bolton brown is another one of my heroes. he tramped the sierras with his wife lucy, climbing mountains and sketching. a professor at stanford and an early, if not a charter member, of the sierra club. i told her of a pass named for his wife, lucy's foot pass; and encouraged her to try and publish some of his sketches and memoirs.

so. a bit of coincidence, that soon after joining the sierra club i should meet two people who knew two of the club's brightest stars, norman clyde and bolton brown.”

[Russell Towle's journal]

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“1/15/87   Before dawn, on a Thursday morning. Arose around 4:30, the cabin ice cold, the wind, a strong strong wind, roaring through the trees. The sky absolutely clear, with Venus just clearing the Sierra crest, Venus so big and bright.”

[Russell Towle's journal]

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Here can be found a delightful account by the above-mentioned Ruth Elwonger of a camping trip she made in Yosemite with a girlfriend in May 1942 ~ “Innocents Afoot”:
http://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/yosemite_nature_notes/22/22-5.pdf

About Norman Clyde:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Clyde 

About Bolton Brown:
http://www.crookedlakereview.com/articles/67_100/92nov1995/92wisbey.html

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Russell and son Greg, in Green Valley, January 15, 2003.
Photo by Ron Gould.

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Green Valley News

[North Fork Trails blogpost, January 15, 2007

http://northforktrails.blogspot.com/2007/10/green-valley-news.html ]

This morning I received a call from Steve Hunter of Colfax, an active man with a penetrating and curious mind, who has explored these Placer County canyons as have few if any others, since his childhood in the early 1950s.

I mean, as dimly as I am aware of his exploits, I know they exceed my own. Roping down the middle of thundering waterfalls: for goodness' sake, you wouldn't catch me doing that.

But Steve Hunter has. And not just once, either. He's seen gorges you only can see if you actually do rope down waterfalls.

Steve loves Green Valley. Yesterday he and Dan Mathers and several friends dropped down into the great canyon on the good old Green Valley Trail, hewed to the western side of things, and eventually found themselves just across from the Gold Ring Mine, on the sand bar at the head of the pretty pool on the river which reflects Lovers Leap, looming half a mile high to the west.

Here they busied themselves collecting the garbage left there last summer by some miners, and without wasting much in the way of time, they hauled several loads up to the old Incense Cedar tree in the meadow, near the wooden trough.

What, were they calling it quits?

Oh no.

From there they worked east to the Old Hotel Site, below Joe Steiner's Grave, where another mess of garbage lay in frozen masses. This too they gathered unto themselves, but this they carried up and up and up and up and up, and finally, completely out of the canyon.

Steve reports that they had to leave a frozen sleeping bag, weighted with ice, behind, but they certainly made some great strides in keeping the fine old Valley clean.

We made sounds about plans to plan to go back down and haul up the rest of the trash, with as many people as we can muster, and hit a lick on the trail too, and who knows but these fantasies may become real.

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January 9 (1977, 1979, 2001) Hayden Hill Mine

Toyon or ”Christmas Berry”
(Heteromeles arbutifolia)
January 9, 2001

“1/9/77 ~ sunset, sunday, winter. [...] yesterday i felt that i have overdone the angular complexity of my cabin, that it comes off too busy. very visual. how to ‘feminize’ it? whether to panel diagonally as planned on the interior walls? remove the x-brace between the rafters to open up the space more? i'm realizing i don't have to rush my cabin.”

[Russell Towle's journal]

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“1/9/79  A curious coincidence ~ rode down to Auburn with Jon and Melody ~ we had found a book in Colfax with pictures of the old mining camps. On one page was a picture taken from Casa Loma in 1867 showing the railroad cut in the foreground and Green Valley below. I was quick to note that the hydraulicking of Hayden Hill across the canyon had not begun.

The next day (yesterday) I went down to Auburn again and picked up an old man hitching rides. As it turned out, he had been mining gold on Hayden Hill ten or fifteen years ago. It was his cabin that Steve & Jerry & I found up there last summer.

It's supposed to snow to low elevations tomorrow. [...]

! haven't been writing on my [“Polar Zonohedra”] book lately at all. Skiing has been too tantalizing.”

[Russell Towle's journal]

---

Topo map section showing the location of Hayden Hill (above
the "NAT" of Tahoe National Forest)
Click to enlarge

---

The following snippet from an unidentified source, found on Russell's computer, contains a very interesting reference about Chinese miners working at Hayden Hill:

7. Weimar resident F.A. Partridge credited Chinese with establishing hydraulic mining. “It has been my impression that the first hydraulic mine was at Hayden Hill, on the Foresthill divide, and that it was done by a group of Chinese miners,” he wrote. “They had been working in Canyon Creek, on the other side of the river, and had been operating by ground sluicing. After much trouble with the white miners in this district, they moved to Hayden Hill. Ground sluicing did not work there, because of the difficulty of getting the water high enough, so they put in a head-gate in their ditch and carried the water under pressure in a hose to the foot of the gravel. This hose was made from sails from ships lying in ‘Frisco,’ and the nozzle was handcarved from wood. They later sold out to a syndicate....”

---

January 8 (1977, 1978, 2003) Stratigraphy, Waterfalls, and High-Flying Wonders

“1/8/77  a day at moody ridge; a tromping around in the serpentine belt, and really appreciating the plants, the terrain. trying to understand the stratigraphy of the bedrock series/volcanics in the moody ridge–casa loma area. some confusing stuff. i can't understand the gap between the two ridges, except as a possible relict of pre-volcanic topography; there are some stream gravels that would seem to indicate a stream valley—but gravels rich in quartz and metamorphics are interbedded high in the volcanic ash exposed in the railroad cut where casa loma–moody join. so high i wonder where the stream could have originated, since the volcanic ash must have covered much of the higher ground towards the crest. careful mapping may clue me in.”

[Russell Towle's journal]

---

“1/8/78   morning. cloudy sky & south wind. storm after storm, it would appear that the drought is over... i am groggy, muscles sore, from a long day yesterday. neil and dana and gary and i hiked to [the Canyon Creek] waterfalls, but not quite in time to see the rainbows. some other time we'll go down there at the right time to see the gorgeous display those falls must put on in the sunshine. they are in such a narrow gorge that the sun is shining for only a few hours in the late morning.

Russell's sketch in the margin of the journal page

there are about seven main waterfalls, many cascades, and a unique inner gorge section between waterfalls two and three (counting down from the top). the inner gorge has walls only about five to ten feet apart and follows a sinuous path between cliffs that rise hundreds of feet on either side. there may be a waterfall hidden within it, clouds of spray billow out here and there. this incredibly narrow cleft ends at waterfall three, a three-leap fall of about 100 feet in height.

ron met us while we were out there [This "ron" is Ron La Lande, landscape painter, who was living out at Casa Loma at this time] and he and neil and i went all the way down to the american river, visiting all the falls. there is an old old trail that goes down beside canyon creek, usually a few hundred feet above, with laterals that go to each waterfall ~ quite convenient, a legacy from the gold miners.

the american river was wide and green and fast and deep; it was apparent that during the recent rains it rose about four or five feet above the level we saw it at yesterday.”

[Russell Towle's journal]

---

Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2003 08:35:44 -0800
To: northforktrails
From: Russell Towle
Subject: Mystery Birds of Canyon Creek

Hi all,

Yesterday I met Catherine O'Riley at the Dutch Flat exit on I-80; we snuck into the Gold Run Diggings at Heistercamp's, and drove to the head of the Canyon Creek Trail. The day was surpassingly clear, and warming rapidly, with the most amazing pure blue expanse of sky.

We paused briefly at Tunnel Camp, and pocketed two pieces of blue plastic Chris Schiller & I had missed, a few weeks ago. We continued south on the slender trail, and noted one more length of plastic pipe underwater in one of the many pools along the creek below. The very last, one hopes, of the miners' equipage. It looks to be around fifteen feet long; it is of the white, ribbed, four-inch-diameter type, and must be retrieved soon, before the creek comes up big in a storm. There is also an automobile tire in that same vicinity—for Canyon Creek parallels I-80 for miles, upstream, and somehow, tires get into the creek, and then floods carry them down. I know of about four tires  between the Big Tunnel and the North Fork American, a mile south along the creek.

As we passed Gorge Point we looked for early flowers, but saw none, and then, a ways below the Rockslide, we decided to drop directly down to the Big Waterfall. Winding along past rocky bosses and gnarled shrubs on the very steep slope, we enjoyed the intense sunshine, and soon had the waterfall in view. Canyon Creek, despite the snow in its upper basin, has only a moderate flow, but the falls looked very good, and the morning sun was just now reaching them, within their narrow embayment in the soaring cliffs.

At the base of the falls there seemed nothing better to do than to luxuriate on the sunny rocks. The cliffs rise in great hackly angular slabs, with an inordinate number of overhangs, and all very very steep—in fact, one has to go to Lovers Leap itself to find cliffs steeper than these, beside the Big Waterfall. These falls seem to be around 120 feet high, altogether. The cliffs on the west side rise nearly 1000 feet.

On my last visit, December 7, I had seen a Bald Eagle at Gorge Point, and then five white pigeons, roosting on the eastern cliffs beside the Big Waterfall. To my amazement, the pigeons were still there, or at least, four of them. We watched them zoom around and then land on the cliffs very close to the top of the waterfall.

We descended Waterfall Trail to The Terraces, and then on down to the creek again on a short spur trail there, crossing, and scrambled to the top of another waterfall. While there we saw what looked to be an eagle or an osprey soaring far above. It was heading towards the Big Waterfall from over Diving Board Ridge, and began folding its wings and dropping, bullet-like, at high speeds, then opening its wings for an instant, then folding and looping lower; suddenly it spread it wings and landed in some trees, perhaps 800 feet above us.

We returned to The Terraces, where we did indeed find flowers on the very verge of bloom, the California Milkmaids which are always the first, at this one spot, which the miners who tended the sluice boxes chose very carefully for their main camp; for it has a very warm microclimate, and the first flowers always appear here. These flowers had not yet opened, but it cannot be long now.

We heard the scream of a hawk, which is so expertly mimicked by Steller Jays that I am never quite sure what is going on, but we saw the hawk itself, a Redtail I thought, not too far above, circling and screaming, and what appeared to be our eagle/osprey, also circling, several hundred feet yet higher. We watched them for a while, and then the two of them disappeared over Diving Board Ridge to the west.

Backlit view from the Canyon Creek Trail of the Diving Board ridge,
protruding into the North Fork American River Canyon

It was time to go, I had my children to pick up from school, so we started up. The sun! the warmth! It might have been all of 75 degrees down there. The native Rock Bugs (I don't know what these true bugs are actually called) were swarming over boulders and moss. We took the side trail to the Overlook of the Blasted Digger, admired the North Fork, Giant Gap, Sawtooth Ridge, and the snow peaks in the distance, and then hurried back to the main trail and up and out.

I was only a few minutes late at Alta-Dutch Flat School.

This coming Saturday might be a good day to hike the Canyon Creek Trail down to the river, and haul out the plastic pipe, if anyone is interested (Craig & Karen; Eric Smith; ?).

Cheers,

Russell Towle

---

June 9 (1977, 1979, 1987, 2002, 2004) Sugar Pine Point

“6/9/77 morning. the sky is overcast and it is cool out for a change. a very few drops of rain. took a walk this morning up to the top of the ridge and followed the property lines around to the corner of the prow of the ridge, then back along the crest road and down the ridge road again. an interesting flat on the northwest side of the ridge that i'd never seen before. off our property. a tree-house platform in the crotch of an enormous black oak there. a hard to reach spot ~ who hammered that tiny platform together so long ago?

the day is dark and windy. so am i. but it brightens.”

[Russell Towle's journal]

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“6/9/79 [...]

hot weather. did a rototilling job yesterday for frank olrich. sunburn and dust. [...]

awoke before dawn to see the moon peeking through trees, a benign wanderer. birds ~ especially the black-headed grosbeaks ~ singing loudly. on my first visit to lé outhouse I saw a bat winging about. giant gap illuminated in the first glow from the east. and I am excited by the projects ahead of me.”

[Russell Towle's journal]

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“6/9/87 [...]
Received a letter from Ed Stadum today, witnessing receipt of mine, sent a couple of weeks ago, and containing comments and criticisms... really hitting the mark, Ed did, because as it turns out I was seriously mistaken about the provenance of the Corral Springs [timber sale] and there was no intent to defraud. (I had thought the Corral Springs to have been a reconstituted "Humbug" sale, but it was entirely separate and the decision signed in 1983.)

[...]

Later; returned to Dutch Flat to confirm arrangements for my meeting with the Forest Service, now rescheduled for the 19th; spoke with Rich Johnson, Foresthill District Ranger.”

[Russell Towle's journal]

---

Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2002 06:21:52 -0800
To: North_Fork_Trails
From: Russell Towle
Subject: Spelling


Hi all,

I can't believe I wrote "disgression the better part of valor," since I know perfectly well that the word is discretion, not disgression. [This is in reference to his posting of June 8, 2002, second-to-last paragraph.] I was making supper last night, thinking about rocks which fizz and rocks which don't, and suddenly it hit me. There is no word, "disgression," tho perhaps I should not be so quick to declare so: I don't have an unabridged dictionary, and all the components of the word are such that it actually could exist.

Ah, well, English. Who can ever say how a word is spelled, upon hearing it pronounced? A delightful German man, master of several languages, a professor and aesthete, once asked me, "How do you pronounce 'ghoti,' in English?" And I guessed something like, "goatee." He explained that no, it is pronounced "fish": the "gh" as in "enough," the "o" as in "women", the "ti" as in "nation."

It so happens that I make a ton of errors while typing, especially on this keyboard, but I can't pass off "disgression" as a typing slip. Purely mental. My mind is increasingly a thing of the past.

I should have mentioned that the big, ten-foot granite boulder I saw in the Bear yesterday could only have come from miles away, probably from the South Yuba basin, in the Lake Spaulding/Fordyce Creek area. The Bear is one of many streams which received ice overflowing from the South Yuba basin.

I need some muriatic acid.

Cheers,

Russell Towle

---

Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2002 08:23:15 -0800
To: North_Fork_Trails
From: Russell Towle
Subject: Disgression


Hi all,

I find on the Internet that many many people misspell “discretion” as “disgression,” further, that it is at least a legitimate word in the French language, where it would appear to correspond to our English “digression,” as in, for example,

“... par une petite disgression historique.”

It has, also, been suggested that my “disgression” may in fact be a Bushism.

Cheers,

Russell Towle

---

Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2002 21:59:51 -0800
To: North_Fork_Trails
From: Russell Towle
Subject: Sugar Pine Point


Hi all,

Today my stepson Gus, son Greg & I drove up I-80 to Yuba Gap, and followed TNF Road 19 and then Road 38 past Lake Valley Reservoir and Huysink Lake, parking when we were finally blocked by a tiny snowdrift, and walking the rest of the way to the ancient forest at Sugar Pine Point, and to the Little Slate Ridge which forms a storm-blasted bulwark between that forest and the monstrous canyon of the North Fork American, here over 3000 feet deep.

I had been waiting to get in to the ancient forest for a while, waiting until the snow melted enough. What really galled me into action was that, at long last, I obtained David Harwood's (USGS) geologic map of the Duncan Peak (and portions of the Cisco Grove) quadrangles. This 1993 map is the fruition of years of field mapping in and around the canyon of the North Fork and its tributaries, in the vicinity of Sugar Pine Point. It documents the positions of the many different rock formations in the area, and their attendant faults, etc., and is accompanied by 12 pages of text.

The serpentine of the Melones Fault Zone, also called the Feather River Peridotite, is one of the most salient bedrock structures in the Sierra, a long linear slice of ultramafic rock paralleling the Sierra crest, and occupying the middle elevations. It has been called one of the two most important tectonic features in all California, the other being the San Andreas fault. This serpentine is not on Harwood's map. I only mention it because it marks the boundary, so far as the metamorphic rocks of the Sierra are concerned, between the more oceanic sequences west of the Melones, and more continentally-derived rocks—like the Shoo Fly Complex—east of the Melones.

Now, the Shoo Fly Complex commonly extends over large areas east of the Melones, and in the more northern Sierra, there is a definite sequence of younger rock formations lying to the east, in turn, of the Shoo Fly. These include the Taylorsville Sequence, the Sailor Canyon Formation, and the Tuttle Lake Formation. All these come into play near Sugar Pine Point. Long and narrow bands of different types of metamorphic rocks are sandwiched together, some only a few hundred feet across; they bend and meander and are cut and displaced by faults here and there. With Harwood's map I was finally in a position to recognize these distinct formations on the ground, and give a name to them.

Torrey's Monkeyflower
(Mimulus torreyi)

We stopped at Huysink Lake, named for hunter-angler Bernard Huysink of 19th-century Dutch Flat, and searched for ammonite fossils in exposures of the Sailor Canyon Formation west of the lake, but, without success. Continuing, we drove down the divide between Big Valley on the west and Little Granite Creek on the east, a ridge forested with Red Fir and Lodgepole Pine, with much in the way of glacial moraines and granitoid erratics scattered about. We passed Pelham Flat, a lovely pond and meadow, really, a silted-in, moraine-dammed glacial lake.

I should mention that poorly-managed, almost unrestrained logging deeply scarred this area in the 1980s, obliterating the historic Sugar Pine Point Trail, as well as the Big Valley Trail. The old railroad lands were sold to lumber companies, and, the rest is history. I myself deeply mourn the passing of this part of Placer County's wilderness, which survived intact until so very recently.

Wooly Violet
(Viola tomentosa)

A mile or so past Pelham Flat we were stopped by snow. We hiked near half a mile to where, if one knows exactly where to look, a vestige of the Sugar Pine Point Trail may be followed, perhaps another half-mile, into the ancient forest. Here truly gigantic Ponderosa Pines, Sugar Pines, White Fir and Incense Cedar may be found. There is a bear wallow, and a bear den. There are unusual wildflowers, like the Tomentose Violet, and Rattlesnake Orchids. An Indian site which likely dates to between 1500 and 4500 years ago is there, too. Deep soils, formed on glacial till, support this amazing forest. Pines five and six feet in diameter are all over the place.

As we entered the ancient forest, we saw the deep footprints of a bear on the trail. Bears, when they use a trail again and again, will step in the same exact spots over and over, and leave deep hollows, in shape something between a pie plate and a cereal bowl. A series of such hollows led down the trail. Near the first spring, a huge, five-foot White Fir had fallen, blocking the trail. We skirted around it and went on to the bear wallow spring. Often when I get there, the wallow is muddy, and has just been used. Today it was clear.

We turned east and visited the Indian site, then on to cliffs facing out across Little Granite Creek to Snow Mountain. Here meta-conglomerate of Late Triassic age is exposed. In places it was polished to a sheen by glaciers coming down Little Granite Creek.

We held fairly close to the cliffs bounding the ancient forest on the east, as we wandered south toward the Little Slate Ridge. Gaining this ridge, we found the Upper Member of the Sierra Buttes Formation exposed at its eastern end. This, then, was the name of that marvelous white-blotched dark slate I had admired so often over the years. Following the ridge west, we soon crossed into the Lower Member of the Sierra Buttes Fm., and even sooner there after into a thrust-fault-bounded chunk of the Shoo Fly Complex. Harwood has divided the Shoo Fly into a number of distinct formations, but I won't bore you with the details.

Dwarf or Common Juniper
(Juniperis communis)

The ridge rose slowly to a storm-scalded summit with dwarfed Jeffrey Pines and even some out-of-place-looking stunted Douglas Fir. Notably, all over the rocky summit were patches of Juniperis communis, a dwarfed shrub species of juniper of circumpolar distribution. The sun felt very good on this day of biting north winds. The canyon was too well-lit to reveal itself to best advantage; except, Big Valley Bluff, a 3500-foot cliff to the west, was rather dramatic.

So, it was very nice to visit Sugar Pine Point with this excellent geological map in hand. We visited the bear den on the way out, in the base of a huge Sugar Pine, and there were three bear trails converging upon it, each with their laughable foot-holes.

I broke my Fiskars loppers on this hike. The old trail in to the ancient forest still needs a lot of work. As we drove out, we saw a fine strong bear, a bit lanky and leggy but with a glossy, deep reddish-brown coat, on the road ahead. At first he didn't notice us. Just as I got my camera in hand, he suddenly realized we were near, and loped rapidly away into the woods.

On a darker note, out at Yuba Gap, on PG&E lands, I think, is some of the nastiest logging I have ever seen, involving hundreds of acres of land which was burned in last summer's "Gap" fire. It is the ultimate clear-cut from Hell, distilled and bludgeoned by the tracks of a hundred bulldozers into something belonging more to some incinerated Moon, one would think, than to God's own green earth.

View westward from Sugar Pine Pt. to Big Valley Bluff

---

Green Valley, etc.

[North Fork Trails blogpost, June 9, 2004:
http://northforktrails.blogspot.com/2004/06/green-valley-etc.html ]

I have been busy with mathematics and home improvement for weeks now, with little time for hiking. I did manage to join Ron Gould and Catherine O'Riley for explorations in Green Valley, two weeks ago, and find myself embarrassed to report that my understanding of the ditches and mines in that remarkable area was seriously flawed.

Green Valley is on the main North Fork, about a mile down from Euchre Bar, and a mile up from Giant Gap. The canyon runs about 2400 feet deep here, but is mostly notable for its unusual width. This width can be ascribed to the weak serpentine of the Melones Fault Zone, in a linear mass trending north and south, athwart the canyon. And this width has allowed great masses of young Pleistocene (Ice Age) sediments to accumulate on both sides of the river. The sediments contain gold; and there is many a mine in Green Valley.

To work these mines, sometimes set well away from the river, water was needed, and ditches were dug. There are many mines and many ditches. At the east end of Green Valley, a ledge was blasted from steep cliffs to support a wooden flume, over a part of the course of the Green Valley Blue Gravel Mine ditch. This ditch took its water from the North Fork itself, well upstream from Euchre Bar. It crossed the river between Euchre Bar and Green Valley, in the lovely gorge there, on a trestle stated, in 1876, to be 139 feet high.

So far so good. But I took it into my mind many years ago that one certain ditch, often horribly overgrown with ancient brush, and which traverses Green Valley from the east to the west, was this same GVBGM ditch. And, since this ditch did lead to the westernmost part of Green Valley, near the Pyramid, where a large hydraulic mine flanks the river, I assumed that this was the GVBGM.

I even stubbornly misread the old newspaper articles to force them to agree with this fixed idea. But as Ron and Catherine and I forced our way east on what I had always thought to be this GVBGM ditch, and passed the center of Green Valley, into the eastern region, we kept on expecting to find traces of Ron's earlier path, from last year, when he blazed a trail along the GVBGM ditch from the east, going west.

I was in the lead, and found some cut branches. "Here it is!" I exclaimed. "Here's the spot you reached last year!"

Ron arrived, and said he didn't recall ever seeing this part of the ditch. Yet someone had worked hard on clearing the brush. In a few yards we had the answer, as a vast area of garbage came into view, the remains of a marijuana growers' camp. It may have been in use last summer. A couple hundred yards farther along this same high ditch, another, similar camp befouled the landscape.

I would guess that something like many dozens of backpack loads would be required to remove the garbage from these two sites. These are new to me; there are several other garbage sites in Green Valley, closer to the river, which I had hoped to clean up this year if possible. Now the task seems insurmountable.

Ron astutely realized we were far to high above the river to be on the line of the ditch-cut-into-the-cliffs-at-the-east-end, which is certainly the GVBGM ditch. Hence the true GVBGM ditch must be below us. We followed a faint trail down through meadowy areas hemmed around by brush, where a fascinating accumulation of large boulders of rhyolite volcanic ash is found. These boulders are no part of the Pleistocene glacial outwash sediments in Green Valley, but suggest something like a landslide deposit, originating up on the canyon rim, where the "Valley Springs" rhyolite ash beds have their proper place. The landslide might have happened a hundred thousand years ago; the boulders are deeply weathered to a brownish color, rather than the raw creamy white one sees in roadcuts, etc. (for instance, see the railroad cuts a few hundred yards east of Alta, for an excellent exposure of this Valley Springs rhyolite ash).

So. We dropped down through the meadows and found the true GVBGM ditch, fully 150 feet in elevation below the higher ditch. I should have realized the high ditch was way too high. At any rate, we followed the GVBGM ditch west, and found that it ended near the center of Green Valley, in a tiny reservoir, from which its water was disbursed to the mine itself, down below us and out of sight.

Thus, in accord with the old newspaper articles which I had so strenuously misread for so long, the GVBGM is in the center of Green Valley, not at the west end.

We then explored some old trails in the area, including one I call the High East Trail, which was always hard to follow, even back in 1976, and now is badly covered in brush, towards the east end of Green Valley. We scouted around without success for its continuation east, then turned west, where it is relatively open, and followed it back to its junction with the main East Trail, near Joe Steiner's grave.

Then it was a long slog up the long trail. Another fine fine day in the North Fork canyon, one in which, strangely, we never reached to river itself, but wandered through vast areas of brush, rife with old trails and old ditches and new marijuana growers' camps.

I wish they'd just legalize the stuff. We'd have no more of these obscene garbage dumps.

On another front, I hear that quite a crowd of dirt bikers rode the Euchre Bar Trail last weekend, and tore it up a bit. It might be that Tahoe National Forest needs better signs indicating the OHV closure on that trail.

---

June 8 (1977, 1987, 2001, 2002, 2005) Fluttering Slates (of mind and matter)

“6/8/77 ~ night in the canyon, fourth quarter beginning, it's dark. high winds, distant lightning and thunder. twigs rattle on the roof but no rain yet. clouds over all. sat out on the serpentine and watched the show. the aural show is really nice as well.

... i've gone to towle's hole* the past few days and swam. carried two tires and all the minor trash out. for the second year in a row someone has smashed exposures of water-polished magnesite in the serpentine matrix along one side of the swimming hole.”

[Russell Towle's journal]

[ * Note: "Towle's Hole", a formerly popular swimming hole on Canyon Creek downstream of the Casa Loma bridge, was named because of its proximity to the historic town of Towle, located between that spot and the town of Alta. The three Towle Brothers, well known in Dutch Flat history, had based their extensive timber business there. “Towle's Hole” is in a spot where the creek crosses private property, and in the early 1980s a house was built on the parcel, blocking off public access to that local treasure. Most remnants of the town of Towle were erased by the construction of Interstate 80. Incidentally, Russell was not directly descended from these Towle's, but both family lines can be traced back to a common lineage in New England. —Gay ]

---

“6/8/87 I am depressed today, full of a sense of failure about my efforts to protect the North Fork Canyon, full of anxiety about money matters...”

[Russell Towle's journal ]

---

Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2001 14:55:40 -0800
To: North_Fork_Trails
From: Russell Towle
Subject: TNF LWCF

Hi all,

The Channel 10 video crew, working hard at Big Valley Bluff
June 8, 2001.

I dragged Dana Howard and Rob the video man (of Channel 10) out to Big Valley Bluff and blabbed as best as I could about how wonderful the North Fork canyon is and how important it is to get LWCF funding so that Tahoe National Forest can purchase the private inholdings. Should air tonight in the 6 o'clock segment.

Blooming at Big Valley Bluff, June 8. 2001
Naked or Wild Buckwheat
(Eriogonum nudum)

Rob took video of me throwing shards of slate out into the vastness. I was trying to demonstrate an interesting phenomenon: a flat rock thrown flat, as if for skipping on a pond, will turn edge-down and plummet steeply, and then (usually after falling well over 500 feet) start to flutter, in a tumbling motion which slows it down. It flutters the rest of the way down. The only place I have ever observed this is at Big Valley Bluff. A 3500-foot cliff does have its uses.

Anyway, I got some good fluttering slates but I don't know if they'll show up on Rob's video.

Cheers,

Russell Towle

The Sierra Crest peaks south of Donner Pass as seen looking east up the North
Fork American River canyon from the Big Vally Bluff clifftop, June 8, 2001.

---

Date: Sat, 8 Jun 2002 18:27:05 -0800
To: North_Fork_Trails
From: Russell Towle
Subject: Drum Powerhouse & the Miners Ditch


Hi all,

It did not fizz; I crushed it into a powder, added vinegar, added lemon juice and Vitamin C, and, it did not fizz.

I regularly surf the internet looking for information on specific geological subjects, among them, the pattern I have perceived, of heavily cemented glacial outwash gravels where Sierran canyons (or any canyon whatsoever) cross serpentine belts. There is a complete absence of information about this pattern on the internet, with the exception of my own web pages.

A few days ago, tho, I found a fascinating page about the "Josephine Ophiolite," a suite of ultramafic rocks including serpentine, near the border between Oregon and California. See http://jersey.uoregon.edu/~mstrick/GeoTours/Josephine%20Ophiolite/JoOphiolite.html and, if you like geology, you're in for a treat. The author, Michael Strickler, is a professor up there, and quite the expert on these types of rock. So I emailed him with a query about cemented gravels in the canyons which cut the Josephine Ophiolite. He has kindly responded, in the negative as to his own personal experience of such cemented gravels, but suggesting that the cementing agent might be calcium, and further, that with dilute hydrochloric acid, I could test the cemented gravels myself for the presence of calcium (it fizzes in acid).

I drove out Drum Powerhouse Road this morning to collect samples of cemented outwash from the ferny old mines below the dam. Samples collected, I decided to explore upstream from the powerhouse, and scramble up to the Miners Ditch, and follow it east and upstream. Immediately east of the powerhouse are several private residences, occupied, I should think, by PG&E employees.

I noted that directly across the river from the powerhouse, a small wedge of serpentine was exposed, several hundred feet high, and likewise several hundred feet across at the base. At river level, there is a large shelf of cemented outwash gravels. A huge granite boulder is embedded in them. This mass of natural cement receives the force and fury of the water discharged from the Pelton wheels inside the powerhouse. It is a striking example of the correlation between serpentine and cemented outwash.

This little wedge of serpentine, lying east of the black slates which are east of the main Melones Fault, throws even more suspicion upon these intervening black slates; now I have even more doubt that these slates are part of the main Shoo Fly Complex rocks, east of the serpentine.

I was prepared to ask permission to cross if anyone was about, but all was quiet. So I continued past and climbed up a sort of road/overflow channel thing leading up to one of the penstocks. This turned into a steep cement-lined chute below the penstock, a six-foot-diameter pipe. It was barely walkable. At a certain point, about 200 feet above river level, a set of wooden stairs led up to a set of ultra-heavy-duty steel stairs, which paralleled the penstock.

At the beginning of these stairs I looked about on the nearby slopes for any trace of the Miners Ditch, saw no trace, but decided to leave the penstock and thrash around until I found the ditch. This worked out well, tho it was a steep climb of another hundred feet to reach it. It is bolstered by massive dry-laid stone walls in this section, and quite mossy and shady, with large Douglas Fir trees dominating the forest. i followed the ditch east, imagining that I had a chance, considering the relative lack of undergrowth, to make good time, and possibly, reach the place where the ditch once drew water from the Bear river. According to my calculations, that would be about three miles upstream.

However, my hopes were soon dashed, as I met a steep-walled ravine, where the ditch had once crossed on a wooden flume. A sheer cliff of about a hundred feet barred my way. I dropped down off the ditch into the forest and found a major game trail, possibly an old human trail, crossing the ravine lower down, and followed it east and upcanyon. For a while it seemed like the remnants of a smaller ditch, but I found myself losing elevation rapidly and was soon down at the river. Here, large piles of mossy boulders showed that the 49ers or, at least, 19th-century gold miners, had worked the glacial outwash deposits here (which, since not in serpentine, are uncemented). I found myself on a gravel bar, with a ducked trail leading to it from downstream. Across the river, a boulder of granite more than ten feet across lay at water's edge. This gave me some pause.

A glacier has little problem moving boulders this size around; but can they be so easily transported in volumes of glacial outwash? Did this boulder hark back to a time when glacial ice came all the way down to Drum? Well, possibly. On the other hand, in ravines with steeper gradients, on the east side of the Sierra, boulders of granite which make this one look like a pebble have indeed been transported in glacial outwash. If you think about it, just as a boulder weighs less in the water than it does in open air, how much less will it weigh, enmeshed in a slurry of water and sand and clay and gravel; in glacial outwash? Imagine as well, that while the glaciers were receding, and the last Ice Age was ending, there may have been episodes of intense melting which vastly increased the amount of meltwater coming out of the glacier, farther up the bear river canyon.

At any rate. I followed the ducked trail downstream, but there is no passage at river level, and the trail leads into the back yard of a house with a large, barking Rottweiler. I called out a "Hello!" but no one appeared, so thinking disgression the better part of valor, I climbed back up to the little trail in the woods and followed it west to the penstock, then on up the steep steel ladder in search of the Miners Ditch; no sign at all nearby, so just took a chance and happened to hit it dead on, not one inch too high or low. Soon I was back at the car.

Such was a visit to Drum Powerhouse. It would not be hard to return there and pick up the Miners Ditch east of the cliffy ravine, except, the house most key to one's passage, is not only occupied, but has a big guard dog. Incidentally, that part of the canyon looks very wild. A little ways upstream there were some huge rockslides in the January 1997 flood event. These likely erased parts of the Miners Ditch, as they did erase parts of the Pacific Turnpike, the South Yuba Canal, and the Towle Brothers narrow-gauge railroad roadbed.

Cheers,

Russell Towle

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View eastward through Giant Gap from the HOUT (High Old Upriver Trail) 
June 8, 2005

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