Iron Point and Lovers Leap

A late start today left insufficient time to hike Euchre Bar Trail as planned, so instead I did a little poking around. First I drove to Iron Point, where starts Euchre Bar Trail from the Alta side. Down below, some 1800 feet below, I saw two sections of the North Fork American River. My Magellan Triton GPS gave my UTM coordinates, 10N 692387 4340555. My compass gave the bearings to the two sections: 121 degrees and 170 degrees. Next I plotted the two sections on my topographical map. The section at 121 degrees was 1.8 miles away, the section at 170 degrees was 0.9 mile away.

My map reading exercise over, it was time to poke around. I was alone here. A trail led to the southwest. There was recent maintenance, for stumps of manzanita bushes stuck out of the ground, and manzanita branches were stacked neatly in small piles beside the trail. I followed the trail to see where it would go.

The trail was only a few hundred yards long, and at the end of it was this view of Giant Gap.

I then drove to Giant Gap and parked my truck a short distance from the top of the ridge.

The west side of the Lovers Leap prominence gave this view of the North Fork American River. I could see the Sacramento Valley. Had the day been clearer, I could have seen the Coastal Range.

The view from Lovers Leap proper, on the south end of the prominence, is always spectacular.

The east end of the prominence gives this view of Green Valley and Iron Point. Far in the distance is Tinker Knob, the core of an extinct volcano at the crest of the Sierra Nevada. In the several times I've hiked to Tinker Knob, I never knew I could see Giant Gap from it.

So today I learned that from Giant Gap, one can see both the crest of the Sierra, and across the Sacramento Valley to the Coastal Range.