Hike to Tinker Knob

To mark the tenth anniversary of my open heart surgery, I hiked the Pacific Crest Trail from Donner Summit to Tinker Knob, a round trip of 15 miles.

I departed the trailhead (elevation 7,063 feet) at nine o'clock. A pair of runners took off ahead of me. This is a popular trail. I would see a few runners, and many hikers, including a few people walking the entire length of the Pacific Crest Trail, from the border of Mexico to the border of Canada.

I've lost count of the number of times I've ascended the steep granodiorite face just beyond the trailhead. Sometimes I went to Donner Peak, other times to Mount Judah. A few times I went to Tinker Knob, elevation 8,949 feet. I know I've stood atop Tinker Knob twice. Maybe I've been atop it three times. I'd have to go through my journals to be certain. One thing I know - the camera has not been invented that captures the grandeur seen from the crest of the Sierra Nevada.

The trail in places is literally on the crest of the Sierra, rain on the west side of the trail flowing to the Pacific Ocean, rain on the east side flowing into the Great Basin.

Today I spoke with two women on solo hikes of the entire length of the trail. The first was an American, in her early thirties. Later I met a woman in her early fifties who spoke English with an accent, possibly Danish or Swedish. She said hiking the trail was the most incredible experience of her life. Over the years I've spoken with several women making a solo hike of the entire trail. I wonder how many were inspired by the book Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed.

I met a group of three men in their fifties, and spoke at length with one, a ham radio operator who inquired about the Kenwood TH-F6 radio attached to my Osprey pack. He said that this was the first day of a three week hike for his friends and him. They were hiking the Pacific Crest Trail from Donner Summit to Yosemite. They were from Oregon and go on many long hikes throughout the Western United States.

Most of my hike was spent alone, my thoughts going here and there, while I took in the views around me.

I reached Tinker Knob around 12:30 PM. Tinker Knob is the core of an ancient volcano. I spoke briefly with a couple coming down from the summit. There is no marked route to the top. I tried to follow the couple's path to the top, but could not find a safe route. I looked about. Nothing looked certain. This is not a good place to suffer an injury. I decided it best to turn around.

I made two 2-meter contacts with my Kenwood radio from the crest, both with 5 watts of power. The first transmission was on the west side of Anderson Peak. I was just above the headwaters of the North Fork American River, and my signal bounced down the canyon walls to the W6EK repeater in Auburn, a distance of about 50 miles. I spoke with a man in Foresthill, and he said I was his first ham radio contact. I regret not writing down his call sign, but perhaps we will talk again. Later, between Tinker Knob and Anderson Peak, I again reached the W6EK repeater, this time talking with a fellow member of the Sierra Foothills Amateur Radio Club. We switched to a simplex frequency, and my 5-watt signal made it some 75 miles to his house in Sacramento.

A strong breeze blew over the crest on the return hike, and the sun beat down, with the temperature about 85 degrees. (It was about 105 degrees in the Sacramento Valley). I was well-hydrated at the start of the hike. During the hike I went through 2.5 liters of water and 1 liter of Gatorade. Still, I was very thirsty on the last mile of the hike, and my thoughts turned to the cold beer in my refrigerator. I reached my vehicle at 4:45 PM, downed a half-liter of warm Gatorade, and headed home.

Approach to Tinker Knob, from the north

View from the east slope of Tinker Knob, to the south shore of Lake Tahoe

View west from the crest of the Sierra, between Tinker Knob and
Anderson Peak, to the canyons of the North Fork American River

B-29 Superfortress

The last flying B-29 Superfortress flew just to the south of my house a few minutes ago. My wife and I were sitting in the shade of the backyard when we saw it approach. The WWII bomber was headed in a northeasterly direction. It's based out of Addison Airport near Dallas and was at Mather Field in Sacramento for a show.

So Few Go Here Nowadays

Climbing out of a steep canyon in hot weather is the very definition of insanity, so with summer approaching, today I made perhaps my last hike on Euchre Bar Trail, until cooler temperatures return.

I wanted to try a new spot, about 0.25 mile upriver from where I panned last week. Google Earth shows a large rock outcrop along the North Fork American River. It looked promising for gold.

This hike being exploratory, I traveled light, my only panning gear a plastic pan and a trowel, inside my Osprey pack. The Home Depot five gallon bucket, folding shovel, and other gear remained at home.

The trail upstream beyond the footbridge at Euchre Bar is in need of maintenance. It's impossible not to brush against the poison oak. (I got poison oak on my hands from last week's hike.) In one spot, three trees had fallen across the trail, in close proximity, but it was easy to climb over them and continue. I think maintenance is done by volunteers, and that may be a long time coming.

I reached a terrace overlooking the rock outcrop. A terrace is a level spot carved into a hillside by the Forty Niners to make their camps. The outcrop and river were some fifty feet below, and the descent was steep. The place looked inviting for gold and I wanted to get down there. I poked about but found no safe route. During the Gold Rush I'm sure there was a simple trail from the terrace to the river, but now the area is overgrown with vegetation. Should I try to make it to the river? Absolutely not. Few hikers starting from Iron Point travel beyond the bridge at Euchre Bar. I could very well be the only person on this section of the trail today. The hillsides are tall (over 2000 feet above the river) and steep, and should trouble come there is no cell phone reception down here. Even getting a Personal Locator Beacon signal out is questionable. The more hiking partners you have, the more risks you can take. When you hike alone, you have to use common sense.

Before turning around, I stood for a few minutes looking at the river. At my feet was an iron pipe, built of plates and rivets, some 12 inches in diameter and several feet long. It likely dated to the late 1800s. Nearby was a water ditch used for mining operations.

So few go here nowadays, but the canyon was once busy with activity. The Nisenan of course were here, for centuries, and in the rock outcrops by the river one can easily find concave holes where the women ground seeds for meal. I don't think the fur trappers working the Sacramento Valley made it this far upriver, so the first non-natives here were likely the Forty Niners. They made their camps up and down the river, and scooped gold from the gravels with tin cups and whatever else was handy. They cut the trees on the hillsides and built large flumes through which they diverted the river, so they could reach the gravels at bedrock. The period of placer mining ended, and next came the hard rock mines, the Pioneer and the Southern Cross and the American Eagle, to name a few. The mine operators built dams and installed electrical generators. They slid stamp mills on skids down the steep hillsides and set them up by the river. There were telephones down here!

So much activity. In the September 12, 1896 San Francisco Call newspaper is a letter from a Mr. Muller, regarding trout fishing here. "The scenery along this route is grand, and the American is about the finest in the State for trout." He talks of anglers intending to spend a month on the river. He complains about mine employees illegally using explosives to get fish.

And then the mines shut down, some 100 years ago, and the people left. Equipment too large and heavy to carry out of the canyon remained in place. Fires destroyed the buildings. The trees grew back.

The iron pipes and generators and stamp mill parts, and the terraces and water ditches, remain to tell of the past activity. As I walk about these, I think about how hard it is to get to the river nowadays, there are so few access points. Yet, people once just went up and down it.

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.

J.W. Beardsley

While researching the history of Green Valley for an earlier post, I read in the May 8, 1876 Sacramento Daily Union of the death in Green Valley of J.W. Beardsley.

His occupation was not given, so I only assume he was a miner, for there was a good deal of mining activity in Green Valley back then. He had been in California for about 18 months.

On the evening of April 17, 1876, he got into a small boat, intending to cross the North Fork American River, but the river was swollen and the boat overturned. J.W. Beardsley was swept downstream. He was 43 years old, and had a wife and two children in Marquette, Michigan.

Two weeks and two days later, on May 3, 1876, his body was found in the Sacramento River near Courtland, downriver from Sacramento and a long distance from Green Valley.

His brother David Beardsley, of Nevada City, identified the body at the undertaking firm of Clark & Davis in Sacramento. He had the remains interred at Sacramento City Cemetery, in Tier 30, Grave 75 1/2.

While in Sacramento today, I stopped by Sacramento City Cemetery to photograph the grave marker for this post, but no marker remains. I spoke with a docent at this historic cemetery. She said that the brother may have wanted to save money on the burial by placing a wood instead of a stone marker on the grave. Only a handful of wood markers remain in the cemetery. "What about the 1/2 number on Grave 75 1/2?," I asked. More cost savings, she replied. After over two weeks in the river, what was left of J.W. Beardsley could fit into a cheaper half-grave plot.

International Space Station

A free iPad app called ISS Spotter advises when the International Space Station will be visible at a particular location. Today at 8:46 PM in the Sacramento area it appeared to the northwest. It looked like a star, only it moved across the sky, for a few minutes on a southeasterly course, 88 degrees above me at its closest point, until it faded from view as it entered Earth's shadow.

Return to Green Valley

Google Earth view of Green Valley, from above Euchre Bar,
looking towards Giant Gap, with the place mark on Joe Steiner's grave

What a difference a week makes.

Last Sunday the climb out of Green Valley was a challenge. Today, it was far less so. I made the ascent of some two thousand feet slowly, for sure, but without any cramping in the legs and with no twenty-minute siesta. I attribute this to three things: the last hike conditioned the leg muscles; I had not over-exerted myself, such as when I went bushwhacking last week; and I started this hike far better hydrated, having drank about 36 oz. of water before leaving home, rather than two cups of coffee. Hydration was likely the most important factor.

My Topo! map software gives a distance of 0.83 mile for the steep section of the trail, but with switchbacks I'll give it 0.9 mile. Let's compare this steep section of Green Valley Trail with Bright Angel Trail, which connects the rim of the Grand Canyon with the Colorado River.

Elevation difference:
- Bright Angel Trail 4,380 ft
- Green Valley Trail 1,600 ft

Distance:
- Bright Angel Trail 8.0 miles
- Green Valley Trail 0.9 mile

Average Grade
- Bright Angel Trail 10%
- Green Valley Trail 34%

Slope in Degrees
- Bright Angel Trail 05.74
- Green Valley Trail 19.67

I departed the trailhead at Moody Ridge at 8:50 AM. The trail soon reached a paved road and followed it a short distance. A small pickup truck approached. The driver stopped to talk. He lived up the road, and he asked if I was prepared for the hike into the valley. Yes, I was: I had water, a GPS, a personal locator beacon, and fire making items. I carry gear I would need to face a night alone. "Do you have a snake bite kit?" Yes, I did. We talked some more. Russell Towle had been his neighbor and friend. I said that Russell was the John Muir of the North Fork American River, and he agreed. We talked for a good twenty minutes, and exchanged contact information. He said trail maintenance events are held in Russell's memory. I would like to join these. Many years ago I joined Russell for a maintenance hike he arranged on Canyon Creek Trail.

I made my way down the steep section, and reached the junction where last week I had taken the trail to the right, leading to the west side of the valley. Today I took the trail to the left. Now I was in Green Valley proper, the steep hillside behind me. The trail was obscure in many places. Few people enter this valley and the old mining trails are becoming overgrown. I passed two old water ditches, now dry as they are no longer in use for mining operations.

Soon I was at the grave of Joe Steiner. Born in 1869 in Switzerland, he spent the latter part of his life in Green Valley, working his mine and managing a property. He died in 1949. Atop his grave were two rusted gold pans, the rusted head of a shovel, a kerosene lamp, and a broken ceramic coffee mug.

Joe Steiner's grave

The trail led to the hotel site, a level spot with rock retaining walls. People now use it as a camp site. Someone had placed a large anvil on the corner of the site. Looking across the river, I saw other rock walls. I don't think many people go over there anymore.

Site of the hotel

I followed the trail westwards, passing old mining sites, rock retaining walls, and pits with iron debris. I found plastic tubing from more modern mining activity, but I think such activity is limited. I reached the site of Joe Steiner's mine. The adit had collapsed long ago.

Site of Joe Steiner's mine

I made my way eastwards along the river, and reached a nice spot for lunch, water and a single Clif bar. Water is more important than food on a hike, so I eat little, if at all. I sat on the slate rock outcrop and enjoyed the view of the river. I was probably the only person in the valley.

Solitude

Then commenced the return hike. My going was slow on the steep section but my legs felt fine. I encountered a couple walking with their dog to the river. These were the only people I saw on the trail today. We talked a bit. They said they lived on Moody Ridge, so they were locals. Russell Towle had been their neighbor and friend. I asked them if many people hiked into Green Valley. They said no, the valley gets few visitors.

I reached the trailhead parking area at 2:05 PM. My truck was the only vehicle there. Thus ended another wonderful day on the North Fork.