Drought Emergency

Yesterday, Governor Jerry Brown declared a drought emergency for California.

Today I hiked Stevens Trail, from the Colfax trail head to Secret Ravine, down to the North Fork American River. Here's the water level from early last year, when rainfall was low, compared to now.

2013

2014

This is serious, folks.

The low water level is attracting prospectors. I met this young man on the trail. He had carried his gear into the canyon using a pack of his own design. He was cooking a breakfast of oatmeal. He planned to prospect only a few days. (He has a job in Sacramento.) He wants to find enough gold to pay for his prospecting equipment. His name was Miles.

I need to correct something from my last post, where I wrote that the miners who live along the river keep their camps orderly. This observation was from a hike last year, when I passed an orderly camp. Today I hiked down the side trail to this camp. The camp was abandoned and trash was strewn about. This was not good. The authorities should evict anyone trashing public land. (Although at this site eviction is a moot point.)

2013

2014

There's a Race of Men that Don't Fit In

I returned to Stevens Trail today, to the North Fork American River, to continue working the crevice in the slate outcrop I had worked on New Years Day. I arrived at the trail head at 8:50 AM. Some six vehicles were already in the parking lot. I went downhill, past Slaughter Ravine and Robbers Ravine. A short distance beyond the adit to the abandoned mine, debris from a small landslide (about one cubic yard of slate rock and dirt) covered the trail. A man on the opposite side of the slide was removing the debris with a thick tree branch, the only tool available to him. The debris was a danger to hikers, for just beside the trail was a sheer drop of about fifteen feet, followed by a steep grade some four hundred feet to the river. The loose debris was at the angle of repose. The weight of a hiker crossing the debris could cause it to give way, sending the hiker over the edge. I took the Gerber folding shovel from my five gallon bucket and helped the man clear the debris. Ten minutes later the trail was ready for use.

I briefly spoke with the man. He was a prospector who lives by the river. He appeared to be in his mid-sixties. He was trim, with a full head of white hair combed back, and a white beard. He wore simple work clothing, something befitting a mechanic. He said he walks to Colfax once a month to buy used books at the library, and today was his trip into town. I would meet him on my return hike, so I'll write later what I learned from him.

It was a clear day, in the sixties as long as I was in sunlight, but in the canyon where the low winter sun doesn't shine it was in the upper thirties. I arrived at my panning spot at 10:30 AM. The wind chill brought the temperature by the river to below freezing. Patches of snow covered the river bank. I dug into the crevice and filled my five gallon bucket with classified gravel. The ice on the rocks made for slippery footing. I sat on a damp and cold boulder to pan the gravels. The river water was ice cold. Down river I could see daylight hitting the south facing canyon slopes. The temperature there was some 25 degrees warmer.

A man made his way down the slippery slate rocks from the trail. He struck up a conversation with me as I panned some gravel. He appeared to be about thirty years old. He had a long beard and carried a hiking staff. He said he pans for gold up and down the North Fork. He knew some of the prospectors who live along this section of river by name. He reads the blog of Russell Towle, and knew the circumstances of his death. I mentioned I had hiked with Russell on Canyon Creek Trail, and once met him by the bridge at Euchre Bar. The man had Ron Gould's book North Fork Trails. I have the same book. We talked about trails and gold and this and that, and then I mentioned I take videos of my gold panning. He said he posts his gold panning videos on YouTube, his name is Victor Marshall. I told him I had seen his videos. I said I posted my videos under Lo Que Vi. He said he's seen my videos. We talked some more, a good conversation. We shook hands, and Victor headed back to the trail. Hopefully, we'll meet again on the North Fork. (From his videos, he pulls some good gold out of the river.)

I finished my panning at 1:20 PM. One bucket was enough for today. I was cold and I wanted to get to that warm slope downstream. I got a small amount of flakes. As I gathered my gear, a group of hikers arrived at the trail above me. A man wanted to see the gold I found. He came down the slate rocks (carefully, they were slippery) and I showed him my small take.

On the return hike, past Robbers Ravine, I met the prospector from earlier in the day. He had purchased his used books from the Colfax library. We spoke for some five minutes. He gave me his name. He said he's lived along the North Fork prospecting for gold for three and one-half years. He didn't do much prospecting in December as much of the river was frozen. He's been working the area where I panned today, but that section of river has largely been worked out, and he's planning to move his camp upriver from Yankee Jims Bridge. He said he was familiar with the Euchre Bar area, where I do a lot of hiking. He's read Russell Towle's blog.

I learned from Victor Marshall that a maximum of 14 days of camping is allowed on Bureau of Land Management land. May the authorities leave these prospectors living on the river alone. They don't bother anyone and their camps are orderly. Let them live their lives.

Heading back to my truck, thinking of these prospectors, the words of a Robert Service poem from the Klondike Gold Rush came to mind:

There's a race of men that don't fit in,
  A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
  And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
  And they climb the mountain's crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
  And they don't know how to rest.

"The Hidden Treasure of the San Joaquin Valley"

That's what the Hanford 2012 Visitor's Guide calls Hanford. I thumbed through the guide in my hotel room shortly after I set down my luggage. My interest piqued, I headed out the lobby door and walked a few blocks to see the sights this small city (2012 population 54,324) had to offer.

I spent only three days in the larger area on business, so I'm no Hanford expert. I saw a few blocks of the downtown in perhaps two hours combined. What little I did see in that short time described a past glory, a stable present, and a promising future.

Hanford is the seat of Kings County. This is the most productive agricultural land on Earth, and Hanford sat on the rail line. Judging from the dates on its larger downtown buildings, the city's heyday was from the 1890s to the 1920s. Then came the Depression.

I passed this drinking fountain at the Courthouse Square. I saw no indication of a significant Japanese population in Hanford nowadays. Did the Americans of Japanese descent return to Hanford following their release from the World War II internment camps? I have no idea.

Likewise, I saw no sign of a significant Chinese population, although Hanford boasts the remnants of a small Chinatown, complete with a Taoist temple.

The original Kings County Courthouse, built 1896, is now occupied by businesses.

The Hanford Auditorium, built 1924, still holds events. The seats with their ornate design are original.

Outside the Veterans Center, built 1925, sit two German 77mm field guns from World War I.

The Fox Theater, built 1929, still draws big names.

Hanford takes pride in its past, and is doing what it can to maintain its historic buildings and attract new business. I walked around the downtown when the temperatures were in the upper twenties. I would suppose pleasant weather brings many events and much activity. I enjoyed my short stay. Hanford deserves its self-appointed description of "The Hidden Treasure of the San Joaquin Valley."

Escuela Estados Unidos

My wife and her sister with her grandson,
at Escuela Estados Unidos, 2006

My last post about my wife and her elementary school reminded me of this story.

Panama City years ago named its elementary schools after various countries. My wife attended Escuela Estados Unidos. (This school was 0.6 mile from the Canal Zone, then under United States control.) The United States ambassador made a yearly visit to the school. The students would assemble and sing to him The Star Spangled Banner, in English.

While in Plaza Francia in Casco Viejo in 2006, we met these
students from Escuela Estados Unidos on a field trip.
Note their school badge, with the United States Coat of Arms.

Fifty Years Ago

My copy of the Oakland Tribune

I was playing marbles with classmates during recess at my elementary school in San Pablo, California, when a girl came up to us and said the President had been shot.

About the same time, in Panama City, Panama, my wife's elementary school teacher announced the same thing to her class.

Return to Humbug Canyon

Two weeks ago, I went to the abandoned gold mine of Cape Horn Tunnel in Humbug Canyon. Today I returned to the canyon for some more exploring. I wanted to see if there were abandoned gold mines down an unimproved road I had no time to visit on the previous trip. I found that there can be a big difference between what's on a topographic map and what actually exists.

Leaving the Sacramento Valley, I drove up Interstate 80 to Auburn, and then took the road to the old mining town of Foresthill. I traveled another thirteen miles to China Wall Staging Area, where I parked my truck. No other vehicles were about. This parking lot is just above the snow line. When the snows come, the lot will be filled with trucks pulling trailers with snowmobiles. I put on my day pack and went on my way. The temperature was in the mid thirties. Frost was on the ground. The elevation here is five thousand feet. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. Leaves had fallen from the deciduous trees. Most trees here are conifers.

I wound my way among the manzanita along the canyon rim. My route paralleled a water ditch once used for mining operations. No water runs through it now. I wonder if the ditch was built with Chinese labor, giving it the name China Wall. There's no wall around here, only this ditch. From the rim I could see six miles to Iron Point, the start of Euchre Bar Trail from the Alta side. Euchre Bar is my favorite trail. Indeed, this vast canyon, with its long stretch of the upper North Fork American River, is my playground. I've been to the canyon many times, yet I've seen only a small fraction of it. The rugged terrain alone will keep the vast majority of it out of my reach.

Rugged terrain, yet the early miners apparently scrambled over every square inch of it in their search for gold. After all, they sunk mine shafts in many remote places. I think the hillsides were far more accessible in the early years of the Gold Rush. I haven't researched this, but I think the Indians here used fire to clear the underbrush, as did the Indians in the Eastern forests, to give game such as deer room to thrive. When the first miners arrived, they easily walked about the forest. Later, the miners cut down the trees and suppressed the fires, and now the forest floor is choked with brush. Casual hikers like me aren't going to leave the unimproved roads or trails and plunge into that brush. So I'll never see most of this canyon up close. I can only go so far from a trail or dirt road.

Back to the object of my visit today: to walk down the unimproved road in search of abandoned gold mines.

The topographic map had a discrepancy - the unimproved road was shown as a foot trail. At about one hundred yards, a small tree had fallen across the road. I walked under it. Soon there were small manzanita bushes and pine saplings growing in the road. It had been years since a vehicle had come down here. And then the road completely diverged from the foot trail on the map. With the map loaded in my Magellan Triton GPS, my waypoint was in the woods with no trail nearby, although I was still on the road. I continued on a bit, until the vegetation in the road simply blocked progress. I shouldn't have gone this far. I had left a map at home giving my intended route, and I wasn't following it. Since I was alone, this wasn't a good idea. So I turned around.

I didn't see any abandoned mines along this route. Perhaps this had been a logging road many years ago.

I walked uphill and returned to my truck. My little exploration this day had revealed nothing of real interest. But it had been a pleasant hike nonetheless.

Cape Horn Tunnel

The autumn weather could not have been better for a hike, so off on a hike I went, to Cape Horn Tunnel on Foresthill Divide. I went to Cape Horn Tunnel a few years ago, in the winter, most of that journey on snow shoes. Today there were but a few small patches of snow at the China Wall Staging Area starting point. Two other vehicles were in the parking lot. They belonged to dirt bike riders - there's a network of motorcycle trails in this area. I would be hiking alone. I put on my pack and was on my way. The starting elevation was 5,000 feet. I would descend to about 4,250 feet. This would be a leisurely hike.

I traveled along the rim of the canyon and got a wonderful view of the North Fork area. On the return hike I would see boxcars, almost six miles away, of a westbound freight train traveling the rail line built by Chinese laborers in the 1860s.

View toward Iron Point from near China Wall

An unimproved road leads to Cape Horn Tunnel. I saw a few tire tracks on the first part of the dirt road, and then I saw no tire tracks. Autumn leaves covered many sections of the road. Few people drive down here.

Cape Horn Tunnel is an abandoned mine that dates to at least the 1880s. I don't know if it was a productive mine, or when operations ceased. The adit is next to the road. It's now filled with water.

Adit to Cape Horn Tunnel

The topographic map shows another mine nearby, the Alameda Tunnel, but the adit is down the hill a bit, in heavy timber, and since I was alone I didn't want to wind my way down there.

The unimproved road continued a short way to the creek in Humbug Canyon. At the end of the road was a tub. What a tub was doing here, I had no idea, but someone had hauled it here for some purpose. I also found some one-inch black plastic line, possibly used for water, but the line was disconnected. This was a beautiful spot, the small creek running through a steep gorge. Some mining activity had been going on somewhere around here. I'm not sure when the activity was going on. There didn't seem to be recent activity.

On the return, at a clearing with a view of the opposite hillside, I saw a young Giant Sequoia. These hillsides were logged about a century ago, and the trees date to then at most. Giant Sequoias are rare in these parts.

Young Giant Sequoia

I passed quartz outcrops by the road. I broke off a piece of quartz. It contained a very small amount of gold. If this quartz had gold worth taking, there would be a mine shaft here. But there is only a small amount of gold. I tossed the quartz to the ground and continued on.

Quartz outcrop

Downhill from Cape Horn Tunnel is a new mine shaft. I took the dirt road to it. The work on the mine appears recent, within one to three years. The miners had dug a horizontal shaft some forty feet into the slate, placing substantial timbers to support the walls and ceiling, and then they stopped their work. It had been a while since they last worked here. I noted the cobwebs on the safety helmet hanging on a beam. And the lack of fresh footprints in the mud. And there were no tire tracks in the dirt road.

 

 

 

 

 

I continued uphill. I passed several piles of bear scat on this hike.

I noted side roads leading here and there. I'm sure they go to mines not listed on the topographic map. I'll have to explore those dirt roads someday.