My Own Two Feet: Darrington Trail: Folsom Lake SRA

Wednesday, January 18th

It still has not rained, so I 'celebrated' by revisiting the Darrington Mountain Bike Trail, which runs along the South Fork American River. It is rocky and narrow and curvy so I pick my hiking times carefully: not on weekends or holidays, school or otherwise.

Parked at the P, walked across the bridge, followed the trail until the arrow, about 1/2 way up the cut at Big Ravine.

Today I saw 3 other hikers and 4 bikers, typical for my weekday experiences on this trail.

At the beginning of my hike, as I was poking around the Skunk Hollow parking area in a vain search for an unlocked restroom, I ran across these two fellow, shovels, buckets, and pans in hand, looking for a good way to get up river.

Yep. Gold seekers. They were eyeing the South Fork Trail, but I told them they'd be better off walking up the river bed itself since that trail is quite a bit higher than the river.

It is hard to tell where the river ends and the lake begins, but I suppose where I hiked today is really the lake shore, since with the water so low, there are many building foundations visible, flooded with the building of the Folsom Dam.

You could walk down to this one from the boat launch on Salmon Falls road.

A lot of the trail is red dirt, plenty chewed up by mountain bikes, but the red makes any photo look better!

My footprint looks lost among all the treads.

Some of the trail follows an old road bed. The rectangular shape you see is part of an old concrete bridge railing.

I was wearing nylon hiking pants, a midweight merino wool top, and I started off with wrist warmers and a wool shirt, buttoned up to my neck. The lack of sunshine and the cold breeze was quite a shock after the past few weeks. By the time I got to the old bridge, I was ready to shed a layer.

Walking on the old road bed was quite different from the earlier red rocky section. It was easy to imagine folks in the early 20th century going into town on that road, shaded by oaks, listening to the rapids on the river.

Eventually, I started moving away from the lake shore, along the edge of Big Ravine. I considered cutting across the outflow of the ravine, but decided to turn around and head back instead.

The skinny green stripe at the left of the picture is normally full of water. Actually, the bare sandy area in the foreground is also. The trail (on the right) loops around to the left further on at a narrow portion of Big Ravine (there's a little wooden bridge there, if I recall correctly), then heads back towards the lakeshore.
I think if I'd tried to cut across I would have found shoe-sucking mud, since that whole area smelled a bit swampy.

On my way back across the old concrete bridge, I stopped for some tea.