Castle Peak Recreation Area

Wednesday, February 22nd

Snow!

I went snowshoeing today (with an REI group).
It was fun!

We're Off!

Stopped to shoot. I'm second from the right, being attacked by my blue bandana.

The instructor behind the lens in the previous shot. Normally one cannot park along this road where we did. How Low the Snow!

This gate is normally something you'd snowshoe right over.

We left the trail to cross this creek bed

Castle Peak

Stomped snow! This is where we practiced going down and up hills. That's my big ol' butt print in the middle of the frame.

Critter needs to clean up his front porch! We saw coyote tracks, small footed fox tracks, squirrel tracks, and one live chickadee, flitting around in the woods.

Andesite Ridge in the background.

We ate lunch just to the left of that knob behind good old what-is-face.

The moss stops where the snow usually comes. 12 feet low this year.

My feet. You can see how damp the snow is.

A little meadow inhabited by the sad remnants of snow-people.

ACK! Running water in the creek!? Spring has sprung in Feb this year.

Super cool igloos. 2 finished, one underway in the foreground. I hope whoever the architects are get to come back and finish the third one.

We took lots of breaks.

Hat, anyone?

We finally, at the end of the trip, came back to the stomped-flat trail.

Gear:
Included in the class fee was gaiter, pole, and snowshoe rental. I had my own poles (Gossamer Gear poles with the Leki snow baskets on them) but used the rest of the equipment on offer.

MSR Ascent snowshoes (I believe 26? not sure). The shoes had every kind of aggressive traction device known to man. So there was very little slipping going on. But I would have been sunk (literally) in powder. The bindings were easy to adjust and stayed put on my feet. They collected surprisingly little snow on the deck. I did sometimes step on my own shoes but that is something more practice will cure.
It seems strange to me that REI rents out shoes they don't currently sell. Anyway. They were fine.

OR gaiters in large. Since I was using my usual hiking shoes, the gaiters were rather large on my feet. And since I have Calves of Steel (or at least well exercised and well-fed calves) they were almost too small around my calves. If I decide to take up snowshoeing for real, I'll be making my own custom gaiters.

Shoes. I do not have waterproof shoes. And I was darned if I was going to run out and buy shoes for a sport I didn't even know if I'd like. So I just used the shoes I had (Inov8 Roclite 295). My toes got a little damp, but my cushy Smartwool socks and exertion kept them warm. At lunch break I was prepared to switch to a dry pair of socks, but by the time I'd sat 15 minutes with my feet propped up in the sun, they were dry. I love mesh shoes and wool socks.

Poles. Really were invaluable. My left pole sometimes did not hold adjustment and after I observed my behaviour a little bit I realised that I was slightly twisting that pole as I yanked it out of the snow. Once I stopped twisting, it stopped creeping. I have read that some folks find the Leki baskets a little small (GG uses Leki tips on their poles) but since I don't know any better I was perfectly content.

Clothing. I wore my old Terry coolweather bicycle tights and the lightest weight of Ibex merino shirt. A ball cap and fingerless gloves. I was plenty warm. I also had my wool Buff around my neck which served more as sun protection than as warmth. (It was about 60 degrees at 1pm)
I had a midweight Ibex shirt and a polyfil jacket as well as my Packa (a nifty combo of a pack cover and rain jacket) but did not use them. My laboriously remodeled bibs also stayed attached to my pack.

We started near the freeway at the bottom of the map, headed off trail north, then swung around west and south to catch the trail again. We went probably less than 5 miles total.

Ranch Road: Cronan Ranch Regional Trails Park

Thursday, February 9th

Another sunny un-winter-like day here in Northern California.
The hillsides, which ought to be greening up by now, are not.

However, the star thistle (nasty nasty invasive plant) at least feeds the local finch population.

Another little fellow I saw today is the California Vole, aka California Meadow Mouse (Microtus californicus). I thought at first it was a stray cattail head, but I was nowhere near a swamp.

Then I thought it was dead, but when I crouched down to get a better look, one beady little eye opened up and it moved away a little bit. I think it was sunning itself, since it was about 52 degrees this morning.

I considered lying down on the trail to get a ground-level shot, but a couple of equestriennes were coming up and I didn't feel like spooking the horses by lying down across the trail!

I decided to just take the ranch road today. No side trail excursions, since my main aim today was to go hang on my favorite trees down by the river, and the ranch road is the most direct way there and back.

Once I was comfortably installed in my hammock, I ate a sandwich: almond butter and jalapeno jelly. Oh yeah! On a couple slices of Dave's Killer Bread.

I didn't make tea since I had not replaced the tea bag in my mini cook kit. Oh well.

While loafing I noticed a bird's nest in the branches overhead.

After loafing around for a while longer, I headed back to the car. It was pretty hot, as usual, hiking up out of the river. I even sweated! Oh my!

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.

Supercat stove, runs on denatured alcohol.

Are we there yet?

Ahhhh!

I saw some really nice looking lichen today.

Fractal nature at its best

and mountain-bike humor?

Bandaids stuck to the information kiosk at the trailhead. I have no idea why.

Don't know when I'll be out again, hopefully it will rain and I'll have to go test bike rain gear instead!

Monument Trail, Monroe Ridge Trail: Marshall Gold Discovery SP

Wednesday, January 11th

Went on a hike today with a crowd of Sierra Club Seniors, with a few Foothill hikers mixed in. We took in the sights of the original "there's gold in them thare hills". The gaggle of people in this photo are staring at the river where the original lumbermill was where gold was found in the outflow of the water powering the mill.

The leader of this hike was Sheila. She was informative and entertaining. We got some painless doses of history along the trail.

Saw a grinding rock.

We went up up up up to the monument of James Marshall (there were a group of school kids there also learning).

We crossed this ditch twice on our hike. It was originally dug for goldmining purposes.

Then we went up up up some more along the Monroe Ridge Trail, getting several nice views of Coloma along the way.

Sheila pointed out that Manzinata and Madrone trees always feel cool to the touch.

After this, one guy in our party made a point of checking this fact on every manzanita we saw. "Yep," as he touched the cool bark.

We made our way down off Monroe ridge and ate lunch.

I boiled some water for tea on my homemade catstove. Between the tiny stove and my custom pack, I was probably pretty memorable. I was also the only one in shorts. If the weather's going to act like summer, so am I.