The CA-NV-OR Tripoint, Black Butte, Fort Bragg, et al

If you came to this post looking for useful information about the CA-NV-OR tripoint, scroll down to that section.



Above: a controversial sign seen in the depths of Sonoma County. According to my wife I wouldn't be allowed in - although I am not a shark, I'm not a great white, just an *okay* white.

I was going to be in Sacramento for a conference, and I have a list of nerdy, difficult, pointless things around far northern California that I want to do that my family is not remotely interested in. I am a compassionate and merciful father and husband, so I did some of them on this trip. I thought it would be livin' wild and free man! like my younger years, but I was surprised to find how much I did not like being away from them.


BODEGA DUNES

Before I took off, we finally took a sled to ride down the dunes, but without being pulled, even on the steepest slopes it wouldn't move. Turns out sand has more friction than snow. Who knew? Next to the dunes is the mouth of Salmon Creek - I don't know why I always though it was cool to see where rivers or creeks come out into the ocean. Creeks are small enough that it still looks like a beach. You shouldn't go swimming or surfing at THIS creek mouth though (no joke. This was just one of a number of attacks.)








SACRAMENTO

Above: the inside of the gate at Sutter's Fort, in the middle of what is now downtown Sac.


Sacramento is a more interesting town than you would think, though that's not a high bar to clear.

Above: the Guy West Bridge, over the American River at Sac State. I always say that I will compare the number and thickness of suspension cables between the Golden Gate and Guy West, which is meant to look like the Golden Gate, and then see if I can discern any relationship. And of course I forgot to put my finger on it for scale. Below: in a "back plaza" area near the Capitol, there's this gigantic rose quartz boulder. No idea why. Much bigger than the one at the Barlow in Sebastopol.








Above: a Christian Milhouse at 15th and L. A quick web search does not reveal the cultural relevance or memehood of this image. Below: the Confluence area near Auburn (of the north and middle forks of the American River.) It hit 90 that day and I am weak to the Central Valley summers now.








Above and below: in the winter this is a nice waterfall. I saw the final hint of moisture in some of the creek bads along the trail.




Above: apparently the heat, and possibly a bike tire, were too much for this scaly friend, but based on the track you can see below, his big brother got off the trail in time.




Above: you had to do it on that day huh? That specific day. You have got to be FUCKING KIDDING ME


THE CALIFORNIA-OREGON-NEVADA TRIPOINT


(Image above from caltopo.com.) I've been wanting to get to this for years. I've been to the PA-MD-DE and PA-MD-WV tripoints already. California has only two tripoints and the other one is in water (the CA-NV-AZ tripoint is in the Colorado River.) This tripoint is also the 42 N-120 W intersection, and the geography term for its location is "the middle of fucking nowhere." Just getting to it was quite an adventure. It was almost a 6 hour drive from Sacramento, via Reno and 395. As a sign of old age, I didn't take the more adventurous route via the Black Rock Desert because there are next to no services there, and it was dark for a good chunk of the ride so I wouldn't have seen much, and I don't like helping the good law enforcement officers of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation make their annual budget with speeding tickets. As you pass the turnoff for Susanville, you're transitioning from the Sierras to the Cascades. I would have stopped at the Likely Saloon (in the town of Likely) but I blinked and missed it. (I guess I wasn't expecting it.) Then through Alturas (the seat of bustling Modoc County), then over the Warner Mountains into Surprise Valley, turn left at Cedarville, and arrive in Fort Bidwell. (I later recited these directions to somebody in Weed and he had never heard of any of these places.)



Above: the Cedarville Medical Building (from Gmaps.) I had to get away from the fast pace and urban hustle-bustle of Cedarville and relax in Fort Bidwell.

The Fort Bidwell Hotel is the only game in town to rent a room and it is...interesting. I called ahead asking if a late arrival around 11:00pm would be okay and the proprietor was kind enough to stay up for me. He showed me my room (it's essentially a converted ranch house) and I asked, "Uh, are you going to give me a key?" His response: "It's Fort Bidwell. You'll be fine." You couldn't lock the rooms from inside either. Despite my wife's assurances that I would be murdered in the night, I was indeed fine.

The next morning after a breakfast of English muffins and mixed PBJ (you know together in the same jar? But I don't just eat it out of the jar with a spoon, I'm not lazy or anything) I headed to the trailhead, 15 miles up a dirt road to the turnoff. This is not a frequently done "hike" and I was actually a little nervous, both because it wasn't clear if I was trespassing at any point due to poor signage, and because most of it is just cross-country travel with basalt boulders and sage bushes for rattlesnakes to hide under. Some good obsidian too. (If you found this post searching for actual useful information: at Tripoint Trailhead on Gmaps, go over the wire gate with two chicken-wire columns of basalt through the small forest for a couple hundred yards. Gmaps makes it look like there's a road or trail but there's really not. From the edge of the cluster of trees near the trailhead, there are somewhat followable tire ruts that lead almost to the edge of the small canyon labeled "Cow Head Slough". From there it's pure cross-country travel and using GPS. )







I was surprised to find birds like this in the desert (there were two, seemingly a mated pair) and while there was water nearby, these two maniacs were just running back and forth making a bunch of noise. Apologies for video quality - the second one has some of the vocalizations. Their dinosaur-like behavior contributed to the land-before-time feeling this area gave me.





















Above: what causes these sandy open areas? As I learned later in Jug Handle State Park, hardpan soil can get leached of nutrients, maybe that it's it? Below: I've not seen lichen or fungus like this before, particularly in the desert.




Above: these juniper berries were particularly brilliant blue. I'm not sure if that means they would make better gin and sadly I didn't have time to find out.






Above: I have achieved the Tripoint. Why do I always forget how much I hate off-trail travel. I opened a Clif Bar in Oregon, chewed it in California and swallowed it in Nevada. Here I was standing on the CA-NV line, with my finger in Oregon, as is appropriate. I am nothing if not consistent and have expressed similar sentiments before (below, in Brookings.)



From there it was a mere 4 hours via Alturas and McCloud to Weed, with Mt. Shasta impossibly continuing to get bigger as it always does. I had some time to kill so I hit Castle Crags for a short hike (on the PCT for a whole half-mile) but I saved Castle Crag Dome for another time. I spent the evening soaking up the culture in Weed. Surprisingly, I saw neither Cheech nor Chong. I saw the place called "Asian Barbecue" and thought "right on" but the prices were SUPER expensive, and when I asked if he had larb (which was on the menu I saw online) he gave me attitude, saying it would take some time since he didn't make anything ahead of time. How about, don't make anything at all, and I'll eat at the much friendlier, busier and more reasonable Hi-Lo Cafe. I should add it never struck me how much better Mt. Shasta was doing than Weed - lots of for-rent signs and empty storefronts in Weed, whereas Shasta has new homes and almost a Colorado vibe.




















BLACK BUTTE

Black Butte is the "little" cinder cone next to Mount Shasta and immediately next to the 5. It looks so cute, I never believed it could be 5.6M RT to the summit. But it's still 1800'. As I often said when I lived in the Berkeley hills where I could watch the sun set behind San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge and Mt. Tam from my bedroom window, I felt bad for the people IN San Francisco who couldn't appreciate the view. Similarly the views of Shasta from Black Butte are of course peerless. By the way, heads-up to the two National Forest people who were working hard maintaining the trail and making hikes like this possible - including Taylor from New Jersey, you guys rock!


Above: a dashing and rogueish adventurer at the summit of Mt. Shasta in...wait, that can't be 21 years ago already can it?










Above: Mt. McLoughlin in the distance.










Above: the "trail" as it often is on stratovolcanoes, which is why it's often better to ascend them with equipment when they're covered with snow.

Below: yeah, no shit



























Above: the summit. Below: in the distance you can see the hummocks (better in the zoomed in second picture than the first), the field of little bumps which are actually pieces of Shasta. Per USGS these are from a landslide, not from when it's periodically violently blown itself up completely; last time was 100,000 years ago. (Those "little" bumps are on the order of a hundred feet high.)





And then on the way down, I met a little friend. This is the second time I've seen a rattlesnake come down a steep hill by essentially just rolling and falling (different species too - this is a northern Pacific, the other time it was a red diamond one in San Diego County.) About 2.5-3', got within 2-3' of me which is striking range - but as is usually the case with rattlers, he clearly wanted nothing to do with me and proceeded to immediately squeeze himself into the crevice under an overhanging root. I had actually stopped to look at the wolfsbane on a tree and when I stayed there for a minute he got tired of me and started rattling to tell me to screw off. See how polite?









FORT BRAGG

In 25 years of living in Northern California, I had never been to Fort Bragg. Long for a day trip, not on the way to anything else, not quite interesting enough to get me to visit. I've been missing out. Originally I was going to Jackson State Forest but when I pulled over at my intended trailhead, the trail was overgrown and unattended, and I got a little spooked that there was another snake immediately at the trailhead, even if not a rattler. (Apparently these are supposed to be rare but I've seen 3 in 5 years.)


He was a lazy little bastid, he wouldn't move until I actually tried to pick him up.



I asked myself "I've run on logging roads in forests before, what will be special about this one?" and I'm glad I did, because I ended up on a whim going to Jug Handle State Park, which has a beautiful beach and a really cool (and not short!) ecological trail going up through five eco-zones including the second Pacific pygmy forest I've been in, the other one further south in Salt Point.































Of course I went to Glass Beach but there's not much glass these days - the pictures you see online of a beach covered with round multicolored jewels are from 20 years ago before the place was discovered, and on one of the harder-to-scramble-down-to beaches just to the south of the parking lot I did find some, but it was just a few pieces of clear or green glass with the sharp edges smoothed by the ocean.




Next two photos below: I went down to the harbor (which is pretty neat) and got fish and chips at Sea Pal's. Unsurprisingly they were the best fish and chips I've had outside New Zealand (still not quite fush n' chups, but the best you'll get around these parts.) The box of purple debris is actually sea urchins - there were 3 more stacked up before I left.






SONOMA COUNTY: BACK TO THE RANCH

Shortly after my return Sonoma caught on fire as it often does, though fortunately this fire was a "mere" 2 square miles. Enough to make a smoke layer and redden the sun. As is my wont, I end a trip report with photos from Annadel. After 5 years of hanging out in this park, I didn't realize there was actually a way to get (almost) to Bennett Peak! Annadel has a whole network of well-maintained social trails and I don't know if I'm committing a sin by sharing the unofficial map so publicly, but here it is.





Above: the map - you've seen it. Below. views from just below Bennett Peak, complete with smoke from the 50%-contained Point Fire and a barely visible Mt. St. Helena. The actual high point of Bennett Peak is on private property.







Why post this random picture of turkeys? They were absolutely frozen in place when I took this picture, staring at a spot where a coyote had just run by - which was fortunately more interested in a fawn than in them. I watched as the coyote ended up catching it on the third try (twice the fawn collapsed on the trail and hikers/bikers interrupted the coyote's attack and it scampered off and waited in the underbrush.) I intentionally didn't take pictures or video as it just felt wrong and I was sure even at the time I wouldn't want to fix this any better in my memory than it already would be. I wrote up the event in detail and emailed park staff in the event that they track this sort of thing. I was surprised to see coyote preying on deer (even fawn), especially since the coyote and fawn were about the same size.


FIN