[env-trinity] Trinity New York Times October 17 2008

Fri Oct 17 10:09:46 PDT 2008

American Journeys | The Trinity Alps

California's Overlooked Peaks 

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

The peak that evokes comparisons with the Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps, seen
from a meadow near Josephine Lake.

By JOHN MARKOFF
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/john_markoff/i
ndex.html?inline=nyt-per> 

Published: October 17, 2008

IN the far reaches of Northern California, traffic rushes up and down the
I-5 freeway corridor without a glimpse of the Trinity Alps, tucked just over
the ridge to the west.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/travel/escapes/17american.html?_r=1&scp=1
&sq=californias%20overlooked%20peaks&st=cse&oref=slogin#secondParagraph#seco
ndParagraph> Skip to next paragraph 

Multimedia

<http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/10/14/travel/escapes/1017-TRINITY_ind
ex.html> Exploring California's Trinity AlpsSlide Show 

<http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/10/14/travel/escapes/1017-TRINITY_ind
ex.html> Exploring California's Trinity Alps 

<javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/10/17/travel/
escapes/1017_AMERICAN_MAP.html',%20'670_663',%20'width=670,height=663,locati
on=no,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')> The Trinity AlpsMap 

<javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/10/17/travel/
escapes/1017_AMERICAN_MAP.html',%20'670_663',%20'width=670,height=663,locati
on=no,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')> The Trinity Alps 

<javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/10/17/travel/
17american.1.ready.html',%20'17american_1_ready',%20'width=404,height=600,sc
rollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')> Enlarge This Image

<javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/10/17/travel/
17american.1.ready.html',%20'17american_1_ready',%20'width=404,height=600,sc
rollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')> 

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

The town of Etna.
<http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/10/14/travel/escapes/1017-TRINITY_ind
ex.html> More Photos > 

For most Californians, the notion of mountains conjures up the vast Sierra
Nevada. In contrast, the Trinities are relatively pocket-sized. Sixty miles
southwest of Mount Shasta and a five-hour drive from the San Francisco Bay
area, the region exudes an off-the-beaten-path feel of a place that time is
in the process of forgetting.

I have been in the Trinities in every season. The mountains empty out after
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/l/labor_day/in
dex.html?inline=nyt-classifier> Labor Day, but they retain their beauty and
they remain unspoiled. In years when winter arrives late, I have
<http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/hiking/overview.html?inline=nyt-cla
ssifier> hiked there well into December. Later there is great cross-country
<http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/skiing/overview.html?inline=nyt-cla
ssifier> skiing, which lasts until summer. 

Lore has it that there are really three Trinities: red, green and white. 

Driving up Highway 3 from the mountain hamlet of Weaverville, it is easy to
find the red Trinities in slashes that the road chisels into the rock,
revealing the rich hues of igneous peridotite soils found on the eastern
slopes. Large swaths of the range provide the green, places where you can
walk on seemingly endless vanilla-scented trails under a dense canopy of
emerald firs and pines.

The crown jewels of this wilderness area, however, are the white Trinities,
named for the white granite reminiscent of the Sierras. They lie at the very
heart of the mountains, reachable by car only over a 20-mile stretch of the
mostly gravel Coffee Creek Road.

The public roadway ends at Big Flat Campground, where a trail begins that
leads to the Caribou lakes - about a 10-mile hike away. Largely unknown
until the early 1970s, when they appeared in a backpacking guide, the
Caribous and surrounding lakes are now popular hiking and camping
destinations. They are hidden behind Caribou Mountain, which can be viewed
from Big Flat, a stunning mountain meadow near the trailhead. 

>From the same spot, you can also see a bit of the Sawtooth Ridge that snakes
through the heart of the white Trinities, linking together a knife-edge
serration of granite peaks overlooking more than a dozen lakes. In both
ruggedness and splendor, the white Trinities compare favorably to America's
most beautiful and remote wilderness regions. 

>From Big Flat, a private road leads past a locked gate to Josephine Lake,
hidden in a glacial cirque, or valley, underneath a granite crag that I had
been told evoked comparisons to the Matterhorn. It is a view that is
concealed from almost everyone. Tucked away inside the wilderness area and
owned for decades by a small group of families, it has long had the
forbidden flavor of a hidden treasure.

Settlers first came to the Trinities in numbers during the 1850s with the
California gold rush, disturbing what for eons had been the summer hunting
lands of the Wintu and several other tribes of American Indians. Today the
Trinities still bear the scars of extensive gold mining operations, ranging
from placer mining that rerouted river and stream beds to a scattering of
abandoned mining tunnels, some of which were operated into the 1930s.

The miners were followed by the loggers, abetted by the patchwork quilt of
private landholdings originally awarded to the railroad companies by the
federal government in exchange for building the intercontinental railroads.
In 1984 the region was set aside as the Trinity Alps Wilderness Area. 

Ordinarily a drive around the Trinities is a visual treat. This year, when
my wife, Leslie, and I decided to make the trip, huge fires raged in the
southwest portion of the mountains, licking up against the Caribou lakes and
burning to the north in the Marble Mountain Wilderness. The usually striking
blue skies were white for much of the summer. Whenever the winds blew in the
wrong direction, an aromatic fog would settle in. Undeterred, we set out for
a long weekend. 

Weaverville, accessible from Highways 3 and 299, serves as the usual
southern gateway to the Trinities. But there is also a shortcut. You can
duck across a one-lane bridge at Lewiston, once a gold mining town, and save
about 10 or 15 minutes on your way to a trailhead at Trinity Alps Resort, a
75-year-old family resort near a horse-pack station, that leads to Morris
Meadows. A roughly mile-long mountain meadow and one of the Trinities' most
popular hiking destinations, it sits at an elevation of about 4,200 feet and
is reached by a hike of about nine miles. It is below Smith Lake, one of the
Trinities' most beautiful lakes - accessible only by cross-country routes -
and Sawtooth Peak, both at the heart of the white Trinities.

Another spot, a few miles up the road, resonates more in my memory: Trinity
Lake Resorts, formerly known as Cedar Stock Resort, is set on Trinity Lake,
a manmade reservoir that serves as the headwaters for
<http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/north-america/united-states/califor
nia/overview.html?inline=nyt-geo> California's Central Valley water system.
My memories are from the 1970s and 1980s: steak dinners, salad bars, power
boats and water skiing. Cedar Stock was the place to go for a touch of
mainstream civilization after spending weeks in the backcountry. 

<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/travel/escapes/17american.html?pagewanted
=2&_r=1&sq=californias%20overlooked%20peaks&st=cse&scp=1#secondParagraph#sec
ondParagraph> Skip to next paragraph 

Multimedia

<http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/10/14/travel/escapes/1017-TRINITY_ind
ex.html> Exploring California's Trinity AlpsSlide Show 

<http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/10/14/travel/escapes/1017-TRINITY_ind
ex.html> Exploring California's Trinity Alps 

<javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/10/17/travel/
escapes/1017_AMERICAN_MAP.html',%20'670_663',%20'width=670,height=663,locati
on=no,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')> The Trinity AlpsMap 

<javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/10/17/travel/
escapes/1017_AMERICAN_MAP.html',%20'670_663',%20'width=670,height=663,locati
on=no,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')> The Trinity Alps 

Today, even with a fresh coat of gray paint, the resort feels as if it is
quietly fading into the forest. It consists of a main lodge, a string of
cabins and a boat dock. Houseboats - bargelike waterborne R.V.'s - have been
added to the scene. But this year Trinity Lake is barely more than half
full. That leaves a strip-mined quality to the shores, which stretch for
hundreds of feet down to the lake's murky, chocolate-colored waters.

After a night at the resort, we headed north on Highway 3, a winding forest
road that borders the west side of the Trinities, passing through the tiny
mountain hamlets of Trinity Center and Coffee Creek. We followed an early
stagecoach route that was probably also used by trappers and early settlers.
It snaked up over Scott Mountain at the extreme northwest corner of the
Trinities and then dipped down to run through Scott Valley, bordering the
western flanks of the Marble Mountains, before joining I-5 in Yreka. 

>From the Scott Mountain summit, a logging road runs west to the border of
the Trinity Alps Wilderness, marked by a locked gate. The road parallels the
route of the Pacific Crest Trail, a hiking route that extends from
<http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/north-america/mexico/overview.html?
inline=nyt-geo> Mexico to
<http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/north-america/canada/overview.html?
inline=nyt-geo> Canada. From Mount Lassen, the trail runs east-west to make
a toe-touch in the Trinities before continuing north.

We left the car at the gate, threw on our backpacks and headed for Mosquito
Lake and Camp Unalayee, where both of us spent childhood summers and worked
on the staff in the '70s. The camp is on private property - we visited
friends there - but is adjacent to the Pacific Crest Trail. Big Marshy, a
publicly accessible lake with great swimming, lies over a ridge about a mile
away

Our original plan had been to head from there to where Highway 299 tracks
the route of the Trinity River. But fire surrounded the road we had planned
to take. So instead we contented ourselves with museum-hopping in Scott
Valley. Both Etna and Fort Jones have small museums that reveal a great deal
about the Karuks, the indigenous people who lived along the Salmon and the
Klamath Rivers, and the miners, loggers and ranchers who displaced them.

"Scott Valley is the best place in the world to grow up and the hardest
place in the world to find a job," said Maxine, the friendly volunteer who
was our guide in the tiny Etna Museum.

Driving south on Highway 3, the next afternoon we hiked along a steep trail
that parallels the north fork of Coffee Creek from a trailhead that can be
found about 12 miles in along Coffee Creek Road. It is a perfect Trinity
Alps trail. We didn't follow it all the way up to Hodges Cabin, four miles
back inside the wilderness area, but we went far enough up to find a decent
natural pool to jump in on a hot summer day.

Back at the car, we ran into Charlie Steele, a 70-something-year-old who
grew up at the nearby Trinity Mountain Meadow Resort, which his mother sold
in the 1970s. He was pumping water from the creek into a truck, under
contract with the Forest Service to aid in fighting the fires. When we found
him, he was bent over a front tire flattened by a sharp rock. "It was my
fault," he said.

We spent our final night at the Carrville Inn. Originally a stage-coach stop
along the California-
<http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/north-america/united-states/oregon/
overview.html?inline=nyt-geo> Oregon stage road in 1854, the inn is just off
Highway 3, at the northernmost tip of Trinity Lake. 

A pristine hideaway, this summer the inn featured the gourmet cooking of the
innkeeper, Dan Dinniene, who used vegetables grown by a neighbor in a
<http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/gardens/overview.html?inline=nyt-cl
assifier> garden next door. The inn also keeps animals for show - horses,
chickens, a pig and even a few ostriches. Next year the inn's owners, Sheri
and David Overly, plan to operate it as a private retreat for family
reunions and similar gatherings. In the morning, with Richard and
<http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/north-america/united-states/virgini
a/overview.html?inline=nyt-geo> Virginia Lombardi, who were visiting from
<http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/north-america/united-states/texas/d
allas/overview.html?inline=nyt-geo> Dallas, Mr. Dinniene, who has since left
the inn, drove us the entire 20 miles to the end of the Coffee Creek Road
and then past the locked gate to Josephine Lake. 

After daydreaming about the spire that hangs over the lake for more than
three decades I finally saw it.

It did remind me of the Matterhorn.

IF YOU GO

THE Trinity Alps are about 286 miles from San Francisco International
Airport and 67 miles from Redding Municipal Airport in Redding, Calif. For
information on the area, see the Web site  <http://www.trinitycounty.com>
www.trinitycounty.com, maintained by the Trinity County Chamber of Commerce
in Weaverville. 

Trail permits and backcountry information can be obtained at the Weaverville
Ranger Station (360 Main Street, Weaverville, 530-623-2121), open 8 a.m. to
4:30 p.m. weekdays. The classic guide to the region is "The Trinity Alps: A
<http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/hiking/overview.html?inline=nyt-cla
ssifier> Hiking and Backpacking Guide," by Luther Linkhart and Mike White
(4th edition, Wilderness Press, July 2004). 

Trinity Lake Resorts and Marinas, formerly the Cedar Stock Resort (45810
State Highway 3, Trinity Center; 530-286-2225;
<http://trinitylakeresort.com> trinitylakeresort.com), rents out boats,
houseboats, and cabins that sleep up to 12 people for $89 to $1,560,
depending on the size and the season. 

Trinity Alps Resort (1750 Trinity Alps Road, Trinity Center; 530-286-2205;
<http://trinityalpsresort.com> trinityalpsresort.com) rents 43 cabins for
$800 to $1,500 a week and is open from mid-May through September. It also
has a general store and the Bear's Breath Bar and Grill. 

Carrville Inn ( <http://www.carrvillecountryinn.com>
www.carrvillecountryinn.com; 530-266-3000) is at 581 Carrville Loop Road,
Coffee Creek, at the north end of Trinity Lake. The inn plans to reopen in
the spring of 2009 for retreats for families and groups.

On Highway 3, the Etna Museum (520 Main Street, Etna;
<http://etnamuseum.org> etnamuseum.org, open June through September, or by
appointment at 530-467-3714) displays both American Indian and settler
artifacts. The Fort Jones Museum (11913 Main Street, Fort Jones;
530-468-5568; open
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/m/memorial_day
/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier> Memorial Day through
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/l/labor_day/in
dex.html?inline=nyt-classifier> Labor Day) has a more ambitious collection,
including newspapers from before the turn of the century. In the front of
the museum is the "rain rock," which a local Native American tribe is said
to have used to control the weather.

Byron Leydecker, JCT

Chair, Friends of Trinity River

PO Box 2327

Mill Valley, CA 94942-2327

415 383 4810

415 519 4810 cell

bwl3 at comcast.net

bleydecker at stanfordalumni.org (secondary)

http://fotr.org 

 <mailto:bwl3 at comcast.net>  

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www2.dcn.org/pipermail/env-trinity/attachments/20081017/513b3cc7/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 69094 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://www2.dcn.org/pipermail/env-trinity/attachments/20081017/513b3cc7/attachment.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image002.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 7186 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://www2.dcn.org/pipermail/env-trinity/attachments/20081017/513b3cc7/attachment-0001.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image003.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 12315 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://www2.dcn.org/pipermail/env-trinity/attachments/20081017/513b3cc7/attachment-0002.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image004.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 20060 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://www2.dcn.org/pipermail/env-trinity/attachments/20081017/513b3cc7/attachment-0003.jpg>