Back to the topic of the wilderness...
This is one of my favorite wilderness hikes, Piru Creek both north and south of Pyramid Lake.
The terrain is so rough I’ve never penetrated more than a few miles down from the trailhead in a day hike. I need to do a multiday backpack someday. Piru Creek offers an immense amount of hiking. Some of it on established trails but most of it is a mix of bushwhacking, stream crossing, and boulder hopping.
North of Pyramid Lake you can go upstream, mostly boulder hopping, wading and bushwhacking for a dozen miles into the western side of the vastness that is the Sespe Wilderness Area. That section of the creek is extremely difficult to access and rarely visited by humans except to cross it. Years ago I backpacked down it with a wilderness restoration group cutting and uprooting invasive, water guzzling, tamarisk. I have paid it a few visits since but that is another post.
Downstream of the dam, water flow is more constant. Sometimes in drought, they’ll cut the flow back a bit – but they can’t cut it to zero. There is a law that there has to be enough flow to keep the non-native trout alive for the fisherman. Other times it will flood, ten feet above the normal level. This could be the result of torrential rains or it could be the dam letting out water to simulate a heavy rain. Some native species need this periodic flushing out to survive.
To get there you head up I-5 to the Templin Highway exit. Turn right and you’ll be going towards Fish Canyon. Turn left, go under the freeway, and you meet the Old Road. Turn right. Left doesn’t go anywhere.
Old Road is gated a couple miles before Pyramid Lake dam. Beyond this point, many movies are filmed.
A few miles up the road you pass the Verdugo Oaks Scout Camp. There are a ranger and a public campground there as well. Just beyond that is where I saw my first and only wild mountain lion. It vanished like smoke the instant it saw me. I informed the rangers about it and they said she was an old friend of theirs. Keep going and the road is blocked off and here you park.
On weekends I’d advise a Forest Service Adventure Pass. But if you don’t the ticket is only $5, the same price as a day use pass. Not a big deal. I always buy a couple of yearly passes anyhow. I visit the National Forests a lot and I like to support them, especially since their funding has been cut drastically.
On the left side of the road is Frenchman’s Flats, a much misloved public campground.
Frenchman’s Flat campground. They have since added a permanent outhouse. (This is the Google Maps link.) That’s the way I’ll be hiking in this blog.
Go straight and the road becomes a much in demand movie set. Three miles of two and four-lane road in semi-perfect condition, very popular for television and film companies because it is a road with no traffic and is inexpensive to use.
It is also an incredible place to ride your bicycle with few pedestrians and rare traffic from trucks for maintenance crews for the dam.
A couple of miles down this road there is a trail taking off to the west that climbs up Slide Mountain to one of the few remaining in-use fire lookout stations.
Pyramid Lake Dam
On the east side, difficult to find and get to, is a very old abandoned campground. with a memorial plaque set in stone. The Old Road continues until it ends at an access road that climbs to Pyramid Lake Dam. I-5 parallels the Old Road and once it was constructed they were free to construct a dam in the valley thru which it runs. But that is yet another post for another hike.
Last Saturday I took my first hike there in a while. The trees are still green and everything else has turned brown and grey. Since I have been thru there so many times I’ll be using pictures from many different hikes here.
Heading west from Frenchman’s Flats, you follow a “use trail” created by fishermen.
At one point the trail meets up with rock and water. This happens many times along the way. You can either find a crossing, wade around or climb over. If you slip here everything you carry will be submerged and soaked.
Climbing up this first rock face I once broke a bone in my foot for no apparent reason. I consider it a “freak” accident.
Then there is a chute to be climbed down. (Easier to climb up.) Maybe 15 feet, so simple even people in worse shape than me can do it. Then… oh look… someone else has been this way recently and placed rocks to guide you along the correct path. (They might be gone tomorrow.) It is a nice spot here and you could just stop and do a bit of fishing but I’m heading on. Back up the side of the hill I go.
The trail climbs and then soon starts dropping. This section itself is on the side of a slope and covers a bit of talus. The view from the crest shows the trail ahead while looking down reveals some good fishing spots.
A couple hundred meters ahead the river makes an abrupt right turn. There is a spot where one could go swimming but I would not recommend it outside of early spring. The high flow of water flushes out all the accumulated organic crap and this place has a deep sandy bottom. You are now entering the far eastern edge of the Sespe Wilderness but there is no signage to tell you that.
In the summer the flow drops and the water slows, becoming stagnant. Algae will bloom and die but can’t go anywhere and… just rots. In fact, the dammed lake upstream will often suffer an algal bloom during the triple-digit days of summer and become unsafe to ski or swim in. The river will often stink during the warmer days. You can cool your feet off or wade around but I wouldn’t swim in it. It will clog your filter very quickly so I always take lots of water and keep the filter for emergencies.
Perhaps a quarter mile from the first crossing you come to a sandy opening with a large oak tree and a couple of large fire rings. It is the last place where people commonly go. There’s another creek crossing just up ahead, right by where the creek is hard up against a rock wall. In the spring it is a great swimming hole and deep. The rest of the year it is either too frigid or it is stagnant.
Even if the water is crystal clear and nobody is upstream you should never drink the water untreated. There are plenty of sources of fecal contamination.
Where the river turns, so do you. Just before it hits that wall the creek is wide and shallow. There are plenty of natural stepping stones. Once you cross that spot, the trail becomes extremely sketchy.
One of many deep spots.
You cross the river just before here because there is no longer trail on this side. Look at all that dried scum. Right now everything looks simple but when you return it is very easy to miss this crossing, keep going and end up in a world of cattails. (Speaking from experience here!) At this point, turn around. you have left the ideal crossing point behind. I would grudgingly understand if newbies left some bright marker tape as a blaze here.
A word on cairns. There are bunches of cairns back here. Most of then mean nothing to you. Somebody wanted to mark a favorite fishing hole or crawdad spot. Ignore them (unless you are fishing). If you are having a hard time looking for an easy crossing, though, you might get lucky by looking around a cairn in a likely location.
You can’t “get lost” here. Just head downstream, picking out the bits and pieces of trail. Even if you “lose” the trail, you haven’t lost the creek. The trail will always be between the creek and the adjacent wall. The river crossings are always at or before the river meets the canyon side making it impossible to continue on without getting soaked. Blaze these crossings once you have crossed, if you must, but remove the blaze on your way back.
Have I said this clearly enough? Remove that awful bright orange marking tape on your way back! Please let the rest of us wander about lost and confused.
These are mostly sections from here on where there is no real trail and you are left to walking on rocks (Great place to sprain ankle. Be careful.) and simply seeking out the easiest passage where there is one.
Past this, we have yet another field of overgrown rocks. Cross and you are on the left side of the river (looking downstream) again. The rocks are a wonderful place to twist an ankle or fall and break something. I just go slow. The trail drops back to the river and passes another fire ring. The next river crossing is difficult to find but the rule is that if it is impossible to go any farther without wading in deep water, you missed it. And beyond that more crossings and bushwhacking for another 15 miles to Lake Piru.
Should you really need it and it is safe to do so, a cheap knife and a ferro rod is all you need for fire. Dried cattail fuzz is a good tinder. This rod has a hunk of magnesium attached. You can scrape off fine Mg powder and spark it. The Mg powder burns insanely hot and is not easily extinguished by rain.
A frog in algae, surrounded by tiny snails.
Sawyer squeeze water filter, my emergency back up. However in the worst of the summer, this won’t give you drinkable water. Algal bloom creates chemical toxins that make the water stink and would need a charcoal filter to get rid of. If I had to, I’d find a place where the water looked a bit cleaner, dig a hole in the ground well way from it and let it slowly filter thru. Then I’d use the Sawyer. But I don’t hike here in mid to late summer and I carry 3 or more liters on me so I don’t worry about dayhikes.
I don’t do anything without my SPOT communicator. I was hiking with a group that particular day so I activated it as soon as I was beyond the group. Anyone who accesses my SPOT page knows where I am within 10 minutes of travel. I can also send back text messages.
This is a map of the entire 14 mile trip from Pyramid Lake to Lake Piru. Not a lot of people have done it. I’d like to someday.
Hummingbird and thistle
Aren't called cow killers for nothing.
Velvet ant. Is really a wingless wasp. One of the most painful sting in all the insect kingdom. They are all over the place out here. They come in different colors. The grey ones are easy to miss so be careful not to lay on one. The stinger is a quarter inch long, the entire length of its abdomen.
Heavy sigh! More rocks...
Your path zig zags endlessly back and forth thru the brush, over the rocks, and across the creek.
As you go around each bend, you see yet another canyon beckoning.
A butterfly, a honeybee and a yellow jacket all pollinating the same plant.
There are trout in the water but it is catch and release.
Dragonflies mating.
Plenty of crawdads (aka crayfish, aka fresh water shrimp) in this creek. You will find locals collecting them but they don’t get much beyond a mile in.
It is starting to get a bit narrow here.
Recent bear tracks using my phone camera. I was eventually saw the bear but not able to get a photo.
Hike time!
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire