Continued...
Day 2 of chasing P1Ks in Northern California saw me camped along the
Tombstone Jeep Trail at 4,600ft. The road/trail sees almost no maintenance
and little travel, but I managed to get the Jeep to within 4mi of
Tombstone Mtn, about 2mi closer than most folks who park at the barrow
pit before the unmaintained portion of the road. This would allow me to
finish the hike early and have plenty of time for some other peaks I had
in mind.
Tombstone Mtn
This P2K likes about 6mi east of Interstate 5 and the Sacramento River,
roughly between Mt. Shasta to the north and Lake Shasta to the south. It
sees pretty good traffic due to its prominence so I didn't expect to have
much trouble. I was up by 5:30a, just before 6a, eating my
breakfast while I hiked the the remaining 3mi+ of . Others on PB
had reported downfall blacking vehicle traffic but that seems to have been
cleaned up, some, though brush encroaches from the sides quite badly in places.
The road descends to a forested before starting up to Tombstone.
Further along the road I found
that the downfall had been cut to accomodate ATVs, most likely by hunters,
but I would have been challenged to get through several sections without
body damage. A little more than an hour was taken in up in the road walk,
leaving me with about 4/5mi to the summit when I reached the WNW Ridge. The road
ends at near Pt. 4,629ft though the topo depicts it going
further up the road. All vehicle travel stops here, but foot traffic can
continue up the ridge through the brush. As part of a large party to visit
Tombstone in 2017, Sean Casserly had clipped portions of up
the ridge, making it easier to negotiate than it otherwise would
have been. The clipping appears to have stopped after about 1/4mi, the
remaining trail overgrown but easy enough to negotiate by pushing the
brush aside. The trail eventually flattens some as it leaves the ridge
to traverse across the where the cross-country begins with a
little over 1/4mi remaining. There is a good deal of brush on this rather
steep slope, but there are also more open , and with
careful navigating there is little real bushwhacking to contend with. There
are several sort-of use trails, mostly used by bears it seems, which can
help. I spent the bulk of the second hour covering the 4/5mi from the
road's end to the summit. There is at the summit but the
register was found a short distance to at some rocks that are
higher than the base of the cairn. Andy Martin had left the original
with Richard Carey leaving a better notepad .
Almost all of the dozen parties were among the usual suspects, including Brian
Kalet less than .
The summit is surprisingly open with views to the west of Grey
Rocks and Castle Crags, Mt. Shasta to and Mt. Lassen far to
the southeast. I made good time on the return, taking a little over an
hour and half, making the whole outing less than 4hrs.
Yellowjacket Mtn
This is a modest summit to the east of the main crest with a bit over
500ft of prominence. The starting point is where the ridgeline leading
to the summit joins Girard Ridge, about half a mile north of where I had camped.
I moved the car to the ridge junction, at the edge of the
road and started from there, about a mile from the summit. Though daunting
with , there is an old trail cut along the ridge that
is a godsend though badly overgrown in most places. Without it, I probably
wouldn't have gone 50yds before turning around. There are some nice
mixed
with some badly overgrown ones, the latter making it easy to lose the
trail. On the way to the summit I lost it altogether in the middle
section, bailing left onto the forested slopes found there, where the
understory was easier to negotiate. The last third of the hike is easier,
with thinner brush along the ridge and the re-emergence of the trail to
take one all the way to the summit. There was a found at
the but no register, so I before
returning. I did a better job of sticking to the trail on the way back, taking
a bit less than an hour and a half for the roundtrip.
Buck Mtn
It wasn't yet noon when I returned from Yellowjacket, leaving me many hours
of daylight to pursue a few drive-ups east of Mt. Shasta and north of
SR89. I spent an hour and a half driving about 40mi between the last
summit and Buck Mtn. I was able to drive within a quarter mile of Buck
Mtn's summit utilizing a series of forest roads, eventually on
the west side of the summit. The had been recently logged
(within the past few years, anyway), making it relatively easy to hike
up the mostly barren slope to the top - a good thing, too, because from
what I saw of the other three sides of the mountain, there is a load of brush I
would have had to contend with. The was spared from logging
which meant no views, too. Better to have trees and no views than stumps
and views, I reckon. There was register from a Bighorn Bill
hailing from the Jefferson State Mountain Club. For those unfamiliar with
far NorCal politics, the State of Jefferson is often touted as the name for
the breakaway state when they shed themselves of the rest of blue CA. Good
luck with that. Oh, and Dennis Poulin from Oregon had visited ,
making for one ascent every 4-5yrs.
Black Fox Mtn
Another 40min of driving got me from Buck Mtn to the half
a mile below the summit of Black Fox Mtn. A 10min walk got me to the summit
where is located, locked up and looking rather
neglected. It sports a pretty fantastic view of Mt. Shasta 16mi to the
west. As I walked around the lookout, I was surprised to see a pair of
legs sticking out from the north side. I said hello quickly to avoid
startling whoever they belonged to, but of course they were startled
nonetheless. I had seen no vehicles since leaving the pavement 16mi
earlier and was surprised to see someone up here. Mitch was as surprised
to see me, too. He was sitting on a small concrete pad in the shade,
having arrived about 45min earlier. He was 71yrs of age, sporting a pair
of knee braces and looking a bit frail. We talked for a while, or rather
Mitch talked for a while as I mostly listened. He was living out of his
camper parked about 3mi down the road (a different road than I had taken),
exploring various parts of the state, periodically visiting with family
members, a bohemian/hippy lifestyle according to him. It soon became
clear that he had a very different time reference, mostly based on
sunrise/sunset, moon cycles and such. He was a putterer, in his own
words, and would have been happy to chat for hours more. I might have
too, but it was a mostly one-sided conversation and I didn't really want
to spend the rest of the afternoon soaking in his lifetime of experiences.
I offered him a ride back to his camper which he readily accepted, though
he didn't readily get his ass off the ground. When he was a bit winded from
talking some more, I helped him up from his seat and together we walked
back down the road to the Jeep. He stopped regularly during our hike
while he made a particularly important point in his talk, but we eventually
reached our goal. I moved some gear out of the front to give him space
to sit and drove him back down to his camper. has a bizarre
arrangement at the bottom (his daughter calls it his "training wheels")
to help lift the camper from the truck bed when needed. I couldn't
understand how this was better than the four retractable poles that came
stock with the camper, but he seemed to think it a grand invention. It
had the adverse effect of giving him only 3-4" of clearance where his
truck would otherwise have 8" or more. How he got that far up the dirt
road was impressive and a bit of a mystery. I had hoped to make it to
another P1K before I was done for the day but the extra time spent with
Mitch had chewed up a bit of time. He
was interesting, so not a
complete waste.
After showering, I drove to Weed, CA where I got dinner and whiled away the
remaining bits of daylight before driving back up into the hills to find a
place to spend the night. More fun tomorrow...
Continued...