Continued...
I had originally planned to spend four days in the Trinity Alps on this solo
roadtrip. My daughter had planned a trip to Tahoe with friends and my wife was
in Southern California reffing volleyball, so there was no need to get home
early. While texting with my daughter while using the wifi at Trailhead Pizza on
SR3, she told me her Tahoe trip fell through. So I decided to cut my trip short
by a day so I could go back and do another trip with daughter - always more
fun with family. I skipped day three's plan for Tri-Forest and Mumford Peaks and
went right to day four's - Battle Mtn. This was an easier outing, about 14mi
and 6,000ft of gain which I hoped with an early start to finish well before
noon. This would give me time for a few stragglers on my way back to Interstate
5 and home to San Jose.
Battle Mountain
The peak is located on the high ridge between Union Creek and Battle Creek,
south of Coffee Creek Rd. In his book,
The Trinity Alps Companion, Wayne
Moss describes the easiest approach via the Sugar Pine Lake Trail. The trail
starts from Coffee Creek and goes up the Sugar Pine Creek drainage, immediately
east of Battle Creek. The main trail ends at Sugar Pine Lake in the upper
reaches of the canyon, but a little-used fork goes over the ridge to the west
into the upper reaches of Battle Creek where the peak can be accessed. Finding
the start seems to be the crux. Using the older topo map from the obsolete
TOPO! software, I had thought the start was found on the other side of a bridge
located at the confluence of Coffee Creek and Sugar Pine Creek. When I drove
up Coffee Creek Rd the evening before, I was surprised to find the bridge had
been partially destroyed in a flood event and the wooden roadway had burned. It
would have taken great gymnastic ability to get across the bridge and the creek
at that point. I decided the trail had probably been abandoned and changed
plans to drive to the end of Coffee Creek Rd and do the other hike to Tri-Forest
and Mumford instead. Half a mile up the road, I spotted a small
that simply said "Trail" on the side of the road. Pulling over to investigate,
I found it went downhill to over Coffee Creek and
from there it contoured southeast around the hill to the Sugar Pine Creek
drainage. My GPSr confirmed this alternate starting point, so I parked off the
road and slept the night in the back of the Jeep.
I was up early and starting on the trail by 5:15a, easily light enough at this
time of year
to hike without headlamp. The trail was in good condition, cleared of
downfall and easy to follow for the first two hours as it climbs through heavy
timber up the Sugar Pine Creek drainage. Sunrise came before the first hour was
up, brightly filtering .
Most of the forest is second growth
after being logged perhaps 100yrs ago, but there were some very
here and there that had eluded the lumbermen. I somehow missed the trail
junction, though as I found on the way back - it was nicely marked by
nailed to a tree. I ended up striking off cross-country uphill in search
of it, eventually finding it about 500ft up the slope after about 1/3mi. The
trail sees little use and does not appear to be maintained any longer, but there
are to help follow it through grassy meadows and
cut into trees from back in the day. Views
as the trail and the forest begins to thin. Where the
trail goes over the ridgeline between the two drainages, one gets
of Battle Mtn which is not all that impressive from this
vantage - apparently it looks much better from Union Creek on the other side.
I continued following the trail southwest and down into the upper reaches of
Battle Canyon. There is a large, located here. I followed
Wayne's advice to contour around this to the south, partially getting my boots
wet as I crossed spongy ground covered in that hid
the water lurking
just below. On the way back I more simply crossed directly from Battle Mtn to
the trail and found it far easier (and drier). The scramble up to Battle Mtn is
nothing great, more tiring than exciting as one travels up loose forest
understory with talus and boulder-hopping . I reached
just before 9a, almost an hour longer than I had hoped it
would take - seems I hadn't
really considered just how much elevation gain this one had when I was
researching it earlier. There is a USDA
from 1922 at the summit, with views to the Red Trinities and
to the White Trinities.
There was no register, but someone had left an arrow shaft sticking out of the
summit rocks. After a brief stay, I descended
to the meadow below
before rejoining the trail and hiking back out. I found the trail junction I
had missed earlier in a marshy area where it's hard to follow the trail fork,
though some ducks on downed logs offer useful clues. It was 11:45a by time I
returned to over Coffee Creek and
where I'd left the Jeep. Time to do some driving...
Red Mountain
This P900 is found northeast of Trinity Lake, outside the Trinity Alps. It
is overshadowed by its P2K neighbor, Bonanza King, which rises about 250ft
higher. Red Mountain is located in a patchwork of USFS and private logging
lands with decent forest roads providing access up from Trinity Lake. One
such road gets within 3/4mi of the summit where it goes over the
southwest shoulder on its way to picturesque Devils Lake, found west of Red
Mtn. I found the road
more than a mile below this point with a sign
indicating motor vehicles prohibited, foot travel permitted at one's own risk.
This section is owned by Sierra Pacific Industries, one of the state's major
logging concerns. I parked the Jeep off the side of the steep mountain road
and hiked the remaining distance up
to the shoulder in about half an hour. It
would take another half hour to cover the remaining cross-country distance to
the summit along the shoulder, a mix of and
that had me on one side of
or the other looking for the least brushy route
to the top, found at the far northeast end of the ridgeline. There is a nice,
broadside view of Bonanza King to and the always
impressive sight of Mt. Shasta to . Trinity Lake can just
be seen to
with the Trinity Alps behind it to the west. The return went only slightly
faster and I ended up spending a little under 2hrs on the hike.
Dog Creek Mountain
This unassuming (and altogether unimpressive) summit is on the
CC-list and
found about 10mi south of Red Mtn. I spent more than an hour and a half driving
various forest roads to get from one to ,
an enjoyable exercise
now that my vehicle is far more appropriate for the task. I had had this peak on
my radar back in 2015, but ran out of time on a roadtrip then and hadn't gotten
around to it since. Daryn Dodge and Kathy Rich had visited in 2017, followed
soon after by other familiar CA peakbaggers chasing the oddly-concocted
CC-list.
They had reported various ways to access the summit, none of them difficult. The
most straightforward way is from the north, but with more driving one can start
from a higher elevation on the south side of the peak. This area is also
checkerboarded with USFS and private logging. The summit itself is USFS land,
but immediately west is private. This slope on the west side of the peak's
was logged a few years ago. What Dean Gaudet describes as a fire
break is actually part of the logging effort. Large berms were built to divert
water and it was never intended to be driven once they had relandscaped it
at the end of the logging operation. Still, Dean managed to drive about
halfway up this "road" before walking the remaining distance. I made a fun
exercise of it, managing to get the Jeep to the top of the ridge (not without
first bottoming out on the berms several times) before getting
.
I probably could have plowed through that as well to drive the remaining
1/8mi to the top, but I figured it had been abused enough. I parked and walked
the remaining stretch of road to where I found
left
by Daryn and Kathy a year earlier. The unlogged summit has no real views and
should never have been put on a peak list. After getting the Jeep turned around
(no easy feat) and driving
the South Ridge, I still had a good deal
of dirt road driving to get myself to Interstate 5 and on my way home. There
would be more fun back in NorCal in just a few days...