With my knee getting better by the week, I took a trip back up to Northern
California, my third in as many weeks. This one would take in three days of
peakbagging around the Shasta-Trinity National Forest north of SR299,
none of the peaks especially difficult, in keeping with my
More Driving - Less Hiking knee therapy. I left San Jose before 7a,
doing well to get out of town before traffic worsened, only
to get a call from my wife after 40min on the road. "Hun, it looks like you
left your wallet at home here." Drats. I'd have probably driven to Dunnigan
where I planned to get gas before I'd figured that out myself. That would have
left me without any money and not enough gas to get home, and boy would THAT
have sucked. I thanked her, turned around at the next exit and proceeded to
fight traffic back to San Jose and then another escape. It ended up costing me
two hours' time, but still better than the alternative. As a result I didn't
get off the highway until after 1p near Hillcrest where I
headed for the Pit River.
The river is one of the main tributaries of Lake Shasta, roughly following the
route of SR299. PG&E has installed seven dams, a number of reservoirs, and
power-generating aqueducts in the area. I crossed the Pit River at the
James B Black Powerhouse (paved to this point) before starting on a good gravel
road heading up to Iron Canyon Reservoir. My first stop was intended to be
Bagley Mtn and I followed a spur road over one of before
finding it gated where it begins to drop to Iron Canyon Creek.
The area around here is a patchwork of private/public tracts
with the Sierra Pacific Company owning most of the private tracts. Sometimes you
can drive on their roads, sometimes you can't. They tend to maintain roads when
actively logging an area, then leave them to neglect for decades at a time. It's
kind of a crapshoot as to where one can get to. I suspect that hunters often
clear downfall from the roads in the Fall to maintain access. At this time in
Spring, not many of the downed trees have been cleared. This was just the first
such disappointment I would find on this trip, with many roads blocked by
downfall, snow, gates, washouts or active construction. Luckily I had a nearly
full tank of gas and plenty of resources to hunt down alternate peaks in the
area, even if I couldn't get to the intended peaks.
Oak Mountain
Unable to make it to Bagley Mtn using my first choice of roads, I returned to
the main forest road, noting there were other possible route to Bagley from
the Iron Canyon Reservoir. The main road between the Pit River power station and
the reservoir is called Oak Mountain Rd and conveniently goes near the summit
of Oak Mtn, which I would make my first stop. With almost 800ft of prominence,
it commands the highground between the Pit River and Iron Canyon Creek. I parked
on of the summit where the road came closest at a
quarter mile. It was a short, steep climb that took all of ten minutes to reach
the top, through forest understory with moderate brush. has a
solar-powered antenna amidst an old clearing of trees, chopped up and stacked
haphazardly in numerous piles like so many pieces of forgotten firewood. They
didn't cut the periphery trees, however, so no views from the summit.
Peak 3,180ft
This unnamed summit also lies along Oak Mtn Rd, just south and above Iron Canyon
Reservoir. I parked on of mountain and went straight up
from there. The 7.5' topo map suggests two closed contours at either end of the
summit ridge shaped roughly like the number "7". The actual
appears to be in a cluster of trees in between these two points. Nothing much to
recommend this one - just a freebie while I was still searching out Bagley Mtn.
Little Bagley Mountain / Bagley Mountain
After reaching a junction just north of Peak 3,180ft, I turned left and drove
across the dam and up into the higher hills to the
west. There is a network of logging roads that showed significantly less
traffic, and two of the routes I tried were by downfall. On my
third attempt I reached the main ridgeline between Iron Canyon Creek to the east
and Squaw Creek to the west. I turned south and drove it to a clearing that
would make for a nice campsite later in the evening. Here, three roads branch
south towards
Bagley, all of them blocked by downfall. At this point I was 2.5 air miles from
Bagley and with almost four hours of daylight remaining, I figured it would be
good enough - I'd do the rest on foot. Most of the route to Bagley was free of
downfall and I suspect it is usually maintained for public use, perhaps just a
little too early in the season yet. This made for easy walking with nice views
mostly to the Squaw Creek side of the ridge, though much of this has been
in the past few years leaving many acres of denuded
hillsides. After a mile and three quarters, the road passes
on its east
side, less than half a mile away. I figured I should visit this bonus while I
was out here, so left the comfort of the road for a bit of bushwhacking. The
route wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great either, following the NE Ridge for
the most part. There was some to push through to start,
then but lots of that caused me
to make multiple diversions. A that had fallen at first
looked like another obstacle,
but I noticed it had landed among one of the denser poison oak patches and by
walking along the length of it I was able to avoid this hazard. After about
20 minutes I found my way to where I stacked a
of rocks to call it good. No views, as expected. I returned
back via the same
route and once on the road was able to relax for the next hour as I continued
south along the ridge to the higher Bagley Mtn. Most of this P1K's summit had
been logged of late and the brush had not yet had time to become troublesome.
I hiked the short cross-country distance up . There was a
in a small clearing and mostly open views on all sides, the brush
here doing it's best to grow tall enough to block it, and will probably
succeed within a few years' time. I could see snowy peaks to
- Crater Peak and Snowy Mtn, as well as Mt. Shasta to
. To , a collection of lower
ridgelines spread out into the distance
towards Lake Shasta, unseen in the hazy distance. My return back to the start
followed the same road and was mostly uneventful, save for one particular
that refused to run off the road as most of his
compadres had done all afternoon. He stood looking ,
challenging me with as much gumption as his 8 inches could .
Seems he was more interested in catching the last
rays of sunlight than in saving his own skin. I took a few photos of him and
let him be, wondering if a bobcat or coyote would give him the same pass.
It was nearly 8p by the time
to the jeep, still plenty of light with
the days becoming noticeably longer. It was getting so I would have hardly
enough darkness to sleep a full eight hours. After showering, I decided to see
if I could drive closer to the next day's objecives. To the west, across Squaw
Creek, rose two P1Ks, North Fork Mtn and the oddly named Shoeinhorse Mtn. The
road dropping 1,200ft down to the creek started off well enough, but I was
stopped where a side creek had cut an erosion channel across the road creating
an 18-inch drop. This could not be managed in the jeep without damage, I
feared, so I gave it up and drove back up the road from where I started. By
now it was after 9p so I decided to camp there on top of the ridge and work
out another route in the morning.
Continued...