Fri, Oct 7, 2016
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Etymology Marble Mountain |
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The marquee feature in the Marble Mountains is the Marble Rim, a conspicuous,
mile-long ridge of exposed limestone that can be seen from great distances.
Nevermind that the name is wrong - it's a great place to visit, with the
four-mile stretch of ridge between Kings Castle and the southern tip of the
Marble Rim being the highlight of the four-day road trip. I had spent the
night camped at the Paradise Lake TH.
The more common trailhead for the Marble
Rim (which includes two CC-listed summits, Marble Mtn and Black Marble) is
Lovers Camp, found at the end of paved Forest Route 43N45 off Scott River Rd.
I wanted to link both of these with another CC summit, Kings Castle, for which
the Paradise Lake TH makes more sense. I was happy to find the six-mile
gravel/dirt road forking off the paved road to Lovers Camp in excellent
condition, easily navigated by passenger vehicles. It was hunting season and I
was hardly alone at the TH. A truck towing a horse trailer was there when I
arrived and several other trucks came by just "to take a look" during the
evening hours. I think they were scoping out places to try their luck not
already being eyed by other hunters.
I was up and on the trail before 7:30a, expecting a rather long day. It was
chilly, about 34F to start, but would warm up nicely as the day progressed.
The trail climbs steeply, more than 1,400ft in the first hour, but it's
advantages are soon apparent. Rather than the five mile approach from Lovers
Camp, this route takes less than two miles to reach the PCT. I paused just
before the junction to pay a visit to the exceedingly minor highpoint of
Cayenne Ridge, about 1/3mi to the north. A use trail can be found
running up the ridgeline, likely used primarily by hunters and the deer they
skirmish with. The summit is a small
rocky knob with good views looking
over the
northern edge of the range. There is a nice view of Kings
Castle to
the southwest, a
smallish summit ringed by a wall of cliffs. To the right of Kings Castle is a
far more impressive feature, a castellated ridgeline that looked exceedingly
difficult. I would not be hiking along that section of the crest.
I returned to the PCT junction and set off for Kings Castle, aiming
for the saddle on the crest between it and Peak 7,180ft to the southeast. It so
happened that there was a use trail,
marked by ducks, leading up to
the saddle. It passes
above Paradise Lake (which appears to be a
small, shallow, swampy thing, not really very paradise-like), and through
pastures used by cattle as seems the norm in these parts. Once
at the crest I found more use trails heading in either
direction along the crest - this would be easier than I expected. The cliffs
around Kings Castle do not extend to the southwest side, but it was not
even necessary to make that small diversion. The use trail led up through a
weakness in the cliffs directly along the crest and by 9:15a I had reached
the summit. There was a generic
USGS benchmark but no
register to be found. Looking
southeast, one can see most of the
4-mile long stretch of
ridgeline I hoped to traverse. The first several
miles looked to be
pretty tame, but somewhere around Black
Marble things might get tough. Luckily there are almost unlimited options to
simply drop left off the crest to the PCT should things get nasty.
I spent the next hour and a quarter making my way along the first two
and a half miles of the ridgeline, going over a pair of unnamed bonus peaks
along the way. As mentioned, a use trail appears in places, mostly the northern
part of the ridge, facilitating an already easy effort. I enjoyed the relaxed
hiking that allowed me more time to take in the views off either side. I noted
Box Camp Mtn to my left and considered adding it to my itinerary at
the end of the day. It looked to be another
fairly easy ridgeline from
where the PCT crosses at a saddle with the main crest. The second bonus,
Peak 7,300ft, offered the first good views of
Black Marble and its NW
Ridge. The ridge looked to grow steep very quickly and possibly end in cliffs,
but I would have to get much closer to ascertain the difficulties.
It was 10:30a when I reached the base of the NW Ridge and found it
looked more reasonable from this vantage than it did from the far view, not
altogether uncommon. The bottom several hundred feet or so are the beginning of
the light
gray limestone for which the Marble Rim is noted. This gives
way to easier terrain in
the middle, lightly vegetated and steep, but
good footing. The upper few hundred feet of the ridge becomes a darker volcanic
rock and grows too steep for scrambling. It is easy enough, however, to traverse
around the base of this to the south side where some fun
class 3 scrambling can be had. I later
noted that the SE Ridge appears somewhat easier, but the route I took up from
the southwest was quite fun with a short bit of knife-edge to work across.
Reaching the top by 10:50a, I found the airy summit perch to have the
finest views of the day, particularly looking south along the stretch
of the
Marble Rim. The Black Marble register was a collection of loose
pages, half of them from BSA
Troop 54 out of Eureka that made several
ascents in the previous decade. The only names I recognized were fellow Sierra
Challenge participants Luca and Ephrat
from 2015. The summit was
swarming with
ladybugs gathering for
a high altitude orgy, and though they're mostly harmless, their incessant
activity flying around and into me eventually drove me back off the summit.
The best part of the ridge traverse was this last mile along the Marble Rim.
Staying on the crest, I found the scrambling to be no more than class
3 and quite fun, with a few tricky spots that required some caution. I dropped
to
Marble Gap, just north of Marble Mtn, finding a trail going over
the crest here. Rising to the south is the impressive North Face of Marble Mtn
that appears to have an interesting class 3 route up the limestone. The final
15-20ft looked to go vertical and kept me from trying it, as I didn't want
to climb up 200ft only to have to scramble back down. It turns out that the
route does go, but I couldn't ascertain that last part until I had
looked down
on it from the top and found a nifty class 3 crack at the finish that would
have been fun. Instead, I circled left around the east side of the limestone
formation, climbing it from the SE and south sides where it goes class 2.
After ascertaining the route I should have taken up the north side, I
continued south along more limestone to reach the southernmost point
of the Marble Rim. I believe this point at 6,881ft is the Marble Mtn that was
first intended for the CC-list. The northern point is higher and has more
prominence, however, and with the impressive North Face makes for a better
choice.
A use trail drops down from Pt. 6,881ft to intersect a maintained trail that
runs east-west across the range. Once on this trail, I followed it down to
a junction
with the PCT at a saddle between Marble Mtn and Peak 6,820ft. It was
at this point that I had originally planned to return to the Paradise Lake TH
using the PCT, contouring back around the NE side of the long ridgeline I'd
just hiked. As it was only 12:15p, I decided to tag Peak 6,820ft
as a bonus. I followed the PCT southeast for a mile and half past
trail junctions to Sky High Lakes and
Shadow Lake, until I
was only 1/5mi from the summit. Easy cross-country leads to the open summit
where there is a nice broadside view of the Marble Rim to
the west.
Rather than returning to the PCT directly, I thought I might make a larger loop
of it by dropping
north down to Sky High Valley. I descended initially
to Shadow Lake before trying to drop further, but soon found my way
blocked by cliffs I hadn't reckoned on. Rather than search for a dicey route
through this difficulty, I decided to climb back up to
Shadow Lake and
take the Shadow Lake Trail back to the PCT. Shaded on the north side of the
crest,
portions of this trail still held 3-4 inches of snow from days
earlier. Someone had recently left footprints in the
snow, making it trivial to follow it back to the PCT.
Now heading northwest, I plied the PCT back another mile to the saddle with
the Marble Rim where the PCT then drops down to Marble Valley. I came across
a backpacker heading south who paused to ask me if I knew if there was any
water at the next spring (I did not). I would run across the same guy the next
day while I was hiking another portion of the PCT near Yellow Dog Peak. A woman
and her dog who had come up the Sky High Trail hailed me as I passed by,
wondering what trail I was on. She evidently wasn't all too familiar with the
trail system in the area. I spoke to her only briefly before continuing on. The
PCT drops only about 500ft to reach Marble Valley where a
ranger station (closed for the season) is located.
There is a trail junction here with a fork coming up from
Lovers Camp about 4.5mi further down Canyon Creek. The PCT then wanders
through Marble Valley east of Black Marble as it begins to climb up towards
Box Camp. The area has vast limestone formations, semi-popular with cavers. I
found several
cave entrances
that could be seen from the trail and undoubtedly
there are numerous other ones known to the cavers frequenting the area.
I reached Box Camp
at the saddle with Box Camp Mtn shortly before 3:30p. The
summit is located about a mile NE of this point, the Box Camp Trail
conveniently heading off in that direction. I started along this poor trail,
wondering where it goes. My GPSr shows it going nearly over the summit as it
continues to the north, but that doesn't seem to be the case in reality. After
about 4/5mi the trail begins to drop more steeply down the east side of the
ridge towards Canyon Creek (maybe heading to Lovers Camp?). I left the trail
here to head cross-country up through forest understory about 2/5mi to
Box Camp's summit. I was surprised to find a register here, more
surprised that it dated
to 1995 and was fairly busy. Hunters seemed
to comprise the majority of the entries.
It was 4p at this point and about 5mi back to the trailhead if I returned to
the PCT. I was overlooking the South Fork Kelsey Creek drainage and
somewhere down there was my trailhead. "How far is it cross-country?" I
wondered. I checked the GPSr and found it was only 1.2mi in a straight-line
distance.
Seemed worth the savings in mileage if I could manage to find my way down
2,500ft of steep, forested terrain. Had I made more careful observations, I'd
have realized I could drop straight off the north side of the summit in the
direction of the trailhead. For some reason I thought the TH was further
downstream and instead aimed for a curved ridgeline that took me in a broad
arc, first east then north and eventually back to the west. It more than
doubled the straight-line distance but it was still much faster than taking the
PCT back. I eventually landed on the Forest Service road I had driven in on,
walking the last 3/4mi back to the trailhead
along the road. The
cross-country
proved to have very little brush and was a fun little bit of adventure. The
day as a whole was one of the best I've spent in the northern Coast Ranges.
There were more trucks at the TH when I arrived before 5:30p than when
I had started in the morning. I showered and changed into fresh clothes before
starting the long drive back out to Scott River Rd, south through Etna on SR3,
then up to Etna Summit where I would spend the night just off the pavement. I
had another CC-listed peak and a P1K on tap for the next day - more fun to
come...
Continued...
For more information see these SummitPost pages: Marble Mountain
This page last updated: Sat Oct 15 10:14:09 2016
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