Story

Continued...

Our last day in the Plumas National Forest felt a bit dirty. Lots of driving, 4 P1Ks, less than a quarter mile of hiking, total, on the day. I feel there will be penance to pay for this agregious sin at some point.

Mt. Hough

Located between Indian and American Valleys, good forest roads lead to the manned lookout tower atop the summit. We were there just after 6:30a, well before visiting hours, so I scrambled up to the rock outcrop on one side of the tower, took a few pictures and called it good. I imagine the views are better from the tower's viewing deck, but from the base they are only marginal. After our summit visit, we tried to drive to Grizzly Mtn, a summit that Dennis Poulin described as an interesting class 3 scramble. Unfortunately, we were unable to find the road shown on the topo map as the shortest route between the two and we flailed about on other roads for about an hour before giving up. More research would be needed.

Mt. Jura

After giving up on Grizzly, we drove back down to American Valley and Taylorsville before driving up to Mt. Jura found further east. The roads were decent, but not great. The views might be similarly described. I walked around the summit area until I found a register that had been appropriately left by Dave Jurasevich, climbing his namesake, or a s close to it as he's likely to get in California. On the way down, Jackie took over the driving duties and would continue for the last two summits.

Red Hill

These last two peaks are accessed via a common forest road heading north from SR70. Red Hill is the easier of the two with a good road leading to some telecom towers found at the summit. While I went off in search of the highpoint ( I found a reference mark but no benchmark and no register), Jackie climbed the short tower near our vehicle.

Rush Creek Hill

We spent another hour driving from Red Hill to Rush Creek Hill, this time on lesser roads for the last mile or two. Jackie enjoyed driving the Jeep and was having a lot more fun now that she was behind the wheel. I had her turn the car around once we reached the large summit area while I walked around looking for a register (no luck). When we got back down to SR70, we stopped at a rest area along the Feather River to give Jackie a chance to go for a short swim. The current wasn't unusually strong, but it needed to be considered carefully as it was her first time swimming in water moving this quickly. Refreshed, She dried off and we got back in the Jeep for the 4hr drive home. Good times...

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