When The Ice Returns

This is Sardine Lakes, a pair of them. On above the other, formed by the same glacier that carved the northernmost spur of the Sierra Nevada mountains into this sharp and craggy point. The lakes aren't huge, but you can fish in them, in a boat. There's cabins, camping, picnic grounds, and hiking trails. It has been getting rain almost daily all summer long. As you can see there is no glacier left there, but it will come back. Making glaciers is a matter of "accumulation". If more snow falls and stays through the summer than melts, you get a glacier. Summers can still be warm and have an ice age. They just can't be warm enough to melt all the snow. Not at the highest elevations, like this mountain. These are visible from where I live, btw. You can see them for a hundred miles. 

The drive up Highway 49 from Nevada City is about 90 minutes. It is twisty, has blind turns and changing radius turns (those kill people because you loose grip as the turn tightens), and winds over all three forks of the Yuba River. The South Yuba, which passes near where I live, is the one that come out of Donner Pass area and it follows I-80 for a dozen miles before veering off into its own canyon to the north. The Interstate than follows the ridge between the Bear River and the American River, which also have deep canyons and lots of gold mining scars all the way down to Auburn. Highway 49 follows the locations of the various gold mines and used to be a stagecoach road. It is paved, smoother and straighter than it used to be, but it is still a very fun road to drive in a sports car, and painful in a slow moving RV or towing a trailer. There are sections, such as the one between here and Auburn, which carry lots of heavy trucks and commuters at high speed, but much of the highway is slow and two lanes and people pull over to let the more anxious pass them. We did, for a few maniacs with downhill mountain bikes heading for Downieville. There is a local hardcore sport that runs out of Downieville for cyclists. They pay a van to take them up to Sardine Lakes and drop them off. They climb up the hill over various ridges onto the west slope, stare at the view from the top, all the way to the mountains which hide the Pacific on their far side, and then power down the various trails for 20 miles, back to Downieville. It is not a good place to wreck, and proper downhill bikes are purpose built for the trip, and very expensive. 

This is a race from 2012. Bikes are getting longer and more angled suspension forks, to absorb more bumps. They also cost a few grand, so rentals are popular, and the shuttle services and bike rentals make it fun for the tourists, who also stay the night, eat at the local restaurants and provide most of the funds in this little tourist town nestled deep in the mountains. It is pretty much the only legal employment in the area, since the illegal stuff is on the south bank of the river, that being the north edge of the San Juan Ridge pot growing area. Sigh. When it starts raining hard this fall, the pot growers will be ready, harvest and process their plants, and make their annual bulk sales down in the cities. Next year will have lots more water, and lots more pot will result.

In any case, the highest parts of the northern sierra, up the mountain from Downieville is very pretty, and totally worth a visit if you live in California or Nevada. Someday those lakes will be filled with glacier again, the trees and brush ground under the advancing ice that returns to the high country first, and I'd like to write a story about the geologists assigned to studying them as they advance, then going down the mountain to one of the local towns for rest and resupply snowmobiles and 4WD trucks, probably electric by that point. Its one of those good things about Star Wars, that it gave us the concept of a scifi universe with dirt. It opened the door to filthy heroes with crap on their boots.

It was a fun day. I drove us over the Yuba Pass, and respectable speed, and descended into the Mohawk Valley below, which thanks to getting almost daily rain, was green, healthy, and filled with cows. They are not having drought there. It was gorgeous and Dad and I both want to live there. I just need to get someone to pay me to be a librarian. Sierraville, several thousand feet below the pass, is in Highway 89, at the south end of the Mohawk Valley. It has a forest service branch office, a Caltrans repair yard for the various highways going through there (serious jobs) and a small market. I did not see a library. Pity. Its got about 350 people, in the summer. And more like 100 in the winter. It ices up during the winter months, and it is about 30 miles to Truckee, which has the nearest supermarkets. We zoomed down that highway with the other traffic until we reached Nevada County, where the roads turned to bouncy thumpy crap. We also passed a crash being attended to by fire trucks, ambulance, and CHP (Highway Patrol) for some honda that had tried to cross a creek at speed, backwards, and wrecked. Not sure how they missed the bridge, but texting is never a good idea. People still do that, texting while driving. I think it is a Darwin Award, and it resolves itself. I remain a fan of Single Car Accidents. Texting crashes are just Chlorine in the gene pool. Once in Truckee, we rejoined I-80 and climbed over Donner Pass, and it rained most of the way up and part of the way down the west slope. This slowed traffic somewhat, but the road was also slippery. A good weekend.