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Introduction to the Area

Imagine for a moment that you’re driving north on I-5 south of Redding, California, on a glorious spring day, after a north wind has cleared the air above the upper Sacramento River Valley—a day when you can see for a distance of more than 100 miles. As the freeway crests a ridge, the frosted cone of Mount Shasta directly north suddenly enthralls you and your passengers, the majestic peak towering into the sky above the surrounding lowlands. Over to the northwest, a row of snowcapped peaks above the lower ridges behind Redding intrigues you. Most of your riders may be surprised to see snowy mountains toward the Northern California coast, but those in the know may recognize the Trinity Alps, and soon regale the group with interesting accounts of past experiences in one of the state’s most diverse mountain ranges. With the possible exception of fishing stories, the tales they tell about these mountains are probably true.

The Trinity Alps, along with the nearby Whiskeytown Unit of Whiskeytown-Shasta-Trinity National Recreation Area, the Russian and Castle Crags Wildernesses, and Castle Crags State Park—all within a remote and diverse range known as the Klamath Mountains—make up the scope of this book. This range of about 8,300 square miles encompasses a large area of northwestern California and southwestern Oregon, extending from the Sacramento Valley all the way north to the Willamette Valley. The area is deeply dissected by rivers, with the Trinity Alps Wilderness, Russian Wilderness, and Whiskeytown NRA drained by the Trinity, Scott, and Salmon Rivers, and Castle Crags drained by the upper Sacramento River.

The Trinity Alps forms the centerpiece of this guide, an area of about 525,000 acres of splendid wilderness and near-wilderness. The federally designated Trinity Alps Wilderness, set aside by the U.S. Congress in the California Wilderness Act of 1984, contains a half million of those acres, an area of more than 780 square miles. The wilderness includes all of the 234,000 acres previously protected as the Salmon–Trinity Alps Primitive Area, plus, obviously, a great deal more land.

Compared with the Sierra Nevada or Cascade Range, the Trinity Alps is a much smaller mountain range in both height and expanse. However, bigger is not necessarily better, as the Alps are filled with rushing streams, high waterfalls, gorgeous mountain lakes dimpled with trout rises, glaciated granite peaks, remnant glaciers, and cool green forests—plus some unique features all their own.

What the Alps don’t have, unlike other popular mountain ranges in the state, is hordes of people. Positioned in remote northwestern California, hundreds of miles away from any large population centers, the Alps tend to attract crowds only in a few areas. Part of the purpose of this guide is to inform the reader about some of the lesser-used places that, in many cases, can handle more visitors than some of the more popular areas.

View over Trinity River Canyon

Photo: Luther Linkhart

The Whiskeytown Unit is one of three parcels of land surrounding artificial reservoirs built as part of the Central Valley Project in the 1960s comprising Whiskeytown-Shasta-Trinity National Recreation Area. Whiskeytown Lake is a 3,250-acre reservoir that doesn’t suffer the effects of drawdown like Shasta and Trinity Lakes, which makes Whiskeytown a popular summertime destination for boaters and water-skiers. Encompassing nearly 42,500 acres, the land around the reservoir boasts 24 trails that are well suited for day hiking and mountain biking. With elevations ranging from 1,200 feet at the lake’s surface to 6,029 feet at the summit of Shasta Bally, Whiskeytown can be quite hot during the typically sunny afternoons in summertime. Therefore, spring and fall tend to be the most pleasant seasons for trail users. Four of Whiskeytown’s trails are included in this guide—three to picturesque waterfalls and one to the view-packed summit of Kanaka Peak.

The Russian Wilderness, also set aside by Congress in 1984, is much smaller than the Trinity Alps, at a mere 12,000 acres. However, within that more diminutive acreage is a biological diversity that makes the area unique. The concentration of 17 distinct conifer species in the Duck Lake Botanical Area distinguishes the Russian Wilderness as one of most biologically diverse areas in the world. In fact, some smaller plants here grow nowhere else in the world. The area straddles a divide between the Scott and Salmon Rivers, and elevations range from a little more than 5,000 feet to 8,196 feet at the summit of Russian Peak. This compact wilderness also boasts 22 lakes and numerous trails, including a section of the famed Pacific Crest Trail.

The 4,000-acre Castle Crags State Park and adjoining 10,500-acre Castle Crags Wilderness combine to form the final backcountry area covered in this guide. Situated along a stretch of the upper Sacramento River and just off I-5, the park is open year-round to campers, picnickers, sightseers, and outdoors enthusiasts. Ranging in elevation from around 2,000–3,000 feet, the lands within the park are towered over by the Castle Crags, a series of dramatic, granite spires, some of which exceed 6,000 feet in elevation. With 22 miles of trail, Castle Crags State Park offers plenty of opportunities for hikers. Castle Crags Wilderness, also set aside in 1984, contains the namesake crags and surrounding higher-elevation backcountry. Nearly 28 miles of trails, including a 19-mile section of the Pacific Crest Trail, offer opportunities to visit a wide variety of terrain, including high-elevation lakes, flower-covered meadows, and the crags themselves. While defined tread leads to the base of the crags, a more intimate visit requires basic off-trail skills.

The Klamath Mountains yield their inner secrets and pleasures only to hikers, backpackers, and equestrians willing to head out on 500-plus miles of trail. Automobile-bound visitors to resorts near the lakes and rivers see only a fraction more of the mountains than they would see from their car windows on I-5. The general purpose of this book is to inform and inspire those willing to forgo the comforts of their vehicles to get out onto the trails.

Natural History and Environment

GEOLOGY

If you crumple a piece of paper into a ball, and then spread the paper out partway so it’s still crumpled and creased in all directions, you would have an approximate model of the topography of the Klamath Mountains. Although the Trinity Alps do form a generally east–west divide, and the Russians form a north–south divide that separates the Scott and Salmon Rivers, the area’s contorted ridges, canyon, and peaks seem to run helter-skelter in all directions.

The metamorphic rocks in the Trinity Alps area are some of the oldest in California.

These mountains are only vaguely related, geologically, to the Coast Range to the west, and not related at all to the volcanic Cascades beginning with Lassen Peak and Mount Shasta to the east. They are, in fact, the southern part of the Klamath Mountains, which include the Marbles and Siskiyous farther north. The Klamath Mountains harbor some of the oldest rocks in California. These rocks originated as offshore sediments, largely volcanic in origin, which were repeatedly uplifted, folded, and combined with the granite bedrock below the seafloor, creating an amalgam of varied rock types formed at different times, by different means, and in different locations. In the process, tremendous pressures metamorphosed the deposits into uptilted and distorted strata of slate, quartzite, schist, gneiss, chert, and soapstone. Isolated pockets of unmetamorphosed sandstones, limestones, mudstones, and conglomerates can be attributed to later sedimentation and fallout from eruptions in a nearby volcanic chain. Geologists refer to this widely varied, complex, and mixed-up geology as the Klamath Knot.

There is no evidence of volcanic lava flows or eruptions with the Klamath Mountains. Granitic magmas did well up at various times, which accounts for the composition of most of the higher peaks in the area. Other igneous rocks, known as mafic and ultramafic, also squeezed up into faults and cracks in the earth’s crust; the high iron content of much of this rock accounts for the weathered red- and rust-colored rock of many of the other high peaks in the region.

Further upheavals, lateral movements, and constant erosion over geologic time gave many of the lower ridges and canyons much of the same shape as they display today, but the higher peaks and ridges received their final contours during periods of glaciation. Although these glaciers ran down the canyons just a few miles, the massive sheets of ice removed cubic miles of rock from the higher areas, depositing the ground-up rock in the lower areas. Once the glaciers receded, they left behind many small cirque-bound lakes at the heads of U-shaped valleys, with fantastically carved divides between them. Moraines dammed some of the larger valleys, which formed large lakes and marshes that eventually became some of the present-day meadows; Morris Meadows in the Trinity Alps is an outstanding example. Erosion distributed glacial till farther down the canyons, putting the finishing touches on the landscape that is visible today. Elevations in this part of the Klamath Mountains range from 900 feet along the lower Trinity River to 9,002 feet on top of Thompson Peak.

Many define three regions of the Trinity Alps by color as seen from the high summits of the central Alps. To the west is the extensive tract of land known as the Green Trinities, named not for a rock type but for the extensive swath of forest, perhaps the largest intact section of diversified forest in the greater Klamath Mountains. The Red Trinities includes lands of high ridgelines to the southeast that are defined by the characteristic igneous bedrock composed primarily of peridotite and interspersed with granite, which creates red-, brown-, and gray-colored summits. To the northeast, beyond the gash of Coffee Creek, are the granitic mountains of the White Trinities. The high, central Trinity Alps are also part of this group.

CLIMATE

Although the Klamath Mountains are much wetter than the Sacramento Valley and many other regions of Northern California, they are not nearly as wet as locations along the Northern California coast. Precipitation varies greatly in this relatively small area, from as much as 80 inches a year on some of the higher, west-facing slopes to less than 20 inches in some of the lower east-side canyons. Much of the precipitation occurs as either rain or snow during the winter months. However, thunderstorms are not uncommon during the summer.

Temperatures vary more greatly than along the coast or in the Sacramento Valley. Winter temperatures can be quite cold. Even Weaverville, at 2,000 feet, receives some snow almost every winter. The snowpack at the higher elevations can build up to 10–20 feet, making it an important storage facility of water for the Central Valley Project. High-country trails are usually free of snow by late June, but snow may linger all summer on north-facing slopes following winters of heavy snowfall.

Summer daytime temperatures can be quite hot, exceeding 90°F even at 5,000 or 6,000 feet. Down in the lower canyons, 100°F days are not uncommon. Day-to-night differentials can range up to as much as 45°F.

PLANTS

An amazing variety of plants grows within the Klamath Mountains. The varied geology, assisted by a relative lack of glaciation and volcanism, has produced one of the most distinct floral provinces in the world, which botanists refer to as the Klamath-Siskiyou Ecoregion. At the intersection of five major biotic regions—Coast Range, Cascade Range, Great Central Valley, Sierra Nevada, and Great Basin—the area boasts more than 130 endemic plant species and the highest concentration of different conifers in the world. The range harbors about 3,500 different plant species, including some unusual meat-eaters.

The most obvious members of the plant community are the trees. The forests in the Klamath Mountains are marvelously diverse and include some of the largest individuals of some species seen in the United States. Two unusual conifer species, weeping spruce and foxtail pine, are fairly common in the higher elevations, and rare elsewhere. Shasta red firs grow north of Redding, extending into southwestern Oregon.

The best way to categorize the forests and other flora of the Klamath Mountains is by plant communities. As in other mountain ranges, plant communities here are determined primarily by elevation. However, many other contributing factors, including soil type, rainfall, wind, and exposure, make the dividing lines rather indistinct. There is more intermixing of species between plant communities in the Klamath Mountains than in most other mountain ranges in North America. Descriptions of six very general plant communities follow.

Mixed Low-Elevation Forest This classification represents the low-elevation community up to about 3,000 feet, including isolated riparian (streamside) communities that may be found as high as 6,000 feet. The deciduous, broadleaf trees found here include alders, dogwoods, bigleaf maples, black oaks, hazelnuts, and Oregon oaks. Douglas-fir is overwhelmingly the most common conifer in this community, but lesser amounts of ponderosa pines and Jeffrey pines also appear, as well as sparse stands of Digger pines on lower, dry slopes. Evergreens other than conifers include madrones, chinquapin, tan oaks, California live oaks, and canyon oaks.

Some bushes appear as trees in the lower riparian areas, including coastal, red, and blue elderberries, along with ceanothus, dogwoods, hazelnuts, and manzanitas. Thick stands of chaparral extend over dry hillsides, with ceanothus and manzanita being the most common shrubs, and gooseberries, wild roses, and poison oak also present.

Poison oak grows in many forms, from low, spindly plants to tree-climbing vines, and is the bane of this plant community. Touching the plant produces a violent skin reaction in most humans and, when the plant is burned and the smoke inhaled, may cause serious poisoning requiring hospitalization. This noxious plant has shiny leaves in groups of three and is easy to identify and thereby avoid. The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) has some helpful information (available at ranger stations) that can help you learn to identify this plant.

Mixed-Conifer Forest The largest trees—sugar pines, ponderosa pines, Jeffrey pines, Douglas-firs, white firs, and incense cedars—grow in this zone between 3,000 and 6,000 feet. Vine maples and mountain ash are occasional associates to the stately conifers. Black oaks and alders are also found in the lower realms of this zone. These magnificent forests are found on most of the trails you’ll end up hiking in the Klamath Mountains.

Shrubs such as azaleas, raspberries, wood roses, and coast huckleberries carpet small openings in the forest. Pinemat manzanita and thimbleberries are common members of the understory. Large expanses of brush are uncommon at these elevations, but where they do occur, huckleberry oaks and other scrub oaks, which do not appear at lower elevations, are the principal plants.

Red-Fir Forest Red firs and their subspecies, Shasta red firs, occur almost equally in the Klamath Mountains between 5,000 and 7,000 feet. They often overlap considerably with conifers from the next lowest community, especially white firs. Slightly larger, beautiful cones distinguish Shasta red firs from the standard red firs, with longer bracts than scales, giving the cones a silver-flecked appearance.

At these elevations, western white pines begin to replace their close relatives, the sugar pines, while Jeffrey pines take over completely from their relatives, the ponderosa pines. Mountain junipers are not particularly common in the Klamath Mountains, but a few do show up here and there in this community. Pockets of mountain hemlocks and weeping spruces can be found at the upper limits of this zone on north-facing slopes and cirques. This zone is the highest with large stands of trees. Above these elevations trees grow alone or in small clusters.

Streams at these elevations may be lined with cottonwoods. Alders are reduced to the size of bushes and are usually associated with willows in wet areas. Different varieties of willows thrive at all elevations, but they are generally the size of shrubs here. Mountain ash and vine maple are also fairly common broadleaf shrubs in this region.

Some southern exposures at this level are covered with large areas of solid brush, referred to as mountain chaparral. Ceanothus, manzanita, chokecherry, serviceberry, tobacco brush, and huckleberry oak are the primary shrubs.

Subalpine Forest Foxtail pines have found a home in the Trinity Alps at elevations ranging from 6,500 to 8,000 feet, along with smaller amounts of whitebark pines and mountain mahoganies clinging to the exposed and inhospitable ridgecrests. Somewhat surprisingly, Jeffrey pines, western white pines, and an occasional incense cedar persist in this zone, but usually in startlingly modified forms—stunted and contorted, pruned by the high winds, and bent over by the weight of winter storms. The only trees seemingly able to stand erect on top of these windswept ridges are whitebark pines and foxtail pines. Foxtail pines may sometimes be mistaken for firs at first glance, but they have bundles of five needles that grow tightly spaced all the way around supple branches that resemble small, green foxtails.

Whitebark pine on Scott Crest (see Trip 28)

Mountain hemlocks grow in protected pockets on north-facing slopes, usually in protected areas away from the strongest winds. Weeping spruces scattered around the higher lakes and cirques in the wettest and coldest places also tend to avoid the winds.

Mountain chaparral extends into the lower end of this community, with flattened mats of willow and pinemat manzanita making up the only persistent brush in the upper realms of this zone.

Mountain Meadow There are meadows in the mixed low-elevation forest, but the true mountain meadows begin in the mixed-conifer community and extend into the subalpine forest. The obvious plants in mountain meadows are grasses, sedges, and wildflowers, but shrubs are also present, along with two species of trees that thrive around the edges of meadows: lodgepole pines and quaking aspens. Neither tree is particularly common in this area, but they are a pleasant surprise when encountered.

Alpine The handful of true alpine ecosystems that exist in this part of the Klamath Mountains are positioned around the highest peaks in the range, at elevations near 9,000 feet. Trees are completely absent, and only a few shrubs and heaths hug the surface of small pockets of soil between the rocks. The most abundant plants are lichens, but a remarkable array of wildflowers burst into bloom during the very short frost-free period in late summer.

Lupines

Wildflowers

More than 100 acres of wildflowers bloom in a solid mass in late July and early August on a northeast-facing slope at the head of Long Canyon in the Trinity Alps. Probably dozens of species are represented, but the most prominent are vivid red paintbrushes; blue, yellow, and purple lupines; white angelica; and creamy western pasqueflowers that turn into fuzzy white mops when they go to seed.

In a completely different location, under evenly spaced red firs on the south side of the Salmon River Divide, the waxy white blossoms of queen’s cups and twinflowers shine against the dark background of the forest floor.

The preceding two paragraphs only hint at the diversity of the hundreds of species of plants that thrive in this section of the Klamath Mountains. To name and describe them all would require an entire volume. Many people derive a great deal of pleasure from being able to identify, as well as admire, the many flowers they see. For such a purpose, A Field Guide to Pacific States Wildflowers by Theodore E. Niehaus, Roger Tory Peterson, and Charles L. Ripper (in the Peterson Field Guides series) is highly recommended.

You may be surprised by the sheer number of species you can identify here that are described in the guide which usually grow on the northern stretches of the Pacific Coast. This is because, as mentioned earlier, the Klamath Mountains are a meeting place for plant species from five biotic zones. At least one species, the California pitcher plant, found more often in the Trinity Alps than anywhere else, is rare and listed as being of special concern in California. Please do not pick any specimens, and be very careful not to damage the native flora.

Many locations and descriptions of wildflowers are noted in the trips at the points where they occur, but some general descriptions may be in order. The largest displays of flowers are found in mountain meadows. The species vary considerably with the type of meadow, elevation, and location. You’ll find California pitcher plants in the wettest and steepest meadows at fairly high elevations, but they also may be found growing around the edges of ponds in the midst of small openings in the mixed-conifer and red-fir communities. Angelica and yampa bloom in most meadows, except for very dry meadows on flat ridgetops. Those high, dry, and often gravelly meadows support pussy paws, cat’s ears, sulfur flowers, and cinquefoils. All of these represent only a small sampling of the marvelous variety of flowers you’re apt to see in the meadows.

Streamside locations support a completely different group of wildflowers. Most showy among these are the head-high spikes of larkspurs and monkshoods. Marsh marigolds, buttercups, and Jeffrey’s shooting stars bloom beside little rills at the higher elevations just after snowmelt. Later, and even higher, a dozen or more varieties of monkeyflowers display a wide range of colors beside seeps and springs, while edible swamp onions grow right in icy streams.

A surprising number of flowers bloom in the deep shade of the mixed-conifer community. Early in the season you may see woodland stars, milkmaids, and trillium. Later, the parasitic flowers, such as coral roots and pinedrops, display their ghostly beauty on leafless forest floors. Mahonia and salal, usually considered more north Pacific Coast plants, grow under thick stands of Douglas-firs. Washington lilies prefer a little more sun in openings in the low-elevation mixed forest, as do gilias, irises, and mints.

California pitcher plants

Photo: Luther Linkhart

Other Plants

Ferns, mosses, and lichens grow abundantly in the Klamath Mountains; they approach rainforest proportions in some of the lower canyons, covering rocks and trees alike with a green mantle. In other low-elevation areas, gray strands of Spanish moss drape away from tree limbs, and staghorn lichens stand out from the trunks. At boundaries between meadows and forests in the mixed-conifer community, ferns grow to head height, crowding the trails. Acres of brake ferns cover some of the meadows at the red-fir level. A variety of lichens add their colors to the rocks higher up, and delicate five-finger ferns decorate dripping grottos.

ANIMALS

Warm-Blooded Animals

A quite common, wild, large, warm-blooded animal in the Klamath Mountains is the black bear. The area has seen a sizable increase in the bear population in recent decades, although you probably won’t see one on your backpack, as these animals remain quite wary of humans. However, you can safeguard against encountering a bear in the backcountry by following a few simple guidelines. At camp, effectively hang all of your food, trash, and scented items (toothpaste, sunscreen, etc.) from a stout tree limb out of a bear’s reach (10 feet high and 5 feet out from the trunk), or, better yet, put all of that stuff in an approved bear canister. Wash your dishes, keep your camp clean, and try not to cook more food than you’ll realistically eat. You may still hear a bear nosing around your camp in the middle of the night, searching for food, but with the proper precautions, at least you won’t go hungry for the rest of your trip. More than likely, you will see bear scat on the trails as well as other signs, such as scratch marks on tree trunks, or torn-up logs, but people rarely see bears in this region.

Columbian black-tailed deer appreciate the pathways humans have constructed as much as the bears do, so you’ll probably see their signs along the trail as well. You’re apt to see does and fawns along the way, and if you are lucky, a buck or two. Every buck has been hunted since the first year of their life, so they’re justifiably wary of humans. Noises around your camp at night are much more likely to be made by a deer than a bear. Deer are attracted to camp food, especially anything salty, and they also have been known to chew on anything that is sweat-soaked, such as clothing, pack straps, and boots. While setting up camp in Grizzly Meadows after the hot and sweaty climb from the China Gulch Trailhead, I removed my soaking-wet T-shirt and set it out on some bushes to dry. A short time later a deer wandered into camp and started chewing away on my shirt. When the deer finally finished, the T-shirt had a pattern of holes resembling a slice of Swiss cheese. Don’t feed the deer—they become horrible pests once they’ve become habituated to getting food from humans. Don’t approach or try to pet one either—despite our Bambi-inspired feelings, they are potentially dangerous, and they carry ticks and lice. Still, a doe and her twin fawns drinking out of a fog-shrouded stream at dawn is a most memorable sight. Mountain lions, the deer’s only predator (besides humans), are very scarce in the Klamath Mountains.

Black-tailed doe in Morris Meadow

The next largest mammal in the area is the resourceful coyote. Coyotes are rarely seen but more often heard on moonlit nights. Coyote calls, passed back and forth from ridge to ridge, are a thrilling wilderness symbol. Martens, fishers, and long-tailed weasels are also seldom-seen animals, although present in the Klamath Mountains in significant numbers.

Smaller warm-blooded animals of the rodent order swarm in some parts of the Klamath Mountains. Mice, chipmunks, and ground squirrels prosper in areas of high human visitation, with people feeding them directly from their hands and indirectly from the horse feed, horse droppings, and garbage they leave behind. There is a relationship between large rodent populations and healthy populations of rattlesnakes—the snakes move in to take advantage of the abundant food supply. In the less-traveled western Trinity Alps, there is a dearth of rodents when compared to more popular areas in the eastern Alps. Bears, bobcats, weasels, and coyotes may also have an impact on the absence of rodents in the western Alps.

One delightful rodent you’re apt to see is the cheeky Douglas squirrel (also known as the pine squirrel or chickaree). This rodent’s strident chattering and frenetic activity in the mixed-conifer and red-fir forests are often amusing to passersby. The Douglas squirrel is rarely a camp robber, but he may drop a green pine or fir cone uncomfortably close to you as you pass beneath his tree. The piles of cone scales and cones under trees usually belong to Douglas squirrels.

The much larger gray squirrel, which lives in the mixed low-elevation forest, is very shy and seldom seen. Skunks, raccoons, ringtail cats, opossums, and foxes also frequent this community, rarely moving into the upper communities.

Oddly, the western states’ largest rodent, the porcupine, is rare in this area, although quite common elsewhere in California. Bats are often seen around lakes and meadows after dusk, hunting for insects. Their marvelous flight rarely ceases to amaze visitors to their realm.

The Douglas squirrel has attitude to spare.

Photo: Luther Linkhart

Birds

Nothing begins the day quite as well as birdsong outside your tent—unless you’re exhausted from the previous day’s hike and would like nothing more in the morning than to sleep in. Unless the weather is horribly bad, you’ll rarely be without that gentle awakener in the Klamath Mountains. Vireos, warblers, robins, and finches greet you in the mixed-conifer forest. Of course, you’ll undoubtedly hear a few raucous jays as well. In the higher realms of the red-fir forest, you may hear a mountain bluebird, a golden-crowned kinglet, or a hermit thrush. The distant drumming of a pileated woodpecker, evidence that some creatures can be so industrious early in the morning, isn’t all bad. Hummingbirds are occasionally seen in some of the upper communities, no doubt drawn by the stunning wildflowers of midsummer. On the lower trails you’re sure to find the dust wallows of California quail, and you may hear a mother quail calling to her chicks to freeze in their tracks. Even though you’ve just heard their peeping, you’re unlikely to find a single chick after they become silent and motionless, as their camouflage renders them virtually invisible. Blue grouse also have excellent camouflage—you seldom see them in the grass and brush until they instantaneously explode from under your feet, doubling your heart rate.

Raptors are well represented at all elevations in the Klamath Mountains. Many species of hawks course the ridges in search of prey, and golden eagles nest in a few locations. Even bald eagles have been seen in recent years. A few ospreys nest along the rivers, and owls can often be heard at night as high as the red-fir forest.

Literally hundreds of avian species are represented in the Klamath Mountains. If you want to add to your list, pack along a copy of Peterson Field Guide to Western Birds by Roger Tory Peterson, along with a pair of binoculars. You’re sure to find something new with each trip.

Cold-Blooded Animals

Reptiles and amphibians are common in all of the communities, except alpine zones. Various snakes, such as rubber boas, garter snakes, gopher snakes, king snakes, and various water snakes are fairly common in all zones up to the subalpine.

An area with as much water as the Klamath Mountains is bound to be home to a high number of water-loving amphibians. Red-legged and yellow-legged frogs thrive in the wet meadows and ponds in the mixed-conifer forest community. Higher up, you may find tiny tree frogs. An amazing number of salamanders live in damp forest areas up to the subalpine level.

The amphibians that receive the most attention are the newts and salamanders that live in many of the middle- and lower-elevation lakes. Some of them are 8–10 inches long and bright red, quite startling as they come up to the surface to breathe when you’re expecting trout.

A bee inspects an angelica blossom.

Insects

Insects inhabit the Klamath Mountains in numbers similar to all other earthly paradises. Only a few of these numerous species of insects are problematic for humans, and of course many of them can be quite interesting, if not beautiful, creatures. Mosquitoes can be a considerable annoyance in many areas right after snowmelt. Repellents can be quite helpful during the day, and a screened tent can be a godsend at night.

Horseflies and deerflies are irritating later in the summer, but at least they go away at nightfall. During and immediately after the wet spring season, ticks can be a particular nuisance at the lower elevations, especially since they can carry Lyme disease or infections. Repellents sprayed on collars, cuffs, and pant legs should help, but the best way to deal with ticks is by inspecting your entire body daily. If discovered soon after it has attached, a tick can be removed by grabbing the body with a pair of tweezers and applying gentle traction until the pest is pulled out of your flesh. Once removed, thoroughly wash the affected area and watch for signs of infection or rash around the wound. If any unusual symptoms develop after a few days, seek medical attention.

Human History

Three natural resources have profoundly affected the human history of the Klamath Mountains, almost to the exclusion of any other factors. They are, in chronological order, gold, timber, and water.

THE WINTU INDIANS

Gold meant very little to the Wintu Indians, who lived very well along the Trinity River and its tributaries for hundreds, possibly thousands, of years without any awareness that gold was even present. The Wintu had no use for gold, and they certainly had plenty of timber and water for their needs. As a matter of fact, they had just about everything else they needed. Deer and elk were plentiful, providing both food and clothing. Each autumn brought the return of salmon and steelhead up the river for harvest, and in most years, a bountiful crop of acorns. In the summer, berries and seeds were plentiful, along with small animals that they could snare. They built roofs for their homes of bark and rushes, and sedges and willows provided the materials for beautifully woven baskets.

Winters were bearable along the river, and the Wintu had little reason to travel very high into the mountains, except to pass through on trading expeditions to the coast or Central Valley. What need had a Wintu for gold? Would gold keep a grizzly from attacking? (Grizzlies were still here in those days.) In the end, of course, gold destroyed the Wintu completely, as the people who came to the area in the 19th century wanted the gold and the Wintu were in the way.

FROM TRAPPERS AND GOLD DIGGERS TO HOMESTEADERS AND LOGGERS

Although Jedediah Smith, and possibly other trappers before him, may have visited the area, Major Pierson B. Reading received the credit for naming the Trinity River in 1845. Actually, the river was named by mistake, as Reading thought the river emptied into the Pacific Ocean at Trinidad Bay, naming the river Trinity (the English translation of the Spanish Trinidad). Four years later, two miners who were searching for a way to the ocean discovered that the river flowed into the Klamath River, not the ocean.

Going for the Gold

There is some conjecture that Major Reading discovered gold at the same time he discovered the Trinity River. However, that would have been three years prior to John Marshall’s discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill. If Reading discovered gold on his first trip to the Trinity River, he was really good at keeping a secret. The big gold rush to the Trinity River didn’t begin until late 1849 or early 1850.

By the end of 1850, the gold rush on the Trinity River and its tributaries was in full swing. Weaverville had almost as many people living there as it does now. In contrast, Trinity Centre (original spelling) had many more people than it does today. Even in 1850, many of those people were Chinese immigrants. By 1853, close to 2,000 Chinese immigrants lived and worked in the Weaverville area alone. Their labor was a boon to the local economy: They worked cheaply, and if they mined their own claims, renegade whites promptly robbed them. Most important, they paid $4 a head per month to the government for the privilege of digging, which went a long way toward supporting the public sector during the 1850s. Contrastingly, the whites paid nothing, despite the fact that they too were immigrants.

Steam engines at Dorleska Mine (see Trip 19)

Photo: Luther Linkhart

In 1854, tensions between two tongs, or Chinese gangs—one from Canton and another from Hong Kong—erupted in a skirmish instigated and egged on by whites. (So-called tong wars were commonplace in California in the 19th and early 20th centuries.) The American and European gold-seekers didn’t allow the Chinese to use guns—stray bullets might hit white bystanders—so the “Hong Kongs” and “Cantons” fought with knives, spears, and hatchets in a field near Weaverville. “Military advisers” for both sides cheered them on and bet on the outcome, with the Cantons eventually triumphing. However, many Chinese on both sides were losers, with numerous deaths (estimates from different historical sources range from 4 to 26) and many injuries. Surprisingly, there were no casualties among the “advisers.”

More people swarmed over the area in the 1850s than have been there at any time since. In less than a decade, most of the available placer gold had been mined, and the Chinese moved on to help build a section of the Transcontinental Railroad over the Sierra Nevada. Only the Weaverville Joss House, the museum, some artifacts, and miles of carefully stacked boulders the miners left along the streams remain to remind present-day visitors and residents of the extent of the 19th-century Chinese community.

The Wintu fared far worse than the Chinese. Estimated to have had a population of between 5,000 and 10,000 prior to the arrival of Europeans, the Wintu were nearly exterminated in the mid-1850s, leaving fewer than 1,000 members by 1910. Of the original nine bands of Wintu, only three remain, and there are very few reminders of their former presence within the Trinity Alps.

After the placer gold had been diminished, gold mining became big business. Capital and corporations were required to finance giant dredges, excavate deep shafts and drifts, and build miles of ditches and flumes. Such large-scale mining continued in the area through the 1930s, the most obvious example of which is the La Grange Mine. Water was transported 29 miles from lakes at the head of Stuart Fork in the early 1900s to wash away a big part of Oregon Mountain west of Weaverville. The remains were deposited down Oregon Gulch toward Junction City, the scars still visible along a portion of CA 299.

A few individual prospectors and small-scale placer miners have continued in the old way in an attempt to eke out an existence to the present day. One Mr. Jorstad, who lived in a cabin on the North Fork Trinity River, was an outstanding example until his passing in 1989. A new breed of gold miner has invaded the area more recently, using gasoline-powered Venturi dredges, wet suits, and snorkels to find gold in deep pools, areas that were out of reach to the old placer miners. Existing laws (primarily the 1872 Mining Law) and other regulations allow these miners to continue working existing claims within wilderness areas.

Ranchers

Along with the miners of the 1850s came a number of ranchers who homesteaded along the rivers, mostly in the area north of Lewiston known as Trinity Meadows, which now rests at the bottom of artificial Trinity Lake. Some of their descendants remain cowboys, still driving beef cattle to summer pasture in the Klamath Mountains.

Anton and Anna Weber, an Austrian immigrant couple, bought one of these ranches in 1922 and established Trinity Alps Resort along the Stuart Fork. The Webers are credited with naming the mountains the Trinity Alps, as they felt the mountains resembled the Alps in their native country.

Loggers and Lumbermen

The miners and early settlers, although profligate in their use, hardly made a dent in the vast supply of timber present in the mountains. However, with the coming of the railroad in the late 1800s, timber cutting began in earnest, and logging and running sawmills soon eclipsed mining as the main industry in the region.

Later improvements in transportation and mechanization increased the rate of cutting dramatically, pushing the cuts to the boundary of the former Salmon–Trinity Alps Primitive Area in many places. In spite of intense pressure on the Forest Service and Congress by timber interests, much of the wilderness was spared the loggers’ ax. Checkerboard ownership (due to land grants from the federal government as an inducement to build the Central Pacific Railroad) of some of the land within the wilderness area was supposed to have been resolved by land trades and buyouts.

Dam Builders and Anglers

Many acrimonious, and sometimes fatal, arguments took place among the early miners about water rights, but those disagreements paled in comparison to what happened when the Central Valley Project (CVP) was pushed through at the insistence of Central Valley and Southern California water users. The CVP steamrolled right over Trinity County residents and the few conservationists existing in those days, diverting water from the Trinity River to points south.

Trinity, Lewiston, and Whiskeytown Dams were completed in the early 1960s, drowning Trinity Meadows, among other things, and seriously damaging one of the finest salmon and steelhead fisheries left in California. In place of beautiful Trinity Meadows, and the opportunity to fish for salmon and steelhead, we now have the pleasure of water-skiing on red-dirt-rimmed Trinity Lake. However, all is not lost, as the Trinity River Restoration Program (trrp.net) has spearheaded efforts to enhance the fisheries habitat, and after years of serious declines, salmon and steelhead runs have shown some hope in recent years.

Recreational Enthusiasts

Except for occasional horse-mounted hunting and fishing expeditions, recreational use in the Klamath Mountains increased with the improvements of surrounding roadways in the 1920s, and a number of dude ranches and resorts sprung up around Trinity Meadows, Trinity Center, and Coffee Creek. Horses still carried most of the visitors to the backcountry until the late 1950s, when much-improved equipment and freeze-dried food encouraged a backpacking boom. Today, backpackers far outnumber equestrians. Rafting on some of the major rivers in the area, such as the Klamath, Trinity, and upper Sacramento, has become a very popular outdoor activity as well.

Rafters on the Trinity River