Headwaters Forest at 10
“The aftermath of Maxxam certainly had a social impact: accelerating the cut and the big bubble of employment, and then all of a sudden there’s no trees left to cut and people had to move on to other things,” Lanman said. “And that was part and parcel why we were fighting — not just for the old growth and marbled murrelets, but also for the legacy of what the Pacific Lumber Co. had left for Humboldt County.”
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You can get into the Headwaters Forest Reserve two ways. You can take the Elk River Road out of Eureka to the trailhead at the north end and hike — or bike, but only for the first three miles — along the South Fork of the Elk River through thickets of maples and alders and younger redwoods and other trees, passing the site of the old logging town of Falk which the BLM has been sprucing up and a series of interpretive signs. After five miles, you come to a half-mile loop through a little patch of old growth forest that’s disconnected from the main mass of ancients deeper in.
Or, you can go on a two-mile guided tour with the BLM, between spring and fall, on the Salmon Pass trail out of Fortuna, which also begins in previously logged land — with its old road scars now being overtaken by thickets of thin young alders and planted redwood seedlings — and ends in a small loop through a relatively small old growth stand also disconnected from the massive, intact interior stand. The trailhead is reached by crossing private timberland, hence the controlled access.
Beyond those two trails, the reserve is closed to protect sensitive species. You can’t walk into the large old growth forest that defines the reserve. Bicycles are restricted to the three-mile portion of the Elk River Trail. And you can forget horseback riding in at all, anywhere. The limited access sticks in the craw of some people who thought they’d get more back when they were wrangling with the BLM and state Department of Fish and Game over their management plan, completed in 2004.
“We got screwed,” said Dennis Mayo of McKinleyville. “We were told, oh, come on, join in and play in the fun. We were told that we were going to get horseback riding, we were going to get all this stuff to help with ecotourism. I don’t think a trail for somebody to walk on and one damn bicycle riding trail is recreation. It certainly doesn’t meet the needs of the horseback riding community. We got zero.”
Mayo grew up in Humboldt County and, in his younger years, he’d go often into what’s now the Headwaters Reserve — back when it was private timberland still and was just referred to as “up in behind Falk” or “up in behind Boy Scout Camp.”
“I had leased ranch land that bordered there many years back and sometimes my cows would get out and get down there and I’d have to go try to find them,” Mayo said. “And then, you know, we’d go in there and go hunting. In those days, you just went. You didn’t need permits. Although, let me tell you, there’s a lot of places in there you can’t access anyway. It’s some pretty rough stuff in there. You know, you ain’t gonna go horseback down in some of those holes, you’d never come out.”
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10 Comments
Comment / By J.A. Schwartz / Feb. 26, 2009, 2:34 p.m.
Interesting story…comprehensive but clear — the kind of environmental writing that’s rare in today’s dwindling print media. The author does a consistently fine job. You Journal folk are lucky to have her and several other outstanding writers on the payroll.
Comment / By Catch me if you can / Feb. 26, 2009, 5:30 p.m.
BLM’s management of the Headwater’s is a big dissapoint. I believe that the intent was to “conserve and study the land, fish, wildlife, and forests occurring on such land while providing public recreation opportunities and other management needs.”
The BLM is removing all of the roads as fast as they can, with no thought as to whether they may be used as future trails. The construction of the poorly planned and located Salmon Pass Trail is a joke, especially given that access is for “Guided Hikes” only. Oh boy, can you hold my hand and wipe my ass too! We have been paying for the expensive pre-commercial thinning of second growth redwood so that in 250-500 years, it will be a little bit more like old growth.
Lastly, the public is restricted to only 2 trails for a 7,500 acre area with no access to the backcountry. These bureaucrats and their biologist’s don’t want us in the Reserve…its their big petri dish. It just f-ing kills me to see signs on the south end that read…”PUBLIC LAND - NO TRESSPASSING”.
Comment / By H2O_nerd / Feb. 27, 2009, 9:06 p.m.
Does every square inch of the planet really need to be used by humans? Humans have manipulated and fouled the vast majority of the globe. What is so galling about leaving a few acres alone for nature to take its course without garbage, disturbances, and small-minded short-sighted humans, like Mr. Catch Me?
Comment / By catch me if you can’t / Feb. 28, 2009, 9:35 a.m.
If Mr. Catch me will read the article, he would understand that driving up to salmon pass is trespassing through Humboldt Redwood Company land for about 5 miles…..due to logistical reasons such as logging trucks blazing down Felt springs Road, the hikes must be coordinated. The north end of Headwaters is an amazing trail and doesn’t need to be a guided. Its a five mile hike that leads you to a pristine old-growth redwood grove.
Comment / By Caught and released / March 1, 2009, 9:05 p.m.
9:35:
BLM has a right-of-way up Felt Springs Road to the Kiosk, and also out to Alicia Pass. HRC’s truck road up Felt Springs road is used minimally. Ever heard of multiple use? Access could easily be restricted during the 2-3 month period when truck traffic is occurring. It could be worked out if they wanted it to.
In the meantime, while the BLM works on pulling their collective head out of their ass, some of us will be enjoying the Headwater’s southern end on weekends to walk, jog, and horseback ride up Felt Springs Road. A large majority of us won’t even enter the Reserve..why? Because the new trail sucks, and all of the existing roads are being removed as fast as they can.
When is the BLM going to figure out that the majority of local park users want access for dispersed recreation, not just to oogle over the “pristine old-growth”? The trees are a bonus but not the main attraction. Countless people walk and jog up Felt Springs Rd and then turn around at the Kiosk before even entering the Reserve. The northern trail is the same…the majority is located in second and third growth, which is where the most use occurs.
I would bet a paycheck that the tresspassers far outweigh the number of people participating in the guided hikes.
It sucks to have to be a “tresspasser” on Public Land.
Comment / By Jimi / March 1, 2009, 11:57 p.m.
The Headwaters is a joke by recreational standards. Much of it is unused and, contrary to an earlier comment made here, the northern trail is fairly bland. It’s consistently muddy, a fair chunk of it is paved and the old growth loop at the end is pretty small comparatively. As far as Falk goes, prepare yourself to relive the times by seeing scraps of an old saw blade or be dazzled by an old shed. The park does not get much use and doesn’t encourage much either. For anyone that truly enjoys the redwoods, a trail in either the state or national parks up north is far more rewarding than the Headwaters (and by the usage, I believe many have figured this out).
Comment / By unanonymous / March 2, 2009, 7:41 p.m.
It would have been nice for the writer to highlight some of the restoration work done by…. I know this isn’t popular, but PALCO. But that would be objective and if you ignore it enough, it never happened….
Comment / By Jeff Muskrat / March 3, 2009, 12:01 p.m.
Conflict of interests…?
This one is sick…
From the Sub-Standard 02/25/09:
“The public criticism of the Headwaters Fund’s five-year report took nearly as long as the report to the Board of Supervisors Tuesday.
Patrick Cleary, chairman of the Headwaters Fund board, presented the report covering the fund’s work between 2003 and 2008.
Originally, the fund started at a shade more than $18 million, Cleary said. Now it totals almost $21 million. During the past five years, the fund has distributed $1.6 million in grants, $951,000 in community investment grants and $2.5 million in community investment loans. One of the main focuses in the past half-decade has been on infrastructure — amounting to $5 million although the local needs are much more.
”We’ve had to pick and choose our spots,” Cleary said.
Among those were the Caltrans project to widen U.S. Highway 101 through Richardson Grove; Horizon’s addition of a flight to Los Angeles; providing upfront money to bring Delta Airlines service to the North Coast; and leveraging funds to acquire an $8.5 million Federal Aviation Administration grant and funding a study on the Humboldt Bay Harbor Recreation and Conservation District’s Redwood Dock.”
One more major reason why this project must be stopped…The fund should be used for the Trees, not against them!
Visit: http://saverichardsongrove.blogspot.com/ to get involved. Save Humboldt County!
Comment / By cdc in the Sierras / June 12, 2009, 5:52 p.m.
After reading this article, I must say I feel very lucky. In 1994, I was one of the CCC special corpsmembers doing habitat evaluation in the Elk River watershed; I saw most of the North and South Forks of the Elk and many of their tributaries (not to mention the Falk train barn in situ, not at its current location). I considered myself fortunate at the time (and still do today) to have seen a lot of territory that was not open to the general public, and now I read with some bemusement that much of it is still not open. I can understand the bitterness some might feel about the current management practices used in this now ‘public’ land.
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