off the pavement / By Bennett Barthelemy

Trinity Alps Rambles

(March 1, 2007)  When some of us think of the Alps, we envision long waits in our cars as fire crews remove logs that have trundled hundreds of feet down to the 299 from blackened hillsides that lead up to the vertiginous slopes of the remote Wilderness Area. What the uninitiated don’t know is that the Alps are pure magic …

With over half a million acres of some of the most scenic landscape in the country, it is no small wonder that the Trinity Alps are the crown jewels of the California Wilderness Areas. If you have not been to this wonderland you should be flogged mercilessly.

Photo by Bennett Barthelemy

GALLERY >

Many of us who crave wilderness perspectives have stories of our summer and early fall sojourns - scrambling up steep passes and granite ridgelines, our gaze spiraling past tiny snow patches, cirque lakes, boulder fields, sugar pine stands, golden eagles - perspective falling away from 7,500 feet to the blue edge of a convex horizon. Eastward, the white-tipped Shasta pierces the ethers with its wreath of lenticulars, Lassen stabs skyward, the last vestige of the mighty Cascade volcanoes …

But have you been to the Trinity Alps in winter? When alabaster white cloaks the gray granite ridges and the sun burns overhead? When your coalescing breath is your constant companion, and the sound of melting snow from the overhead boughs of snow-bobbled evergreens sounds like great avalanches roaring into you? Have you followed huge paw-prints of bear or mountain lion into the backcountry - or, better, have you followed them only to discover, as you return, that they have been following you?

Here is my advice when the winter weather offers a sunny reprieve. Throw a rented pair of snowshoes into the car. Set the alarm for 4 a.m. and head for a sunrise in the Alps. You might choose the Canyon Creeks trailhead and drive as far as you can get before the blanket of snow stops you at twilight. Park. Strap on the snowshoes, clip on the camera bag and start hiking up the snowy road for a day trip that will blow your mind.

If you can get to a trailhead that promises quick elevation gain, so much the better. Leave the river drainage and head up toward the peaks with spindrift swirling off their desolate summits for views down the tight canyons. From snowy saddles gaze down to the rolling lowlands of the Coast Range that are shrouded in morning fog, or painted deep emerald with a finite infinity of temperate chlorophyll.

So why go here? What could possibly be appealing about half a million acres of uninhabited and unincorporated Federally Designated Wilderness? Why waste a productive day spending 5-plus hours driving heinous riverine highways and spending a day’s worth of food money on gasoline to welcome frostbite to your already overworked digits? Seen one sunrise, you’ve seen them all, right?

Maybe the history will entice you. Gold mines? Boomtowns like Dedrick in the back of beyond - the 19th and even 20th century Wild West at your frost-nipped fingertips, perhaps …

1 2 3 NEXT PAGE >SHARE