Plumas County Lakes: Silver and Crystal

18,19,20-Jun-06

Just a run-of-of-the-mill shopping trip....

Well, not really....our intent was to turn a task of otherwise onerous nature into something fun and adventurous. Take the relatively short (One to one-and-a-half hours) trip over the mountains to Quincy, fuel up, grab some last minute camping supplies, and hightail it up to either Silver Lake or Snake Lake via the questionable and labyrinthine backroads to camp for a night, have a nice day kayaking, fishing, hiking, etc., and then, in the afternoon, hit the various hardware and grocery stores for our monthly "stocking up" shopping run.

Leaving home in the late afternoon on Sunday, with a pair of kayaks strapped to the rack along with the other standard gear, and a night's-worth of camping gear and supplies, we took the first backroad-bypass we came to, which is known as Old Gold Lake Road.....an easy but relatively steep dirt track with a nice view and a mild but tricky stream/dip crossing. At the top, on Gold Lake Road, we enjoyed cool mountain breezes displacing the fairly intense heat from the bright sunlight, and almost got stuck when stopping at Snag Lake in search of a place to eat lunch. (Some troublemaker snuck in at night and had strewn some dry dirt and needles over what turned out to be somewhat respectable muck, but they didn't get us!)


Upon cresting the pass and passing Gold Lake, I noticed that the "Road Closed" sign on the road to Feather Falls (and back to Gold Lake Road near the bottom of a very long, beautiful mountain highway) was no longer there, so I gleefully headed down the rocky road, where an SUV and another passenger car were parked. Seems that the road wasn't in such good shape, as the washouts and ruts started immediately.

Feeling superior to whoever those wimps were that had to park their SUV, we trundled past and into the nasty bits. The ruts weren't something one would want to get a tire into, as they were quite sharp and deep.....but the scariest part of the whole road was the not knowing whether it would actually get "bad". After a stop by a potential morel patch (which yielded nothing, of course) which was after some of the gentler ruts, and before a longer stretch which had a serious rut running down a nice, smooth set of wheel tracks......we saw a modern passenger vehicle of not-too-great clearance coming up, which I pulled well off the road to make room for. The driver stopped and asked how bad it got, and I asked him the same thing.....well, it turns out that what he had done on the way up was all easier than the thing I was about to go down, which means that the road ahead of him was potentially dangerous, and the road ahead of me was boring.....I hope he made it!

We did, though, and the nightmare was over before it began. What? Sorry. Wierd radio show at the moment....anyway, we made it alive to the northern part of Gold Lake Road, hit Hwy. 70 near Graeagle, then to Blairsden and Hwy. 89 to Quincy. I don't think I need to express in exquisite detail the experience of travelling from Blairsden to Quincy....this is a backroad site! Anyway, there we were, in Quincy, in the afternoon, getting gas, shopping for food for the night and next day, and then escaping to the hills. I can see it now: John Carpenter presents: Escape from Quincy: The third installment in a series of movies about some guy who really has problems with his location.

Sorry, that was a little weak.

Part of our idealized itinerary was to continue past Quincy to the place on 89 that showcases some really cool interplay between the railroad and the highway and hope to get some shots of the trestles, tunnels, and tracklines with some awesome canyon and river views as backdrop......but the opportunity had already passed us by in our previous trip, and we spent about half an hour fruitlessly searching for a spot just to pull over on the side of the road within camera shot of the tracks.

The tertiary mission of that afternoon was to access and utilize the backroads north of Quincy (near the trestles) to get to either Snake Lake or Silver Lake.....whichever we decided on when the decision-making time came. After some silly driving-back-and-forth, we finally decided to try for a little road that wound up along the river for a ways and then headed into the steep canyons and hills. Well, we found that the road we wanted was indeed there, but was named something else...., but that didn't stop us! Unfortunately, after poodling around on a single-lane road that had some intense views of a hundred-foot-drop onto the railroad tracks below, and the river beyond, and then back down to just above river level with a shady canopy and lush green undergrowth..... undergrowth which barely concealed the hulks of rotting carcasses of mid-70's automobiles and currently occupied dwellings which brought to mind the word "shanty", we found something which should have been on the map, but wasn't: A huge landslide at least a couple years old...and it was guarded by an ATV and a pickup, which were parked in a manner suggestive of an impending ambush. Any of you all seen "Deliverance"? There you go...and there, but for the grace of some hidden backwoods gentry with banjoes, went we....since the slide that had obliterated the roadway so long ago was such a fine example of how nature takes back its own.....and possibly provides the locals with a means of capturing and devouring unwary or lost adventurers.

So we backtracked like wounded dogs, past the car-casses, the shantytown, the local clearcut (trees are worth something, don'tcha know!?), back over the tracks, up the cliff, down over the tracks, and across the river to the relative safety of the highway, and promptly got stuck behind an old duffer out for a Sunday drive with his missus....never exceeding forty miles-per-hour. At first, in the frustration of being stymied by a big pile of rocks and losing time, we intended to go all the way back to Quincy, hit Bucks Lake Road, and then to either Silver or Snake Lake (the decision had still yet to be made), but we happened upon a tiny road snaking up a ravine by a tiny creek which should be an alternate route to the chaotic web of Forest Service and logging roads which should go all the way to the lakes in question (and more places besides... it's a matter of time!)

The signage at various intersections was somewhat lacking (an understatement), combined with our lack of a proper Forest Service map (which would have helped with the signs we did see) made us a bit pensive as we wound up through the hills and forest, through puddles, and across creeks. At the terminus of one particular unintentional detour, atop a knoll in a tiny glade we found by following a faint overgrown track up a hill, we had lunch. There were tree-lined valleys dropping away to the north and the south, and late afternoon breezes toyed with the tired sunlight Up to this point we were not in the mood for picture-taking, and were slacking on that account.....sorry.....so here are a few pics of where that was.



Let me talk a bit about cartography. Or not. Ya, let's not. There's not much to talk about in this case anyway, since the maps we had were leaving something to be desired.....more than once. Like information as to which of the three or four roads should we take at this here intersection of meandering forest paths? Who cares if said intersection doesn't actually exist according to the maps we have? In any case, since the details we needed were lacking, and we had a preference this time to arrive at our campsite well before dark in order that we get some kayaking and lounging-about in, we went back the way we came to yet another unmarked intersection, and headed in the direction we thought we oughta go, and hoped it was the right one....

At one point, astride our chosen path, a puddle loomed. No, sorry, it didn't really. Puddles do NOT "loom". It lurked. It lay in wait. With unspeakable horrors hidden beneath its placid surface. So I sent out a scout (Michele) to probe it with a stick just in case and to videotape the crossing, which was less than exciting, so I won't bother posting pics or video of it. If you're bored, you can just imagine this lurking puddle teeming with unspeakable horrors.

Through and beyond the "Butterfly Preserve" (where we didn't notice any butterflies, preserved or not), and back into logging central (National Forest), the meandering road ushered us through vale and switchback, over ruts and gullies, and right into the path of a vicious rattlesnake! Egad! This ferocious beast, with postures that surely inspired the Shao-Lin, posed a serious impediment to the onward rushing of our steed--the pursuit of which we were so keen on continuing, but for our natural curiosity and responsibility as photographers and naturalists. So I got out and poked it with a stick.



After the snake encounter, we thought we had a pretty good idea of where we were, and that was the upper roads on the ridge north of Snake Lake...and these roads would take us eventually to Silver Lake....provided we interpreted the maps and the unmapped intersections properly. To make a long story short, we made one wrong choice, and re-discovered Highway 70 just to the north of Quincy. Oh well. Back to Quincy, and up (westerly) on Bucks Lake Road just past the little outpost, and back off the asphalt onto the climbing gravel and dirt road to Silver Lake.



This time at Silver Lake we were prepared to hang out for the rest of the day and a night, so we immediately relaxed into the part, and despite the fierce gale howling over the lake and through our summer clothing, we broke out the kayaks and fishing gear for an evening lake tour. Heartened by the stringer of fish being carried by the smallest member of a family of three (humans) as they removed their boat from the water, we took our chances with the elements and potential entanglements with unknown submarine life. It's hard to express, but the wind chop, the scent of snow in June, and the lengthening shadows o'er the waters as we worked off the torpor developed during our day's drive made for an exquisite evening. Later, as I returned to the shore and camp, I got a sincere bite on the lure I was using, and immediately cast again, and got another! Fun! But no dice. No fish, either, but that was OK, since a bite or two indicates potential for the next day, right? Right.

The rest of the evening was spent enjoying food, fire (without a permit....more on that later!), frogsong and video, and of course, night-kayaking! It's spooky enough to be out there on the water at dusk, seeing huge rocks mere inches below as you pass over them...knowing that they extend to the bottom of the lake that you can't see, and sticks, stumps, and sodden branches like the tentacles of sea monsters....but at night, with the water still and black, the beam from my flashlight clutched painfully in my teeth barely cutting through the murk, it is totally out there as far as crazy experiences! After navigating out into the open water, I switched off my light and looked up. Amazingly beautiful! A ring of tree silhouettes framing a stellar display of stunning and epic proportion. No mere words of mine can express this feeling....the brilliant stars above, the untold depths below, and the intimate sense of falling sideways as the boat followed the surface currents caused by convection wells from the last vestiges of the sun's warmth.....

The next morning we woke to the twittering of birds and the breeze whispering through the treetops in spring's full majesty. Scones and a particularly flavorful coffee brew started the day nicely, and we then basically started wandering around. We wandered out onto the lake in our boats, we wandered back and forth a bit to explore the other (all vacant) campsites, and eventually we wandered off in separate directions: I headed back out onto the lake with Michele's kayak to fish, and Michele set out upon the trail to Gold Lake, an unknown hike to the higher areas.


(to be continued....) Author's note:I am just getting to the good stuff....please check back soon, as there is more story to tell!
Last updated: 13-Jul-06



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