07.24.08
Posted in Personal, San Joaquin Valley, Hockett Trail at 7:23 pm by Dan Jensen
I returned to Lewis Camp Trailhead by way of Trout Meadows—about 16 miles with 3800 feet of gross elevation gain. Clouds had gathered overnight, so the weather was mild, with only occasional direct sunlight. I would not have minded being rained upon, as it was still possible to overheat. It’s not a bad idea to keep one’s hat wet.
There are plenty of livestock gates along the way.
As I ascended out of Kern Canyon, I spotted my second pack train of the trip in the distance. I was taking the steep, rocky shortcut out of the canyon, and I could see the packer leading his animals down the longer, earthy and less strenuous branch. There was something mystical in the silence of that Mexican horseman lazily leading his train down into the canyon.
That train was the beginning of a number of encounters with equestrians—perhaps a half dozen, during which I spooked a dog and a horse, and caused several horses to freeze up with my mere presence. In all my backpacking days, I cannot recall ever having been such a haunting presence on the trail. It’s not that I don’t have the sense to get out of the way. Some animals seem to trust me less for every step I take away from the trail. Perhaps it’s the big heavy ceanothus walking stick that’s spooking them, if not my size 7-3/4 head and size 13 boots.
When I finally got to the trailhead, the SAR base camp was still there. Orders had just gone out to some of the workers to go get some dinner. Two days after I returned home, the Visalia Times-Delta reported details on the missing man.
This trip, I entered and exited the Sierra by way of Frazier Valley—a personal first. When I drive to or from the southern Sierra, I love to see the sinking Sierra foothills jut out of the Valley like surfacing whales. Someday I would like to try doing a photo essay on this beautiful local phenomenon. Somebody ought to!
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06.08.08
Posted in The Sink, San Joaquin Valley at 3:00 pm by Dan Jensen
THE CARP BECAME A NUISANCE TO THE CALIFORNIA FARMERS.
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 17.—Samuel Page, who owns a farm east of Hanford, states that the introduction of carp into the streams of the valley has fastened one of the worst curses on the irrigated section that the farmers have to contend with. Kings Rivers and the ditches flowing out of it furnish water for Lucerne Valley. Wherever the water goes the fish go, even into the small ditches which flow into the vineyards, orchards, or gardens.
Mr. Page states that the carp, being a species of sucker and having the mouth peculiar to that variety of fish, sucks the roots out of the banks out of the ditches, causing the banks to wash out. Their destructive operations are not confined to the small ditches, for Mr. Page states that he has seen places where the fish have eaten into the high banks on large ditches at least a foot. Mr. Page got rid of the fish in some of the small ditches, last year, by hauling soil strongly impregnated with alkali, of which there are a number of spots on his farm, and making ditch banks out of it. The fish would not touch alkali soil, and where the ditch was stopped at both ends the alkali leaked out into the water and killed off all the fish. He proposes hauling enough alkali soil next Spring to the ditch banks to keep the fish away from his ditches.
Besides hurting the banks the fish create a terrible stench in the ditches when water stops flowing in and the fish are left there to perish in the sun.
The New York Times, October 18, 1891
Note: Lucerne Valley is the old name of the Mussel Slough area, which includes present-day Hanford. There is a neighborhood named Lucerne just north of Hanford, where 10th and Flint Avenues cross.
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05.22.08
Posted in Background, San Joaquin Valley, Hockett Trail at 3:56 pm by Dan Jensen
Accounts vary as to the starting point of the Hockett Trail. Most reports have it that the trail started at Visalia, and some specify the Union Army fort in that town. Other sources report that it began at Hale Tharp’s ranch on Horse Creek, now under the high water line of Lake Kaweah. The likely explanation for these variations is that the trail did indeed begin in Visalia, particularly in light of the fact that the Union Army participated in its development, but that in 1862 no actual development work was needed below Horse Creek, thanks at least to Tharp himself, to say nothing of Valley traffic on the Jordan Trail, the Dennison Trail, and Butterfield’s Overland Stage route between Saint Louis and San Francisco.
The Overland Stage
As far as segmenting the trail is concerned, Horse Creek is probably not the best natural terminus for the first leg of the Hockett Trail. The best spot for an end to this initial segment is probably the gap between Limekiln Hill and Lemon Hill that forms a gateway between the Kaweah Delta and the Sierra.
There is some question as to what route the Hockett Trail took between Visalia and the Sierra, but it is most likely that the trail followed a route similar to the present-day path of Sierra Drive (State Route 198), given knowledge of the locations of area settlements and other trails in the early 1860s. The Jordan Trail, for instance, is known to have started near Rocky Hill, just south of Sierra Drive. One of the earliest settlements in Tulare County was probably a bit north of Sierra Drive, on one of the branches of the Kaweah River:
“The southern portion of Mariposa county so cut off, shall be called Tulare county. The seat of justice shall be at the log cabin on the south side of Kaweah creek, near the bridge built by Dr. Thomas Payne, and shall be called Woodsville …” — Act of the California Legislature, 1852
Woodsville, first settled in 1850, was in the neighborhood of the present-day Kaweah Oaks Preserve, seven or eight miles east of what would later become Visalia. This was the site of a historic massacre of white settlers by local “Kaweah” Indians in December 1850. From 1858, the stage road between Stockton and Los Angeles went through Woodsville. It seems it would have been silly for the Hockett Trail to miss Woodsville, though the Overland Stage was moved north to Placerville a year before construction on the Hockett Trail began. Knowing this, it seems quite likely that the Hockett Trail approached the Sierra south of the Kaweah River.
The best route to take today is therefore along Sierra Drive (SR 198). This takes us from downtown Visalia, directly past Kaweah Oaks Preserve and the site of Woodsville, and also directly past the Jordan Trail historic landmark at Yokohl. After passing over the easternmost branches of the delta, the route approaches the portion of the Sierra that appears to be sinking into the Valley, allegedly due to a convection cell in the mantle beneath Visalia. As one travels toward the hills, there are hills buried beneath ones feet.
Sierra Drive’s hillside approach continues to be the likely route of the old trail as it turns northeast toward Lindcove, Goodale, Citro, and Lemon Cove, inasmuch as keeping closer to the river would have meant encountering floods in Winter and Spring.
As the route leaves Lemon Cove, it’s likely that Sierra Drive strays from the original route by climbing the slope south of Lemon Hill, but we can’t exactly travel through the dam, so we stick to Sierra Drive.
See Exploring the Southern Sierra: West Side by Jenkins & Jenkins: Highway 198 Car Tour (T84).
©2008 Dan J. Jensen
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05.21.08
Posted in Background, San Joaquin Valley, Hockett Trail at 7:28 pm by Dan Jensen
Looking back millions upon millions of years ago to the tectonic events that gave birth to the San Andreas fault and California, earth scientists have been striving to determine what forces might have caused the southern Sierra Nevada to lose its root about 3.5 million years ago. It’s a good bet that a range of strange goings on in and around the southern Sierra has been caused by delamination of the subcrustal root of the Sierra: the further uplift of the southern Sierra, subsidence of another portion of the Sierra, tremors and volcanos, and who knows, maybe the 1969 Mets.
One particular event comes to mind: the supervolcanic eruption at Long Valley only 760,000 years ago. You may skeptically inquire, “only 760,000 years?” Bearing in mind that if that infamous supervolcanic explosion-implosion was caused by that splitting of the crust 3.5 million years ago, 760,000 years doesn’t sound like that much. It is as though the initial delamination occurred two weeks ago and a resulting supervolcano then occurred just three days ago.
I don’t mean to venture any conjecture about the probability of major eruptions at or near Long Valley in the immediate future, but rather, I wish to submit that whatever general process existed under the southern Sierra Nevada 760,000 years ago is likely to still be an active process. There’s likely to be something very big going on down there.
What was our first clue?
Perhaps our first clue was the abnormally thin crust under the Sierra.
Where is the crust at its thinnest? Curiously enough, the crust under the Sierra appears to be at its thinnest from around Mount Williamson south to Olancha Peak. This zone includes the highest peaks in the Sierra, and the Hockett Trail cuts right through the heart of it.
Then again, maybe our first clue was the abnormal activity detected in the mantle under Visalia.
The “mantle drip” cell that earth scientists have been investigating lately is thought to be centered approximately below Visalia, and the arc of its circumference cuts deeply into the western Sierra; deepest at the Hockett Plateau. Clearly then, the Hockett Trail cuts through the heart of this zone as well.
Then there’s that other clue: the subsidence that CalTech researchers have identified as roughly centered at the Kaweah Delta. Again, this is the domain of the Hockett Trail.
Oh, and one more thing: why does it appear that the western Sierra is rising west of the Kern Canyon Fault? Could recent activity along this fault, which the Hockett Trail follows from Trout Meadows to Golden Trout Creek, betray some tension caused by convection in the mantle west of that fault?
It seems like a lot is going on under Hockett country.
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05.20.08
Posted in Background, San Joaquin Valley, Hockett Trail at 7:56 pm by Dan Jensen
The trans-Sierra supply route of the Civil War period commonly known as the Hockett Trail was completed in 1862-63 for two functions:
- moving miners and supplies to and from mines in the Coso Range east of the Sierra.
- moving soldiers and their supplies to and from Fort Independence (AKA Camp Independence). This was primarily to defend and promote the interests of white settlers against local Indians.
The first function, the commercial reason for the trail, is the reason why the trail was named after the Visalia businessman John Hockett. For this same reason, the Hockett Trail may also rightly share the name “Coso Trail” with the Dennison and Jordan Trails.
The second, military function is the reason why it was also called the “Trail to Fort Independence”. Hockett and the Union Army worked together in developing the trail.
The Hockett Trail found other uses before it was even completed. It served as a route for discovering and accessing new Sierra peaks and valleys. Mineral King was discovered by a hunter on the Hockett Trail crew in 1862 (Hale Tharp later claimed to have visited Mineral King earlier, but even if he did his visit had no historical impact). Ranchers appear to have used the trail to move their livestock to the Hockett Plateau during the drought of 1863.
Though the Hockett Trail was the primary trail across the southern Sierra throughout the late 19th Century, it probably did not serve the Cerro Gordo mines, as they were not generally known until after the Hockett Trail lost much of its purpose as a supply route with the completion of the McFarlane toll road over Greenhorn Mountain in 1864, the opening of a stage service on that road in 1865, and the end of the Owens Valley Indian War in 1865.
The city of Los Angeles gained dominated trade with Cerro Gordo by 1868, and her geographic advantage over Visalia became clear. By 1905, as work on the Los Angeles Aqueduct began, Owens Valley was in practical terms within LA’s city limits.
The completion of Mineral King Road in 1879 diverted traffic away from the westernmost segment of the Hockett Trail, but it may have made the rest of the trail even more popular. The original Hockett Trail, often labeled the Trail to Fort Independence, can be seen skirting around the end of the Great Western Divide on area maps throughout Sequoia National Park’s first decade (the 1890s).
“The Hockett trail was made in early days, and to-day it remains a plain, well-blazed track from Lone Pine through to Visalia.” — Hubert Dyer, Sierra Club Bulletin, 1893
Mountaineering, golden trout, and the establishment of Sequoia National Park kept the trail popular into the 20th Century. The first people to climb Mount Whitney, America’s highest peak until 1959, were fisherman who used the Hockett Trail to get to the Kern River, and the Hockett route continues to give sport fisherman access to some of the most striking freshwater fish in the world.
©2008 Dan J. Jensen
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05.19.08
Posted in Background, San Joaquin Valley, Hockett Trail at 2:47 pm by Dan Jensen
Much of my childhood was spent in the towns of Hanford and Tulare, in a region once called the Tulare Basin, not far from the dry bed of Tulare Lake. This name “Tulare Basin” might have had more meaning before Tulare Lake was drained for wheat and cotton, but it’s still got that “basin” feel to it, or perhaps “sink” is a better word, with the way the heavier air settles down into it. It’s more than just the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley.
At about the time I became a teenager, I bicycled from Hanford to the brink of the Sierra Nevada, and watched the ghostly hills emerge one-by-one out of the Valley haze. I remember the sense of wonder in coming so close to something other than table-flat. I remember the soft, round foothills jutting suddenly out of the Valley floor like whales breaking the surface of a sea of orange groves.
There’s a remarkable story behind those whales that I had not heard about until quite recently.
I was taught in college that the earth’s crust is thicker under continents, and thickest under mountain ranges. Think of it as a characteristic of any floating object: the more that you see floating over the surface, the more there is under the surface; only there’s much more under the surface, as with an iceberg.
It turns out that this is not the case with the southern Sierra Nevada. This mountain range is more like a catamaran than a conventional boat. Under the highest portion of the Sierra, the crust is thinner than 30 km, and the crust doesn’t exceed 35 km in thickness under most of the crest of the High Sierra, as well as the Great Western Divide. All this is thinner than the crust is under Fresno.
The Sierra Nevada is hence thought to have lost its root. Layers under the range are thought to have separated, or “delaminated”. If this occurs to an iceberg, one would expect the iceberg to settle down into the water a bit, but that all depends on the relative density of the ice and the water. What happens when a mountain range looses its root? What happens if chunks of crust are dropped into the upper mantle? Some geologists appear to believe that delamination under the Sierra may have created a deep convection cell that led to even more uplift, and possibly an ancient supervolcano. What’s more, that convection cell appears to still be around, and very much alive.
Let’s take a conceptual hike. Start at Long Valley Caldera, where one of the world’s great volcanic events occurred
760,000 years ago. Walk across the Mammoth divide, past Devils Postpile National Monument, and down the San Joaquin River to Fresno. For much of your hike across the western slope of the Sierra, you will be waling over another anomaly: there is no clear boundary between the crust and mantle beneath your feet: you’re crossing the “Moho Hole”. You’re also walking over a gigantic “high-velocity drip” convection cell. In some areas, the convection cell presses up on the crust; in other places, pieces of the crust are dripping down into the mantle.
So what does all this have to do with whales?
Look at those whales east of Visalia, then look at the foothills along other parts of the western Sierra Nevada. The latter emerge gently from the plain, but the former shoot right out of the Valley floor like sinking ships, and that’s just it: they must be sinking, and there’s more than thirsty farms at work here. As they sink, sediments from Sierra streams settle in around them, burying the the foothills themselves. What we see, then, are not foothills but mountains.
The Tulare Basin is more than just a stagnant basin that happens to be adjacent to the Sierra Nevada: it is part of the Sierra, and not just because it sits on the low end of a great granitic incline. Likewise, the southern Sierra Nevada is much more than just a giant slab of granite. When realizations like these dawn upon us, so too are we reminded that science is more than an accumulation of knowledge: it’s a thing of beauty.
Don’t take my word for it, of course. No doubt I’ve read some of the science wrong. Read it for yourself and let me know what you think:
George Zandt, University of Arizona, 2003:
The Southern Sierra Nevada Drip and the Mantle Wind Direction …
George Zandt, Hersh Gilbert, Thomas J. Owens, Mihai Ducea, Jason Saleeby & Craig H. Jones, in Nature 432, 2004:
Active foundering of a continental arc root beneath the southern Sierra Nevada in California
Jason Saleeby and Zorka Foster, CalTech, 2004:
Topographic response to mantle lithosphere removal in the southern Sierra Nevada …
Elisabeth Nadin and Jason B. Saleeby, CalTech, 2005:
Recent Motion on the Kern Canyon Fault, Southern Sierra Nevada, California …
©2008 Dan J. Jensen
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11.13.07
Posted in Personal, The Sink, San Joaquin Valley at 10:58 pm by Dan Jensen
Sometimes I stop in Hanford or Tulare on my way to the Sierra Nevada, and look at my old homes, neighborhoods, and schools, trying not to raise the suspicions of the current residents.
Of all the kids I knew during my elementary school years, Chuck and Cora are among those I remember most.
Cora was known as a little sister of several football stars, two of whom went on to play in the National Football League. She wasn’t little, though—even in fourth grade. I remember her principally for her dominant presence wherever she went on campus, and her steely breasts which hovered out before her like two bodyguards. I don’t know whether she had any friends. A person would have to be pretty brave to approach her. I don’t think she was a bully, though.
Chuck was the star athlete at James Monroe Elementary School. He wasn’t quite the fastest runner on campus, but he was skilled in just about everything. His intense competitiveness was frightening, yet he was as fair in his dealings on the playground as any kid I knew. He was an angel to me, but of course it must be noted that I posed no competitive threat to him. There were times that, if it weren’t for intercession from Chuck, I wouldn’t have been permitted to play on either team in a given game. Sometimes, though, even the grace of Chuck wasn’t enough, for though I was put onto a team in say, kickball, I would usually mark the permanent end of every line. As a kid would take his or her turn and either run home or make out, he or she would inevitably consider the end of the line as the spot in front of me.
I didn’t keep in touch with Chuck, or any of my classmates. I remember seeing a two-page spread on Chuck in a sports magazine years later, and then several years later I heard on some late night show while crossing Nevada that he’d been forced out of the NFL after he hurt another player badly. I was surprised to read that Chuck had earned a reputation as an executioner, though I never doubted his competitiveness.
© 2007 Dan J. Jensen
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03.27.07
Posted in Background, San Joaquin Valley, Hockett Trail at 7:50 am by Dan Jensen
Sometimes creatures migrate onto the land, and sometimes the land creates its own. When the land creates its own, it does not do so arbitrarily. Every creature is an expression of its creator. Even the immigrants express the character of the land, it is sure, for the mere fact that they have found their place in the community is a reflection of the community, but no creatures express the character of the land quite like the natives.
Some lands, it turns out, are more creative than others. The secret to their creativity, so Charles Darwin discovered, is isolation.
The Pacific Coast is home to a familiar species of trout that is split into two subspecies; one, the steelhead, that lives at sea and spawns in the Pacific tributaries, and another, the rainbow, that lives an entirely landlocked, freshwater existence.
Pacific streams present varying degrees of isolation from the ocean. The Kern River is an extraordinary case, as its waters naturally reach the ocean only in Spring, when flows are high enough to escape the lakes of the Tulare Basin. When the Kern was a free river, it would flow into Kern Lake upon spilling into the Tulare Basin. If the river was high enough, Kern Lake would spill over into Buena Vista Lake. When Buena Vista Lake filled, it would overflow into Goose Lake, and the overflow would continue from there to Tulare Lake. When Tulare Lake overflowed, its excess waters would flood toward the San Joaquin.
At high flows, fish had an opportunity to migrate up and down the basin waterways, but the waterways would dry quickly, and the lakes would recede and even dry as summer and autumn progressed. The basin streams that flowed directly from the Sierra Nevada, the Kings, Kaweah, Tule, etc., were not as isolated as the Kern, because their path to the sea was only impeded by the ample waters of Tulare Lake and their own intermittent character. A fish that ascended up the Kern from Tulare Lake, on the other hand, would have a much longer journey through a chain three smaller, intermittent sinks.
Once fish got above Kern Lake, the river might be perennial, but the Sierra would present its own obstacles. The falls and cascades dropping off the Kern Plateau were the final barrier. Beyond that barrier live the California golden trout.
The domains of the three varieties of golden trout consist of four streams, from west to east: the Little Kern, the Big Kern, Golden Trout Creek, and the South Fork Kern. The Little Kern subspecies is the most endangered, and perhaps the most visually striking. The Big Kern subspecies is relatively indistinct from other rainbow trout, and is thus a rainbow trout by name. The remaining subspecies, the California Golden Trout, inhabits the two adjacent streams, Golden Trout Creek and the South Fork Kern, is perhaps the purest example of golden trout.
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02.21.07
Posted in Personal, The Sink, San Joaquin Valley at 3:53 pm by Dan Jensen
After Visalia, Grangeville may have been the first town in the Sink. It was a stage stop between Visalia and Stockton, and a center of industry—one might say, as the irrigation systems that make the Central Valley what it is today were just beginning. Even the famous naturalist John Muir had stopped in Grangeville to admire the innovative network of canals in 1875, when Grangeville was booming with a population of 600. That was before the Southern Pacific Railroad bypassed Grangeville and thereby doomed it to obscurity.
Before irrigation and other initiatives, the Grangeville area was a harsh place to farm. Salinity, dust storms, and wild cattle and pigs made for unending frustration. The Last Chance and Peoples’ Ditch Companies were formed in 1873 to bring Kings River water to the Grangeville area, and the town itself was organized in 1874.
We lived in the town that the Southern Pacific Railroad created just east of Grangeville. That railroad town would be named Hanford, though there was nothing to ford at Hanford but the Peoples Ditch and the Southern Pacific.
I was given a tour of the canal system one summer when my older brother Al came to Hanford for a visit after returning from Alaska. He purchased an inflatable raft, and invited me on an expedition down the River from Laton to Excelsior Avenue.
As we floated downstream, the river began to look less and less like a river, and more like a canal. Just after we passed what I later determined was the Lower Kings River Ditch diversion, our way was obstructed by a dam on the river—and just by a lucky chance—an angry farmer. Al had to pull the raft out of the river and carry it down a dirt road to a point downstream where we could get back in the water. We finally reached Excelsior Avenue, where Al’s wife Sanna picked us up.
© 2007, 2008 Dan J. Jensen
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02.15.07
Posted in Personal, The Sink, San Joaquin Valley at 8:44 pm by Dan Jensen
When we arrived, the Sink was a hot, arid place, and it only seemed to become more so as Spring burned into Summer. Autumn, though, was a temperate season right from the equinox. It did not offer the freshness and youth of Spring, but it offered something equally consoling: the peace of gradual decline; that comfort of the old which the young cannot conceive.
Autumn, though, did not endure more than five or six weeks. It happened that the close of October, marked in a child’s mind by the annual festival of Halloween, represented a transformation in the Sink, as it does in a similar manner throughout California.
Halloween is said to have once been a Celtic New Year’s Eve festival. I don’t know why the Celts chose the close of October to be the close of the year, but it comes naturally enough to Californians, for it is usually soon after Halloween that the winter rains arrive.
We say winter rains, but what one feels if one walks in the midst of the meadows is the conception of a new cycle of life. The reclined rays of sunlight and cooler weather are no threat to life. There is light and warmth enough, but what is in dire need, and what has been utterly nonexistent for six months, is water. November, then, may not be the favorite month of the Sun worshipper, but the meadows love November. This is when the embryo is planted in the womb of California. By bleak January, the hills will have transformed from the dull, grayish brown of death to the bright greens of rebirth.
The October air is polluted with the exhaust of the year. We blame the cars, the farmers, and the great cities for the suffocating soup that masquerades as air, and we are justified in part, but it is also true that the Sink has always collected the exhaust of the year. Man did not invent fire; certainly not in this land of fire.
But come November the exhaust of the old year is washed away, and puddles of it lay scattered about the Sink bottoms. I looked out that first morning of the year, and walked out and smelled the strange mix of dust and chemical and humidity; it was foreign. It was refreshing to breathe again.
© 2007 Dan J. Jensen
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