Tag Archives: trout
Valley to Valley
Here’s a tribute to Hockett country that I recently threw together, to the music of U2′s song “Elevation”. Yes, we take the song quite literally, as it serves our present purposes.
A Hockett Trail Guide: 10. South Fork Kern
At Tunnel or “Chickenfoot” junction we enter the domain of a slightly different subspecies of golden trout native to the South Fork Kern. This junction was once known as the turnoff to Mount Whitney, but today it is better known as the boundary of two very special watersheds; a boundary that was once infamously compromised [...]
A Hockett Trail Guide: 9. Golden Trout Creek
From here we head up the second native golden trout stream along the Hockett Trail, Golden Trout Creek. The original Hockett Trail was without bridges. Its strategy for crossing the Kern River—the river that drowned John Jordan in 1862—was to follow the river upstream to a broad ford above two major tributaries: Coyote Creek, and [...]
A Hockett Trail Guide: 7. Little Kern Valley
Here, near the headwaters of the Little Kern, is where the Golden Trout leg of the Hockett Trail begins, and the native country of my favorite variety of golden trout. Ladies and gentlemen, present … fly rods! … or just sit by the stream and enjoy the show. The Little Kern descends quickly, then levels [...]
A Hockett Trail Guide: 6. The Western Divide
After crossing Hunter Creek, the incline increases as the Hockett Trail leaves the Hockett Plateau for the Western Divide. After ascending 850 feet, the trail reaches a ridgecrest that might deceive a traveler into thinking he’s reached the top, but he has another 300-foot climb ahead. All-in-all, it’s not a difficult ascent to the divide [...]
A Hockett Trail Guide: 4. Ladybug vs. Garfield
Clough Cave is not the only cave in the South Fork area. There are four that I have heard of, one of which was discovered in 2006 and featured in National Geographic. Hundreds of such caves occur in marble outcrops which appear in the Sierra’s eroding meta-sedimentary shell. There are at least a half dozen [...]
The Golden Trout Trail
The Hockett Trail was first chosen for its efficacy as a trans-Sierra route, and specifically chosen by the Union Army for its usefulness as a trail between forts in Visalia and the Owens Valley. Coincidentally, or perhaps not so coincidentally, the route of that old trail also traces the native range of California’s distinctive sport [...]
The Early Hockett Trail
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 [...]
The Independence Trail
The southernmost 12,000-foot peak in the Sierra Nevada is Olancha Peak, also the southernmost 11,000-foot peak, and one of the three southernmost 10,000-foot peaks of the range. At this latitude, the Sierra has a nearly perfect north-south orientation. The three divides, the Western Divide, the Great Western Divide, and the Sierra Crest, each have their [...]
Sierra del Fuego
The southern Sierra, from the headwaters of the Kern River in Sequoia National Park southward to the sweep of the Kern River into the far southern extreme of the Tulare Basin, is morphologically dominated by a single seismic fault that splits the range into western and eastern legs, and gives the range a southerly slope [...]