California - October 2022

[Vaughn]

The tallest tree ever discovered was actually atop a ridge not far behind me here. ...

That is very questionable -- many in the Redwood Creek drainage were more likely to top any redwoods found south -- and purposefully not measured, though easily done once they were put horizontally. When companies were fighting the Nat Park expansion in the 70s, they preferred not to let the world know they were actively finding and cutting down the tallest living things in the world at the same time.

Coastal Redwoods do not mind soil compaction around their roots. Some compaction is actually helpful. Unlike most tree species, including the Sierra redwoods, coastal redwoods do not have root hairs. Root hairs significantly increase the surface area available for the absorption of water and minerals. The compacting of the soil around the hairless roots increases contact and maximizes the aborption of water. It is why as one drives along the Avenue of the Giants and other roads through the Redwood Parks, on finds redwoods doing quite well with roads going over their root systems -- which extends out 100's of feet from the trunk -- not much downwards. It is also why coastal redwoods can survive massive flooding and the depositing of feet of soil around them.

[Tin Can]

We had huge trees in MN, WI, MI and more

but we cut them all, every one

Where I live we now have good forest after after the clearcut, as the CCC replanted

My yard trees are frightening big and shed killer branches, I trimmed some with $$$

[Bernice Loui]

From a previous LFF discussion on SF to Monterey.
https://www.largeformatphotography.i...nterey-10-Days

IMO, places like Yosemite and such are very popular, due to their popularity often packed with tourist-visitors.
Consider this Mark Tansey painting.
https://www.largeformatphotography.i...light=Yosemite

Keep in mind the humaniod density of California has GREATLY increased from three decades ago. Places that were once seldom visited or known can now be packed with humanoids.

Add to this issues, Oct has some of the hottest weather of the year in CA, currently triple digit temperature warnings for much of CA this first of September ... and there remains serious water shortage issues.. This is NOT a "Drought" this is the way water supplies will be going forward.

About two years ago, Coastside CA had this "significant" fire.. those areas are still deep in the recovery process.

HWY. 1, near Pescadaro CA.




Bernice

Hello everyone - after a few years away, I am beginning to get back into LF photography now that I have retired. My wife and I have a few days in San Francisco in mid-October, mainly to help her sister in moving house, but we should be able to find 4-5 days to head off and do something within a reasonable drive of SF. The focus would not be exclusively photography - I'd like to do some interesting hikes, not necessarily in the most well-known places, but with some photographic potential.

First thoughts are;

- Yosemite - but I'm not sure if it will still be very busy in mid-October, and whether the recent fire in Wawona is still causing problems
- Mono Lake / High Sierra - if this is viable, what would you recommend in terms of hikes, and places to stay
- Monterey / Point Lobos - OK, mainly as a homage to Edward Weston, but this might be a bit easier to organise, and be a little more relaxed than Yosemite or the High Sierra?

I've realised that I was last in California about 30 years ago, so need some guidance! Do any of the above make sense? What would you do, and what alternatives would you recommend?

Many thanks in advance,

David

[Vaughn]

The European colonists arrived in North America to find a heavily managed landscape, not a wilderness. The Frontier that the colonists bravely set off West into was already someone else's backyard.

While I was brought up with the concept of 'wilderness' and enjoy the solitude of vast areas without other humans, I realize that our Western concept of 'wilderness' over the last couple of Centuries shows a lot of cultural bias and wishful thinking. And I was a wilderness ranger for a decade in charge of a section of a wilderness. With recent fires and with no budget for trail work since I left the job in 1990, I have to admit that the Yolla Bollys are closer to a 'true' wilderness than when I worked my crew and my ass off for 10 years getting the trails up to 100%.

But at the same time the area was heavily grazed by sheep and cattle in the early 1900s, which significantly altered the ground cover, which affects oak and other hardwood regeneration and caused 'erosion pavement' on the ridges. Increased erosion coupled by a massive flood in 1964, drought, strong fishing pressure in the Pacific and poaching in the river below and in the wilderness has decreased the steelhead run into the wilderness. The pre-white natives used the 'wilderness' for summer villages and such...so it has not been untouched empty land for tens of millenia at a minimum.

[Drew Wiley]

It's a well-known fact, Vaughn. The marker is still up there on Grizzly Peak. Those entire hills were solid old growth redwoods, and there was plenty of fog to sustain them. Every single one in those hills was cut down to supply the burgeoning demand of SF as well as the trend in "woodsy" East Bay architecture. It's amazing the kind of old growth redwood you can find in pre-War houses and University related buildings, even ribbon pattern. No amount of money could buy that now.

As far as aboriginal uses of the land goes, that was a specialty field of mine going clear back to at least 18,000 yrs ago. All kinds of ecological changes. Management by fire was routine at lower elevation for centuries. To keep their meadows and trail clear for travel and deer forage, they'd stash certain belongings under rocks and light things up at the end of Spring just before relocating to higher altitude for summer. That transmigrational pattern was standard even during warm intervals before the close of the Ice Age. But its footprint was comparatively quite small. It's the Gold Rush which brought drastic change. And yeah, I'd find very ancient dart points way up on remote high passes and even peaks; but there were certain areas nobody got into prior to modern times. The Chinese sheepherders were among the first. For example, probably nobody has been crazy enough to use "Tunemah Pass" since them - the very term itself is thought to be an expletive so vile as to be uninterpretable.

Bernice - it wasn't too many years ago I hiked in Yosemite for 12 days without encountering anyone else for a week of that; in major basins, not even evidence of others being there except for ancient obsidian chips left by bighorn sheep hunters. Of course, a few climbers and so forth do go through such places from time to time, but so seldom that the odds of meeting one are slim indeed. That's been my experience many trips in a row in the high Sierra - in the most populated State in the country. Even within the bounds of Yosemite NP, 98% of the people go to only 10% of the area. Glad I've been able to explore beyond that small footprint while I still could. But pretty much anywhere I've learned that it's easy to get away from the herd just paces away from popular trails and highways themselves. Everybody else seem in a hurry to get to the same location as everyone else.

I myself grew up right next to a canyon system almost never entered by anyone, despite massive hydroelectric development both upstream and downstream. Sure, a few miners had gone in, and I only one elderly Indian who ever claimed to have do so, then it was just me and my buddies until whitewater types eventually navigated it their own way. No, it's never been classified as official wilderness like portions of the high country, but is more defacto self-preserved wilderness unless another damn dam or two goes up - just too steep and rugged for past Indian occupation. They did have numerous hamlets up above it, or in the more accessible portions of the River.

Randy - we have trees with branches way high up them bigger in girth than most old tree trunks themselves anywhere else on earth, the oldest trees ever discovered too (which aren't big).

[Willie]

Drew wrote: "As far as aboriginal uses of the land goes, that was a specialty field of mine going clear back to at least 18,000 yrs ago."

Just how old are you, really?

[MAubrey]

Drew wrote: "As far as aboriginal uses of the land goes, that was a specialty field of mine going clear back to at least 18,000 yrs ago."

Just how old are you, really?

At least old enough to read a few books!

[Drew Wiley]

Hard research. Real deal, digging and dental pick style, well before the "books" even dared propose that kind of timeline. Now it looks like there's hard evidence going back even further, to about 22,000 yrs ago. Another "heresy" was me claiming the peopling of North America was mainly down the coast in light vessels rather than merely by some alleged Alley Oop types blundering down between continental ice sheets randomly following mammoths and mastodons. Now the coastal "kelp highway" explanation is not only mainstream, but there's a least one major smoking gun discovery, which in fact was already discovered 70 yrs ago and then forgotten due to that particular researcher being the timeline heretic of his own era.

But aren't you visiting Missouri, Willie? I've heard there's a museum in Branson Mo. with the mummy of Lawrence Welk about that old.

[jmontague]

If you are in the SF area, spend a day on Mt. Tamalpais, just over the Golden Gate Bridge. You can visit Muir Woods (Redwoods galore), open grassy areas, Stinson and Muir Beaches, grand views of the whole Bay Area…. Special place.

[Vaughn]

Saw a fun meme that said there are records of ancient Egyptian archeologists studying ancient Egyptian monuments.

According to Geologist Richard Waitt of the U.S. Geological Survey (1985), the various limits on the ice sheet and the floods suggests that Glacial Lake Missoula existed for 2,000 to 2,500 years between 15,300 and 12,700 years ago, creating more than 40 and maybe up towards 60 separate flood events.

These floods put the Portland, OR under up to 400 feet of water -- a heck of a time to be coming down the coast in small boats. The coast being quite a bit further out from what it is now due to water tied up in glaciers. If semi evenly spaced, that is only 40 or 50 years between floods. Must have been barren uninviting land for a long time after, too. "Don't linger here" written all over it. How many generations would it take to return to such a place? Interesting...

Still signs of the 1964 Floods up here in Humboldt County. But in the 50 years I have lived up here, the high water marks on the Eel River Valley redwoods are slowly disappearing...once very obvious, 10 to 15 feet above ones head.