Saved by a gold prospector on Saddleback Mountain!
We were on a dirt road from Downieville to La Porte, going steeply downhill. It was okay but getting sketchy in some places with our tires without knobbies. Good enough to keep going but bad enough that we were getting a bit worried about being able to go back up the hill if needed. The bottom of the ravine and Canyon Creek was not too far away when we met a guy (first person we met on the whole morning) on an ATV with aggressive tires. He told us that he was doing round trips from his car up the hill to the creek where he intended to spend a full month prospecting gold.
He told us that the climb on the other side of the creek had become very rough with recent washouts and that he didn’t think that we could do it with our big bikes. Nicolas needed to go back to San Francisco that evening and this place is so remote that we decided to backtrack (always a tough decision for me :) before risking getting stuck at the bottom for hours or days.
So beautiful with all these wild flowers!
This Ponderosa Pine tree has a diameter of about six feet, the largest of any tree in the Plumas National Forest.
Seneca : Gold was found in 1851 and a wild mining town was born with a dance hall, feed store, livery, blacksmith, post office, grocery, rooming houses and a hotel with solar heated showers. The canyon's mine included the Sunnyside, Lucky Chance, White Lily, and Last Chance. A 10 stamp mill pounded out the ore. One mine had 500 Chinese miners; each earned 10 cents a day in rice and they had an opium den. The largest nugget found here was 42 ounces; worth $28,000 in 1942. The most famous spot was the gin mill run by Marie Sabin who moved here in 1934 with her husband Don. Marie was known as the guardian angel of Seneca.
Trail encounters
Beautiful place for a break
I usually manage to find snow in my motorcycle trips :)
Lassen Volcanic National Park
Lassen Volcanic National Park
