#trinity divide

By the time you read this the midterm elections of 2018 will be history. Whatever course the midterms take Congress will have returned to do the business of the people. In 1964 Congress earmarked monies to the ‘Land and Water Conservation Fund’. These monies were derived from the revenues from offshore energy exploration and were used to purchase land for public access, recreation, cultural preservation and healthy communities. Nearly 23,000 acres have been acquired along the PCT since 2001 at a cost of about 36 million dollars. The Land and Water Conservation Fund is in its 53rd year of conservation and recreation success. It is because of Teddy Roosevelt's vision to start protecting our recreational opportunities, Dwight D. Eisenhower’s instinct for conservation action, John F. Kennedy's commitment to the outdoors, and Lyndon B. Johnson's creation of LWCF that we as Americans now have the most extensive network of open spaces in the world.

The LWCF is a linchpin in protecting the last 10 percent of trail that remains on private property. These private holdings such as the Tejon Ranch in southern California, a prime example of why keeping the flow of funds coming so lands  can either be bought or  access to them otherwise mitigated in a reasonable fashion. 

Unfortunately the LWCF expired on September 30, 2018. Congress failed to vote on this crucial funding source. Specifically partnerships between the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and willing sellers have enabled purchases to be made that have greatly improved the PCT. Among the examples of this work are pieces of land near Stevens Pass, Washington, Trinity Divide, California, and potential trail rerouting near Agua Dulce, California. In fact the Land and Water Conservation Fund has supported efforts in every state not just California, Oregon, and Washington so the impact goes far beyond the PCT. 

During this time when some significant protections for stretches of the PCT remain under threat (e.g., Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument), there was welcome news recently about the protection of the Trinity Divide, east of Castle Crags in Northern California.  This is a really big deal and those partners in this process who worked long and hard on our behalf, deserve our gratitude. Thank you!

by Megan Wargo, Pacific Crest Trail Association

The Trust for Public Land and the Pacific Crest Trail Association announced the historic conservation of more than 10,300 acres along Northern California’s Trinity Divide in the Klamath and Shasta-Trinity national forests, protecting 17 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail and securing one of the largest privately-owned segments along the trail.

This acquisition secured a protected corridor for the PCT along 30 miles of the trail, 17 of which previously crossed private property on a narrow right-of-way easement.

In June, a significant step forward was achieved in the goal to permanently protect the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail (PCT) with the $15 million acquisition of the 10,300-acre Trinity Divide project in Northern California.

This major land protection accomplishment is the result of an extraordinary five-year combined effort that included the Pacific Crest Trail Association, the Trust for Public Land, the Michigan-California Timber Company, the U.S. Forest Service, and the surrounding local communities. Thanks to this partnership, a total of 17 once private miles of the PCT are now in public ownership.

Porcupine Lake, a little gem high on the Trinity Divide

Ed "Eeyore" Jarrett is currently southbound from Seiad Valley to Donner Pass and then will flip up to Washington and hit Rainy Pass to Stevens Pass toward the end of August. This is a submission from the trail. Check out Ed's blog: http://aclayjar.blogspot.com/

We have posted Ed's writing before and hope we will again. We have had stories about marauding bears, salt-starved deer, killer toads, aggressive rattlesnakes . . . but never, until now, gnats.  

I hiked through the Castle Crags area in northern California last night and this morning.  The Crags are pretty awesome and the surrounding Trinity Alps mountains were pretty cool to walk around in.  But as the trail descended towards the trail head at I-5 I had an encounter, or series of encounters, that took my mind completely off the beauty that surrounded me.

I had expected that identifying and avoiding poison oak would be the biggest challenge on the way down.  But not even close.  Trying to stay sane while hiking through gnat swarms became my biggest problem.  It's not as though there were millions of them, or even thousands.  But for about 10 miles they were a pretty constant companion.  I lost track of how many gnats with a death wish I spit out or swallowed.  And I know I hit at least a hundred while fanning the air in front of my face.

Now a gnat weighs about a milligram.  And there are 1000 milligrams in a gram, 454,000 milligrams in a pound, and 79,450,000 milligrams in me.  That means that I am 79,450,000 times bigger than a gnat.  So why should a gnat, or even a dozen gnats swarming around my face bother me?  It's not as though they could carry me away or drain me of all my blood.  I can't even recall feeling a gnat bite before.

But after 10 miles, or nearly 5 hours, of these little critters dancing around in front of my face looking for opportunities to be ingested or inhaled, or just to take a bath in the sweat streaming down my face, I was ready to flee screaming down the trail.  Every time I would let down my guard to concentrate on hopping across the rocks in a stream, they would take advantage of the opportunity and attack in renewed numbers.  When the poison oak was thickest on the trails edges, they were there to distract me.  I kept telling myself "they have no brain; they are not out to get me".  But it was a losing cause.  I was slowly but surely going insane.