Faye-Luther Trail System

The grant from Alpine County’s Resource Allocation Committee is with the USFS for final processing after which the funds will be available to complete the studies.  The Poop Patrol has made tremendous strides in getting dog owners to clean up after their dogs. The trail is much more pleasant to hike on. 

Job’s Peak Ranch Trail

Douglas County received trail easement from the Job Peak Ranch development. The 15-foot easement has been staked by the county’s contractor. CVTA has started construction of the trail and hopes to have it open to the public in spring 2006 (see Phil Brisack’s article). Gaining this public access is a giant milestone for the CVTA, taking over eight years and many hours by our officers and board members.  

River Fork Ranch

On June 4^th At Walley’s Resort, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) gave a briefing on the plans for the River Fork Ranch near Genoa.  More detail on the briefing is included in River Fork's Ranch Plans article. CVTA is an active partner in this project.

Committee Reports

Trails Access
By Mary Bennington, VP Trail Access  

No major developments are on the horizon affecting the community’s access to the surrounding public lands.  However, Douglas County is working on the 10-year Master Plan update.  I encourage everyone to attend their community meeting and see what the County Community Development Department has on their radar screen for your neighborhood.  Please check the Record-Courier for upcoming meeting dates.

In other news, I had the opportunity to be a guest speaker for the Douglas County Leadership class tour of the Carson Valley on June 21, 2005.  I gave an overview of the history of CVTA, the Comprehensive Trails Plan and current projects.  We made a stop at the Faye-Luther Trailhead and took a short walk up the trail discussing trail maintenance issues including the Doggie Bag Dispenser.  Many of the class were very interested in the work of CVTA and some have recently joined as members.

Trail Operations
By Phil Brisack, VP Trail Operations

The Jobs Peak Ranch Trail construction is well underway.  The construction started with an Eagle Scout project led by Peter Mazza of Reno in June.  His group constructed 1,250 feet of trail and was assisted by crew leaders from the Tahoe Rim Trail Association.  Additional flagging was put in place, and Mike Beam, a supervisor at China Springs Youth Camp and Tahoe Rim Trail crew leader, is continuing the construction with six to eight young men from the camp.  The riparian areas that need to be crossed are still under design and will take more time and skilled help to finish.  Mike’s group will build to the riparian areas.  The remaining trail to be completed will be in the tree line, so it should not be so hot for the volunteers.  We will schedule several days to finish construction on the tread in September or October, depending on riparian area completion.  We look forward to including all those who have signed up or inquired about trail construction and will notify all by e-mail or phone.

Trail Awareness
By Richard Morissette, VP Trail Awareness

The Trails Awareness Committee (TAC) continues to publicize CVTA activities in the local press and through public presentations. It also organizes trail events and on June 4^th the TAC team put on National Trails Day at the  River Fork Ranch in partnership with the Tahoe Rim Trail Association and The Nature Conservancy. The CVTA website is on the web at the address shown in the newsletter heading.  

The TAC continues work toward providing guided hikes and, starting with this newsletter, TAC will be providing information on local hikes for those who want to just take a hike (see article by Terri Sutor).

Welcome New Members and Supporters

Bill & Cris Banker
Debbie & Michael Beam
Howard & Joan Morris
Jeff & Christine Vuletich
William Weik

Eagle Creek Trail
By Terri Sutor  

For those of you who would love to see lots of wildflowers at this time of year when the snow still covers the high Sierra, I highly recommend this delightful trail in the Hoover Wilderness near Bridgeport .  A small group of us hiked into this area on July 7^th, and we were thrilled with the huge assortment of summer flora along the way.  Many of the popular species greeted us, especially thousands of yellow mule ears and purple lupine.  We also walked  past Indian Paintbrush, Ceanothus, Corn Lilies, Sego or Mariposa Liles, Yellow Monkey Flowers, Larkspur, Western Wallflower, Bluebonnets, Scarlet Penstemons, sulphur plants, wild onions, and daisies!!!  You may even spot more! Take your camera and enjoy!  (Unfortunately, not one of us had one.)  

The trailhead can be reached by driving south on 395 toward Bridgeport.  Once you pass Devil’s Gate Pass proceed 7.7 miles to the Buckeye Road turnoff on the right.  This is a dirt washboard road in places, however all vehicles can negotiate it with caution and care.  Drive in 6 miles following the signs to the Buckeye Campground at 7300 ft. elevation.   Go through the campground to the far end where you will meet a trailhead parking lot.  (Water, toilets and tables are available, for this was previously a group campsite.)  Park and begin the hike by walking down the main road, pass through two unlocked gates (a stretch of private property) and continue a short distance until encountering the Eagle Creek Trail sign on the left.  The path is an abandoned road that starts climbing right off the bat.  Rushing, voluminous Eagle Creek will be seen and heard in about 15 minutes from the start.  This follows for a distance of  1.7 miles when one reaches a dilapidated, demolished bridge which was once used as a creek crossing. (This was an excellent and very pleasant early lunch stop for us.)  

Do not cross here but look to your right for a single track which takes off up the hill.  Follow this narrow trail in as far as you choose.  We hiked  to a good sized creek crossing for a total of 4 miles before calling it quits, turning around and marching back to our vehicles. However, one could continue on to climb Eagle Peak, 11,845 ft., Victoria Peak, 11,732 ft. and Robinson at 10,906.  The sky’s the limit!  (We passed one lone hiker who had just climbed Eagle Peak. He claimed that the view from the saddle below Eagle was awesome and we ought to try it someday!)  

Our total hiking time (at a leisurely pace) was 7 hours with an approximate elevation gain of 1900 ft.   This, coupled with at least an hour and a half driving time from Minden (barring road construction stops), makes for a long day, but oh so worth while!  An extra attraction is an unimproved hot springs on the river which is found down a steep bank from the dirt road, .5 mile east of the campground.  Try it, you’ll like it!    

P.S. An excellent map of the area is Hoover Wilderness from the U.S.D.A. Forest Service.  A
15- inch topo is Matterhorn Peak.

Faye Luther Canyon Trees
By Charles Campbell

The first tree found on the trail is a Jeffrey Pine (Pinus jeffreyi).  Easy to spot and identify, the Jeffrey has three needles to a bundle, 8 to 12 inches long and blue-green in color.  Large cones are 6 to 10 inches in length with prickles pointing down and in.  The cones are the easiest way to distinguish a Jeffrey from its close relative, the Ponderosa, which can be found higher up the trail.  Remember:  Ponderosa prickly, Jeffrey smooth, and you will seldom go wrong.

The Jeffrey is a very interesting tree, one that I could write many pages on.  First, it is big.  I measured the first tree on the trail using my Idiotoscope and found it to be 70 feet tall and 10 feet in circumference at 5 feet off the ground.  This is a smallish tree compared to a mature Jeffrey that can go 200 feet and over 17 feet in circumference.   A tree this size in old growth forest would have been around a thousand years old.  Now, if you could find a tree near that size, it might be only 500 years old.  The bark starts off green colored in young trees and turns dark and furrowed around 40 – 70 years old with thick pinkish brown plates on mature trees.  There is a distinct odor found in the bark of mature trees.  Some say vanilla, others say butterscotch or pineapple.

The sap or pitch gets really interesting.  All pines have terpenes in the sap, a natural source of turpentine which is obtained by putting sap in a still and boiling off the light oils.  A Jeffrey is different.  Its sap contains heptane, a volatile chemical in the same family as butane and propane.  You can imagine the results when pioneers, new to the west, tried to make turpentine using Jeffrey pines.  Which leads us to another feature.  When a fire starts up the trunk of a Jeffrey, the burning bark explodes and a layer of bark is blown away from the tree.  If the fire is a normal quick moving ground fire, unlike the fires of today, the tree is saved.

One last interesting fact.  In the very early days of the auto industry, gasoline was pretty crude.  It might be as thick as kerosene or thin as alcohol.  Many cars ran better on gin than they did on gas. The industry needed a standard and it was the Jeffrey pine that supplied it.  Remember heptane?  They took the heptane from the Jeffrey, somehow renamed it octane and it became the gold standard that gasoline has been measured by to this day.  In the beginning, gas usually ran between 10 and 15 octane.  Now, it runs close to 90.

There is a sad twist to this tale.  Around LA, the auto capitol of the world, the Jeffrey is dead or dying.  The Jeffrey pine, which helped spawn the auto industry, is deathly allergic to auto exhaust pollution.

Construction Begins on Job's Peak Ranch Trail
Article and photos by Richard Morissette

Boy Scout Troup #15 from South Reno made history on Thursday, June 16th, 2005. Fourteen scouts broke ground for the first joint effort between Douglas County and the Carson Valley Trails Association (CVTA) to build a trail on a private land easement in the county. The scouts were assisted by parents, friends, and experienced trail crew leaders from the Tahoe Rim Trail Association (TRTA). The project was part of Peter Mazza's Eagle Scout project that did a great job organizing and implementing the effort. Peter, who completed the 2-day TRTA trail builder training the previous weekend, gave the orientation and safety talk to the 28 volunteers at the start of the workday and managed the effort throughout the day. His mother, grandmother, and other helpers provided water, fruit, and snacks on the trail followed by lunch for everyone in the temporary parking area.

You could feel the excitement in the air when the group reached the county's first survey stake marking the centerline of the 15-foot trail easement. The 6-foot stake was in the middle of a field of sagebrush, bitterbrush, and other assorted vegetation that needed to be cleared with hand tools on loan from the TRTA. The enthusiastic group split into work parties led by TRTA crew leaders. Each party worked along the easement marked with flags between the county's survey stakes. The first groups cleared a 4-foot path through the heavy brush followed by a second group that trimmed the vegetation on each side and laid a 2-foot wide trail thread. The day's excitement peaked when a 4-foot  bull snake crawled out as the scouts were clearing of an old trash pile and slithered pass the feet of a couple very startled scouts.

Phil Brisack, VP of CVTA's Trail Operations, stated at the end of the workday "What a wonderful start to this project!  The Boy Scout troop from Reno was enthusiastic and worked very hard, following directions from the Tahoe Rim Trail Crew Leaders.  I had expected to build 400 to 500 feet of trail at best, but we ended the day having finished 1,250 feet of trail." Completion of the trail is expected by Spring 2006, and Phil is planning other workdays where the public can participate this summer and fall. Announcements will be placed in the newspaper, and anyone wanting to volunteer with trail construction can contact him at 265-7264.