Bowman Road Exploration

On Saturday drove up to Bowman Road off of highway 20 to explore. I could see that from 80, most of the snow had melted. At the Yuba River crossing, there was a sign for the Pioneer Trail so that's what we took. This segment connects with a trail to Spaulding Lake, although we didn't make it that far.

I didn't even take my snow shoes because the ground was so clear. The trail is relatively level, paralleling the river, with a few minor up and down switch backs. Some pretty big boulders had rolled down onto the trail and someone with a strong back and a lever is going to have fun shifting them.

Perhaps 1/2 mile along, there's a big meadow and there was an interesting sight. At the edge of the meadow there are about 10 pine saplings with the tops torn off. I'm going to guess bear, but I considered beaver and a buck scratching it's horns. I thought beaver would be tidier and would have taken the tops down. I thought if a buck had been scratching velvet I would have seen lots of damage on the ground from hooves and perhaps quite a few broken and bent branches. I picked bear because whatever did it had a LOT of strength. It looks like the tops were bent over repeatedly and violently. At least 2 of the trees were too big to wrap a human hand around. Also, a couple of the trees had dead needles although most were still green so it looks like it happened over time. Still, with the bear theory, I would have liked to see some bite or claw marks and I didn't see any damage other than where the trees were ripped apart. Except for one tree, the tops were just left where they lay. I'm not sure what would motivate the bear either. I picture them mainly eating and none of the trees looked eaten. Perhaps violent butt scratching?

I decided that humans would have used tools, possibly burnt the wood, and left trash around. Take a look at the picture and see what you think.

We stopped shortly after crossing a lively creek and then headed back. This is a good trail for early, early spring and late, late fall because the summer crowds are gone. We only saw one other hiker along the trail.

On Sunday we drove up to the other end of the trail (near Fuller Lake) and headed out. This time I took snow shoes because there was a lot of snow on the ground still in spite of the bare dirt patches.

I was glad to have them because some of the hills were steep and icy. I didn't take the official trail because no one had gone before and the snow was deep and unmarked. The weather was bad and I didn't want to get into any trouble.

We headed where snow mobiles had gone and ended up at a water pumping station taking water from (presumably) Fuller to Spaulding. I forced Commando to walk on a thoughtfully provided metal walkway and he didn't enjoy it. Once he made it to the rodent land beyond he was much happier.

Both days were cold and windy. Saturday was sunny but Sunday was gloomy and overcast.