No tick snowshoe

Jodi's cabin was available for a brief two days so Commando and I headed up on Wednesday. We unloaded and then drove around looking for likely places to showshoe. We finally settled on Billie Mack road, at the Donner Lake exit on 80. Many snowmobiles had blazed a nice trail along the stream and we enjoyed the final hour of daylight snowshoeing up and back.

The cabin was nice and warm with the brand new propane heater and we slept great!

The next day we lazed around and took a brief morning walk with coffee. Commando played with a young champagne colored standard poodle and also peed on virtually every driveway we passed. I don't know how he manages to hold so much pee.

The cute guy came to shovel off the decks and we had packed up and took this as our cue to leave.

I thought there would be a good place to go along 89 on the way to Sierraville and there was. We stopped at the Prosser Hill OHV staging area and explored the Prosser dam and a random picnic table. Someone had snowshoed along the 10 + mile Commemorative Emigrant Trail (to Boca Stampede reservoir) and left a pretty big trail. We followed that back after blazing our own trail for a short distance. The snow is GREAT! There's a deep, hard base covered with about 2-3 feet of wet powder. Great snow for shoeing.

Commando is exhausted and has spent most of the evening sleeping with only a few forays out to the backyard to remind the squirrel enemy that he is home.

Another low elevation hike with ticks

The weather was unsettled so I decided to stay out of the chain control zone and hike in Auburn. There is a small waterfall called the "Black Hole of Calcutta." It's at a popular area which I would normally avoid, but I was hoping that only die-hards would be out in the possible rain.

We drove to the Auburn confluence area and parked across the highway 49 bridge and started hiking along the Western States Trail. I could only let Commando off leash occasionally because there were other people about. We strolled along quite nicely for about a mile and viewed the waterfall. Despite the rain, it was thin and thready but it was high and dropped into a scenic dark-gray granite grotto.

We headed back and I stupidly elected to try to hike down to the river on the Cool trail side. After bushwhacking around for a bit, I was forced to turn back.

And, I have a tick bite on my back shoulder!

Ticks, or why I don't hike at low elevations

We started off intending to hike somewhere at Ice House but a boulder at Bridal Veil Falls was threatening the road and the traffic backup was insane. So we did a U-turn and decided to explore somewhere off Sly Park road. We turned off on Park Creek road. From the map, it looks like you can hike down to Jenkinson Lake via Old Sly Park road.

We didn't make it quite that far. My phone GPS was working and it just didn't look like I was moving that fast. The way back would be uphill. We turned off on an unmarked but well travelled road (White Springs). It traversed the hill at roughly the same elevation and parallel to Old Sly Park. I figured it must eventually hit Park Creek again. It does, almost, except for the dead end.

The last 1/4 mile to Park Creek was uphill through an extremely dense forest with manzanita, willow and plenty of junk pines. I'd already picked 3 ticks off Commando so I figured they were now raining down on us.

We saw plenty of deer sign, indeed, there really wasn't a place where there weren't fresh tracks or droppings. I did see what looked like bear scat, but I couldn't be completely sure. It was certainly a BIG pile of poo with lots of berries and twigs in it. I've never seen horse or cow poo quite that color either. It wasn't particularly fresh although I didn't touch it. There's only so much I'll let my naturalist self do. I observed, that was good enough.

Commando got a bath once we got home which he loved (not). I took a bath and am pretty sure I washed off some ticks.

So, that's why I don't hike at lower elevations.