CHAPTER X
Poker Flat to Green Island Lake

Beyond the Yuba Gap, we were supposed to follow another section of the Pacific Crest Trail, designated by Clinton Clarke's Crest Trail Conference in the late 1930's as the Lava Crest. Our one and only printed trail guide fantasized that this was the dividing line between the north end of the Sierra, and the beginning of the volcanics of the Cascade Mountains.

As we could look north to a white granite pinnacle called Sierra Buttes, this bit of information was difficult to believe. Then the guide went on to list our first destination as an "A" tree.

Of course, none of the locals had ever heard of the Lava Crest, or the PCT, and when I asked in Sierra City where the "A" tree was located, they wanted to know what the punch line of my joke was. A call to the U.S. Forest Service brought the same response. I quickly hung up before being arrested for making an obscene phone call. Or worse, they might have started another search and rescue.

So we simply, now that we were full of confidence and experience, headed north. We knew that in enough days following our own noses in this general direction, we would fall, stumble, splash, into the Feather River.

Lacking a main trail, we followed unmarked, and unmapped, stock driveways connecting meadow to meadow, logging roads, and the most exciting of all, tracks leading to mining prospects. Some of the abandoned camps we came across were old diggings, but even then there usually was the remains of a water ditch, a path, or blazed trees leading on to that proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. In effect, we were now part and parcel of the gold rush.

I don't know how the argonauts that led the way so many years ago fared, but for us this gold seeker's trail led to rich 'finds.' Our first, was to discover twhat miners were, and are, pretty friendly people. Maybe I should qualify this a bit as I could talk their jargon. But, no where else on this trip did we see a sign on a cabin that said, "You're welcome to use this roof friend—just leave it as it was." We didn't stay as the grass was poor, but rode on to another invitation that we couldn't resist. A night in a bed!