climbing and clearing the land

Today was kind of a bust as far as climbing is concerned. We tried out donner and rainbow, two areas near I80, but it was too hot to climb at Donner, and we got shut down on climbs that would normally be our warm-ups. Have I mentioned how much I miss French limestone? While bushwacking our way back from Rainbow we happened upon some strange non native looking plants which had been set up with an irrigation system.

After a depressing half day getting shut down on slabs, we headed back to Dutch Flat. I wanted to show Chloe "the Diggins", which is a dark green spring fed pool located in a heavily hydraulic mined area just north of the main street in Dutch Flat. When we were kids we used to swim there all the time, and it was a popular local destination in the summertime. Someone had made a raft out of railroad ties, so the first thing that we always did when we got there was to start swimming around to find it. As the years went on, it seemed to become more and more waterlogged until there really wasn't very much of it left above the waterline. This time, I was disappointed to see that someone had completely fenced off not only the diggins, but most of the hydraulic mined area to the left and right of the road! We drove past it to have a look at the dutch flat fore and afterbay. These are two dammed artificial lakes connected by a big pipe and turbines for hydroelectric power. There were signs warning you not to swim in them because of rapidly changing water levels, as well as "underwater traps". I assume that the latter is just a hyperbolic way of saying that there could be trees etc underwater, and not that they have set actual man traps.

From there, we returned to Alta, and got down to choppin' We cleared even more land than last time (before and after):


and after a long sweaty day, we both jumped into the freezing cold snowmelt fed river. It wasn't quite as cold as the glacial snowmelt rivers in the Alps, but our toes still went numb.

We had Trader Joe's macaroni and cheese with tuna from a can and river chilled beer on the deck to the sounds of the river and the slightly sweet smoke of mosquito coils. As an aside, my family was introduced to mosquito coils by my dad's japanese friends in the 80's, and a study has shown that these coils (containing octachlorodipropyl ether, which is banned in the US) might cause cancer! Ahhh, nothing like a cold beer and carcinogenic smoke after a hard days work!