2024 Rambler Hikes Page 3

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Back to Balsam Forebay          Big Stump Basin          Mariposa Grove          Wawona Meadow Loop          Woodward Lake

Back to Balsam Forebay

For our August hike, the Ramblers did something we've never done before - returned to the same location we hiked last month. We had good reasons. In July we spent half of our time on the wrong trail. Two of our hikers were well in front and went down to the water's edge, while the other two stopped a hundred yards above it.  And in August the two in the lead last month would not be hiking, with the other two the only ones doing both hikes. And of course, we knew where to find the correct trail this time.

In addition to Pam and Dick, repeat hikers, we were joined by Elsa and Don B. We left Clovis at 8:30 and arrived at the trailhead an hour and twenty minutes later. As we hiked down the trail, Don and Pam soon got way ahead of Elsa and me. She has an app on her phone that identifies plants and flowers, and I asked her to check several varieties, including ones I knew. I was pleased to find that the app agreed with me on those, and even happier to learn some new ones, including birdsfoot trefoil and a bush with small, bright red berries, known as bitter cherry. We also saw gooseberries, elderberry, wavyleaf Indian paint brush and several others.

Not surprisingly for a facility that is part of Southern California Edison's Big Creek Hydro Project, the water level in this small lake fluctuates as water is released, then pumped back up for re-use. When Don and Pam arrived, she walked out and climbed on a boulder near the edge of the water. By the time Elsa and I arrived, you would have had to wade to get to the boulder.

I drew a line in the sand at the edge of the water; ten minutes later it was several feet out in the lake. We could actually see the water level rise as we stood there.

As we walked the trail, we were reminded that summer is coming to a close before long. Squirrels had been busy taking pine cones apart in search of nuts. And the elderberries on a number of bushes were fully ripe.

After returning to the parking lot, we completed our outing in the traditional way, with lunch at a restaurant on the way home. Our choice this time was the Pizza Factory in Prather, where Don displayed extreme generosity by buying everyone's lunch. Thanks, Don, and thanks to Pam and Elsa for your continued enthusiasm for these hikes.

--Dick Estel, August 2024

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This is a familiar location for the Ramblers, one we last hiked in June of 2021. The Big Stump Trail is a loop that starts at the parking lot about a quarter mile past the entrance to Kings Canyon National Park. The trail crosses the road just a few feet past the entrance station, and winds up the hill and then back down to the big parking lot, going under the road through a tunnel.. You can follow another extension all the way to Grant Grove. However, we usually follow the trail down from the parking lot to the Mark Twain Stump. Returning on this same route, we take a branch trail that leads through the Shattered Giant, and rejoins the main trail a short distance from the start.

For this, the 123rd Rambler hike, we had five hikers and one sitter. Sue has some issues with walking any distance, but brought her chair and enjoyed sitting near the parking lot with her book, surrounded by cedars, sugar pines, and within sight of one huge sequoia. Those with varying degrees of ambition were Wes, Allen, Dick, and Bruce and Susan V. (We have several Susan's and prospectively, one more Bruce). Since Allen lives in Visalia, he drove up through Sequoia Park from the south and met us at the trailhead. This enabled the other five of us to squeeze with a reasonable degree of comfort into Wes's Subaru.

The weather was absolutely fantastic, about 60 degrees, mostly sunny, and comfortable for us to wear a light jacket throughout the hike. The trail goes past a few fairly big second growth sequoias, a lot of younger ones, and a number of stumps from days when the giant trees were mercilessly logged in the 1800s. These trees are very brittle and often shattered when they fell, rendering them useful only for shingles and posts. One  feature along the trail is the Shattered Giant. the remains of such a tree. The trail goes through the remains of the tree, but is a bit sketchy for older hikers  Fortunately there is a bypass.

Another landmark is what my great grandsons named The Castle - the spiky stump of a sequoia which appears to have broken off, being too tall to be a stump. One can only imagine the forces that could break off a giant sequoia.

It's just a short walk from this point to the crown jewel of the hike, the Mark Twain Stump. This 16-foot diameter specimen was cut down in 1891, not for lumber but so that sections could be transported east to prove that the stories of these giant trees was no hoax. A newly reconstructed staircase offers easy access to the top of this stump, where dances were supposedly held in the early days. The surface was probably never truly even, and the toll of time has made it even less so. 

From this point, Wes, Bruce and Susan continued on the trail across the road, up the hill, and eventually back to our starting point. Allen and I retraced our path to the junction where we turned right and made our way back to the parking lot. One of the attractions along this section of the trail is a meadow that was the sight of the Smith-Comstock Mill, which logged sequoias from 1883 to 1885. A more dramatic sight is the Old Adam, a gnarled, burnt-out snag that was once a proud giant.

Although there are probably a couple of dozen big stumps, after the Mark Twain, my favorite was one that I named the Tunnel Stump. If it has an "official" name, this information is not found on line or on the ground.

We've had mixed results dining at Grant Grove Village, three miles past our hiking spot, so we chose to bring our own lunch, and ate at one of the picnic tables provided, where we could continue to enjoy being deep in the forest.

A couple of final notes:

We observed that a new route for the trail is being constructed from the parking lot. So far it goes about 200 yards, covered with crushed granite. There was no indication on how far the new route will go. 

Be aware that many of the pages linked to this report as well as others you may find contain some inaccurate information. The most prevalent error is to state that the entrance station is located at the Big Stump parking lot. This was in fact a temporary location, but several years ago a new station was built just south of the old spot. Another page tells you the trail starts to the left of the restrooms, which is true until the new route is opened.

We greatly enjoyed our hike, and encourage you to visit this short, easy trail. You can even park at the park entrance and walk down about a quarter of a mile to the Mark Twain if the full 2.2 miles of the main trail is too much for you.

--Dick Estel, September 2024

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Like Hank Snow's peripatetic traveler, the Ramblers have been everywhere. Well, not exactly. After 120 plus hikes over more than ten years, we had never gone to the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias in Yosemite National Park. Of course, most of us had been there on our own, with family or friends, but for some it had been decades. Joining this hike on October 2 were Wes Thiessen, his brother-in-law Jim Tuck, Sue Wirt, Ardyss Webster, Don McClellan, Jackie Taggart, Dick Estel, and Bruce and Susan Vasquez.

There was extensive work done in the area starting around 2015, with the area closed for three years while roads that ran close to the trees were removed, and  new trails constructed. Visitors park at a huge lot just past the southern entrance to the park and ride a shuttle to the grove, where trails of various lengths go past many of the more than 500 magnificent trees.

Visitors with a handicap placard can drive to the place where the shuttle drops off passengers, and then to another small parking area near the grove's crown jewel, the iconic Grizzly Giant.

Sue, Don, Jackie and I rode to the grove in Sue's car, while the others took the shuttle. From the drop-off point a very short loop goes through some of the large trees. This was sufficient for Don and Sue who finished the loop and drove to the next parking spot. Since it was only six tenths of a mile to the Grizzly Giant, all the rest of us continued on the main trail, with Jackie and I soon lagging behind. The first part of the trail is a boardwalk, which protects the shallow roots of the giant trees, as well as allowing water to follow its natural course, rather than being diverted by roads as was the case for many decades. The restoration project included allowing plants in meadows and elsewhere to recover to their natural state.

There are plenty of benches to rest on, and Jackie and I seldom passed one without stopping. However, Jackie has had some allergy issues lately, and we soon realized our 60-second rests were not working. We decided to rest a full five minutes, and that did the trick. Of course, we soon fell even further behind. Wes takes responsibility to see that no one gets lost or left behind, and before long we saw Jim coming back down the trail to check on us. He accompanied us the rest of the way, and we soon arrived at the Grizzly Giant, the second largest and probably oldest tree in the grove, estimate at just under 3,000 years.

The tree presents a dramatic appearance, big, gnarly (dare one say "grizzly"?) and simply mind-boggling. It's been said that it's the fastest-growing tree in the grove, although it does not really look different from this photo when my grandparents made their first visit to Yosemite in 1935.

About a hundred yards north of the Giant is the California Tunnel Tree, not to be confused with the drive-through Tunnel Tree, which fell in 1969, partly because someone had cut a tunnel through it (still, it survived for 88 years with the tunnel). Most of our group made the short walk to and through the California tree, although Jackie and I simply enjoyed it from a distance, having been up close a number of times in the past.

I'll give Wes the final word: "We all experienced Mariposa Grove in our own way. We hiked in different directions and at different speeds. No one got lost and we all came back together to share a late lunch at El Cid in Oakhurst. What an adventure!" 

--Dick Estel, October 2024

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For November the Ramblers chose a familiar location, although one aspect of the hike was new for us. Two days earlier it had snowed down to the 4,000 foot elevation level. As far as we knew it was "just a dusting," and we assumed there would be nothing left of it but a few patches in shady spots. In fact, starting at Fish Camp, a few miles south of the Yosemite National Park entrance, there was a lot of snow along the road, enough that we decided that the area probably got two or three inches.

At our destination, the Wawona Meadow Loop, snow covered the meadow and there were large areas of snow under the trees. About half the time on the trail we were walking through snow.

It was not deep and almost never slippery, and the Ramblers are ever undaunted. We enjoyed the beauty of our surroundings, and pretended to enjoy the very cool weather. Those who remembered to bring gloves were more successful at this than the others.

We had a group of eleven for this outing - our Mariposa contingent, Susan and Andy Crandall and their friend Dave Rozelle; Ardyss Webster, Jackie Taggart, Wes Thiessen, Allen Ward, Bruce and Susan Vasquez, Don Bandoni, and Dick Estel.

Andy and Dave did a "pre-hike" to the Swinging Bridge over the South Fork of the Merced River, about a mile into the woods on the east side of the highway. They had not returned when we started our hike, but soon caught up with us. Everyone hiked as far as they were comfortable going, with Wes, Susan V., Bruce and Allen completing the entire four-mile loop, while the rest of us turned back at various points. 

We all met up in the parking lot of the historic Wawona Hotel, then made our way down Highway 41 to Oakhurst, where we could not help but stop at El Cid for an excellent Mexican lunch.

With the weather cooling off substantially, our next few hikes will be at a lower elevation - perhaps just on the outskirts of the Fresno metro area.

--Dick Estel, November 2024

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With cool weather now the rule, the Ramblers sought a lower elevation hiking destination for December. And there's not much within a reasonable distance lower than the city of Fresno, at 300 feet. No, we did not hustle down Blackstone Avenue. We hiked in an area of mature trees and green grassy areas, surrounding man-made Woodward Lake.

Bruce and Susan Vasquez live in Woodward Lake, an upscale residential development in the northern reaches of the city. The houses are located on a  series of peninsulas that extend into the lake, with a sidewalk around the entire complex, a popular destination for dog-walkers and anyone who just needs some low-key exercise. They suggested we hike there, and offered to provide lunch after, which we happily accepted. 

There were nine of us in total, Dick, Wes, Keith, Jeff, Allen, Ardyss, Jackie, Bruce. and Susan V. On December 13 we parked at the clubhouse lot where Bruce greeted us. Susan did not hike, but instead made the sacrifice of staying behind to prepare our lunch. We set out on the paved route that goes around the lake, going in a counter-clockwise direction, mandatory for Rambler loop hikes.

Most of the houses are on those  "peninsulas" that extend into the lake on all sides, with the loop encircling the entire complex. There are benches along the way wherever the lake comes into view  The entire loop is 2.3 miles, but we have a standard rule that you can hike as far as you want, and turn back if you do not want to do the entire distance. After .8 mile I rested on a bench and decided to take advantage of the "turnback rule." Jeff joined me, while the rest went on to complete the entire loop.

Jeff and I had been back at the parking area for less than a minute before the rest of the group came into view.

Jeff had to return to his house-sitting job, but the rest of us walked the short distance to the Vasquez home. On the way we met two of our retired work colleagues from Social Services, Marlene and Linda. The latter also lives at the complex, and Marlene is nearby and walks her dog around the lake several times a week. Both were invited to join us on our next hike and in fact Marlene had hiked with us once a few years ago.

Susan had prepared a delicious pasta dish, served with French bread that immediately started disappearing. It was a fitting conclusion to a crisp, cool day.

The great food, beautiful surroundings and good company left us satisfied in body and soul, and The Ramblers extend a hearty and heart-felt thanks to Bruce and Susan for providing a unique outing.

--Dick Estel, December 2024

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