TR - Day Trip to Shaver Lake

[evdog]

I headed up to the Sierras this weekend to do some scouting for a bikepacking route. I started toward the north end of Sequoia/Kings Canyon NP intending to check out a back road that drops down from Simpson Flat to the Kings River. This road had been closed the other times I was nearby. Excellent dirt route to connect areas. Had a decent camp spot and it got respectably chilly over night so I slept well.




Kings River was running pretty low. Quick stop for a swim. All the campsites along the river were signed as closed. People were camped in them anyways.




There are tons of possible routes from the Kings River or Pine Flat Lake up to Shaver Lake or Hungtinton Reservoir. I drove one of the more remote ways, nice doubletrack. I'd driven it before in the dark, wanted to confirm how it looked as a route to climb up out of Balch Camp. It's the best, most direct route I've found. Feels remote. Saw no one.




Checked out some other possible routes. A couple looked promising. Came around a corner and saw this. Ruh roh.




I figured once I got up to Dinkey Creek Road I'd probably be sent packing off the mountain so I did a bit more exploring south of there.


My map shows a ~12mi long Dinkey Creek Trail. Stopped in at a couple spots where it came close to the road. Found it here, mostly just an old bench cut covered in litter. Though there was some evidence of recent foot traffic. But in the other spots I looked there was no sign of trail. This has been the case with a lot of trails in this area. Trails on maps that are no longer on the ground. It's a shame. If I lived closer I'd be up there all summer cleaning them up.




Dinkey Creek. Nice spot for a swim.






I finally headed up to Dinkey Creek Resort. Came across some Sheriff Deputies who were helping clear out campers and asked what was closed so far. Mostly the area around Bald Mountain north to China Peak and Huntington. The OHV trails in that area is what I'd been planning to check out. The only thing not in the closure area that was on my to-do list was the Tour de Granite route closer to Shaver Lake so I headed over there. It's a short ride and not far from the road so I figured it would be ok.


It's a figure 8 ride and I couldn't find the start of the lower loop due to logging so I headed to the upper loop. After some forest road riding you pop out into the granite




Eerie light




After a short descent the "ride" goes straight up a steep granite dome. Hike a bike. View from the top showed I wasn't far from the fire.




Note to self, avoid shortcuts through manzanita. Bike is hung up 4 ft off the ground here. The patch looked shallow but the ground dropped away while the bush height was level. By the time I realized what was happening there was no point going back. Miserable waste of 10 mins. First world problems. I found the lower loop but lost the trail near the end of it in a logging area and had to bushwack out.

I headed down off the mountain after this. Shaver Lake town was shut down and hard closure by CHP on all roads up to Shaver Lake. Looks like this will be my last visit to the area for a while. On the plus side maybe fire will expose some of the trails that currently don't exist on the ground.

[evdog]

The west side of the San Joaquin River east of Bass Lake was on fire as well which was my original Plan B, so as a Plan C I headed a little ways south to ride some other trails that will be part of the bikepacking route.


A bit of smoke but not terrible




Lotsa big trees




Big enough to live in




I hiked some of the trails here a few years ago but wasn't able to ride due to recent ACL surgery. Was happy to make an unplanned return.




Ride thru tree




Mind the gap




Fun trails




I continued down canyon and the trail started getting rustic. This is the last I'd see of it for an hour or so




Where'd it go? It disappeared into a burn area and I couldn't pick it up again. My recollection was it stayed high and traversed the slope, but turns out it went low. I bushwacked across the slope looking above and below but saw no sign of it. Finally I gave up and slid my way down the slope before trying to traverse lower down where there was less brush. Half mile over and a couple hundred feet lower down I finally crossed it, though it was barely visible. Could have easily crossed it if not paying attention.




I followed it along another half mile and then dropped down to an old mine. An old mining road drops down to the river here from the other side.




There were a few tunnels around. This one went about 25 ft in




I was filthy by this point so my swim was more of a bath than anything. Also realized I was quite dehydrated. It was low to mid 90s even at elevation. Getting back into filthy riding clothing was not appealing but it was sweat soaked anyways so I gave it all a quick wash too.




Stout hike a bike out of there, finishing in the dark. This trail will be in the route eventually but will need some work first. For now we'll be using the mining road to exit the canyon.




Got up in the morning to do a quick lap and then explore some other stuff. Noticed the smoke was worse, giving the sunlight more of an orange color like you get during golden hour.




When I got back to my truck I was surprised to see no other campers around anywhere. A lot had been up late partying. Then I saw the note on my truck telling me the area was now closed due to nearby fire and to evacuate immediately. Dammit. Took that as a sign and just headed home. It was too hot to stop pretty much anywhere along my route home. And it turned out fires had just popped up in some of those places too. Can't wait for winter.

[SchralphMacchio]

Lucky fuck! It’s insane how fast that one and Bear Fire grew

Awesome trip, hopefully some of it is still left in October

[cydwhit]

Dang, I grew up visiting Shaver/Dinkey/that whole area a few times a year. I never got to ride up there, just got a few days at Woodward park in Fresno and that's it. Really cool to see some of the riding potential I was missing out on! Super bummed about the fire situation up there right now.

[RootSkier]

Different views of Dinkey Creek:



(Action starts around 1:30.)

[Jack Burton]

Thanks for posting, those old growth shots are incredible. Fires yup very scary shit, have ridden around Bass Lake a bit, i had not realized that was affected as well

[evdog]

It's not at Bass Lake yet but I'm sure that area has been evacuated. The fire looks to be creeping toward Central Camp and Whiskey Falls. It's reached Shuteye Peak. It's circled around Shaver Lake to the west and south now too.

https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/map/7147/0/105783

[jamal]

neat!

[evdog]

Awesome trip, hopefully some of it is still left in October

Well good thing I got up there when I did. Everything in the second post has now burned in the last day or so. The big trees will be ok, but we'll have to see what is left of the rest.

Fire is far from contained. Since it was mostly in the Golden Trout Wilderness it doesn't have a lot of personnel assigned, less than 800 for a fire that's approaching 100,000 acres. Now that it's moving into Sequoia National Park and towards Three Rivers it will probably get more resources.

[SchralphMacchio]

When the fire 15 miles down the road from my house hit 100k acres last week, it had 39 persons assigned and no incident commander.

It’s been a rough cycle.

[evdog]

That's wild. Hope everything turns out ok.

[SchralphMacchio]

That's wild. Hope everything turns out ok.

For me, yes.

For thousands who live up the McKenzie River ... many have lost everything
The fire traveled over 20 miles downriver the night it started - there was no warning time and some were trapped due to falling trees and had to escape on foot ... some unable to escape at all. It’s a goddamn tragedy.

One micro silver lining is that all the key bike trails up the McKenzie may not have been affected too badly other than a ton of blowdown (hard to say, one of the premier trails was on the inside edge of the heat map) ... the bottom half of the North Umpua Trail looks absolutely hosed though. TBD.

[CS]

how the heck do you find these trails? That Dinky Creek one is especially intriguing to me as we need more higher elevation trails in a bad way.

As for the fire....it has not yet reached some of the more popular Bass Lake area trails, though it did hit some outiler trails further away from the lake and burned the moto trails pretty bad in the Whiskey Falls area as well as the OHV stuff North of Bald Mountain.

Are you scouting these trails as part of the Orogenesis Project?

[supermodel159]

Super rad.

[evdog]

how the heck do you find these trails? That Dinky Creek one is especially intriguing to me as we need more higher elevation trails in a bad way.
....
Are you scouting these trails as part of the Orogenesis Project?

Easy...
1) Buy the Shaver Lake National Geographic map
2) Spot trails on the map and go check them out
3) ????
4) Profit

A lot of trails I've explored are trails I saw on that map that I've gone and checked out. Some are legit like Potter Pass. Some like Dinkey Creek barely exist. Others I could find no sign of. The Shaver Perimeter trail and Tour de Granite are not on the map but are on Trailforks and MTB project. I've found other trails looking at USGS maps - scans of those are available on Ride with GPS and a few other sources.

Dinkey runs N-S for about 12 miles without a ton of elevation change. Chinese Peak trail connects top of China Peak to the Potter Pass trail. Bear Wallow trail drops around 5,000ft from Rodgers Ridge south of Wishon Res down to Kings River. How rad would that be? On the south side of the river there are trails that drop down from Verplank Ridge, Simpson Flat and Delilah lookout Pine Ridge for 3-4000ft. And on the Bass Lake side there is the French Trail that runs from Minarets Highway down to Mammoth Pool and then north before crossing the river into Wilderness. All of these are on the map but are in poor shape or non-existent on the ground. Dunno if there are enough riders in the vicinity to bring these back. I wish I lived close enough to work on them. We'll have to see if the fire hurts or helps and how long any closure is. In some cases it might remove brush and help locate alignments again.

Yeah, all this exploring is for Orogenesis. We've got a pretty solid route from San Diego to Pinecrest. Lots of options in some areas like Shaver Lake which has meant quite a few trips to the area to scout. I need to put together GPS track for the route options I'm recommending. I'll post that up when I have it. I'd love to hear any thoughts or suggestions if you're familiar with the area. We should have more than enough mileage for a solid bikepacking route just around Shaver Lake area and Bass Lake area too. And eventually, a route that circumnavigates the Sierras. Part of the Orogenesis group still wants the route to go down the East side of the Sierras. I think the west side has far better terrain for biking. Especially if we can eventually use the project to get some new trail built to create key connectors.

[kidwoo]

how the heck do you find these trails?

What are you? Enduro™?

[TahoeBC]

Thanks for taking the time to make this TR, seems few are motivated anymore, long live adventure riding! smoke from that fire and another south of there are making breathing in Tahoe a real chore.