Hi Waco, the Shasta, Trinity and Wiskytown lakes are some of the crown jewels of Northern California, along with a hand full of Rivers and the three designated Wilderness Areas. I fished, hunted and walked the 200 square mile Trinity Alps Wilderness from the late 60s until the late 90s every year for 10 days to two weeks. There are 38 prestine snow fed lakes in that wilderness, more than a hundred streams, and creeks feeding the Trinity River far below. Pure native trout up there and have been for more than 60 years. Bear bigger than you want to bump into and some very nice Blacktail coastal deer. There are some really big Elk that make their way down from Orageon in fall to the lower elevations, but not huntable. Lots of mountain lions and every mannor of birdlife. The Mountain Qual season used to track the Salmon Steelhead and deer bear season, so you carried some snakeshot in your revolver for dinner pickup along the trail. I think Ive walked (backpacked) almost all of that 200 square miles in my youth. Why was it so good. You had to get a wilderness permit, be responsible for your camp sites, be prepaired for the weather and be able to actually go beyond a turist with a camera and a sweater, also no motorized anything allowed, on foot or horseback only. Soon as you got beyond 8 or 10 miles in you were in a part of california thats been closed to all mannor of transpertation for almost a century. Ive slept in the walls of burned down cabins, with stone arrowheads still in some of the timber (big indian uprising in the 1870s against the gold mining camps). Its an awful pretty country, you can climb a mountain (wilderness starts at around 3500 feet and goes to over 10,000 on the peaks) and do a Rocky pose with nobody to see you, its that remote and that much fun. Fishing and hunting are a blast. For the first 10 years after my return from Vietnam I hunted it with close friends in the American Mountain Man Association with muzzle loading rifles. Try that up close and personal with a 400 pound bear. Alot of fun camping and fishing primative, flint and steel, no matches, wool blankets, no sleeping bags, a handline for Steelhead, it helped me coop with the return from a place I really didnt enjoy. Anyway that area of Northern California is still today little settled with some of the finest hunting and fishing anywhere. Like alot of Oregon if you shoot a deer on the edge of a drop, bring your knife and fork, you might just need to eat him where he fell. My best friend made a classic one shot kill at 40ft on a nice little buck deer. he fell immediately, hit the coastal ferns and slide right over a cliff 15 feet away, tumbling over 200 feed down to a big stream below. We had two 50ft repelling ropes with us and it took us the whole day and until dark to make our way down that cliff big bush to big bush on the side, then to tag team that buck and his antlers back up that devils drop to get it back to the car. We butchered it out after dark exhuasted, went to bed cold and hungry. Guess thats how some of lifes memories are made. Finest snap shot Ive seen, worst lay Ive ever experenced. Fishing was something them, we had ocean run Steelhead returning up some of those big streams and creeks, try a three foot steelhead on a handline some time primative style. Back then even some of the big King Salmon (natives now long gone) made it up that far inland to spawn. That was a sight to see in the late 60s. Water was way cold, snow fed, one of the guys was half breed indian, so legal to gig fish, he opened a bottle of Jim Bean, threw the cork away, stripped the his skivvies and walked into that ice cold water with a lodgepole spear and that bottle of JB, managed to gig two nice King Salmon for our dinner though. Big guys, or girls, easily went 25 pounds. We eat them all night and smoked the rest till morning to carry with us. That one trip was quite interesting. We slept in a place called bear wallow and found out after midnight how it got its name. A great place to go though, if your young, heathy and know how to live in a wilderness. I get a kick out of the tv series servivor, they cant even build a fire. Guess nobody has heard of shoe laces or eye glasses on the program. Two of the early methods were making a bow (indian) and using a glass (white man) to build a fire with tinder. Far easier than flint and steel. Im my possibles even today is a flint and steel, a copper tinder box with a magifying glass in the cover, and a long length of leather lacing, for a bow. Oh well, I regress and expand. The area that was picked is one of the very best in the state of California, glad to here its getting some recognition. Richard
|