High Sierra Topix

A couple weeks after the fact, but still a worthwhile trip for anyone in northern California. We have been wanting to get up here for years and took three nights before the 4th of July in the South Warners. Well worth the wait!

After a six-hour drive from Sacramento, we got to the Pine Creek TH. Covered as couple miles on the first day and spent a great evening in Pine Creek Basin - tons of wildflowers, birds, and lots of flowing water. On the second day we headed up to the Summit Trail and headed south along the crest of the Warners. Great, wide open views into Surprise Valley and the Great Basin. We headed over to Mill Ceek Meadows, expecting to do a bit of a loop, but I was a bit foolish and dehydrated, so we took it easy.

Day three we headed back north along the Summit Trail to Patterson Lake. The lake is one of the most popular areas in the Wilderness, but we didn't see a soul on Monday afternoon. Great place to relax before we headed a couple miles closer to the TH for the last night.

Highlights of the trip included food and bugs! For food we tried to eat better than usual and experimented with number of very good, easy dishes. Regarding bugs, there were NONE!! (Well, a couple, but not very many!)

A few photos can be found here:
http://outdoors.webshots.com/album/559771109ffguay

Patterson is heavily used I saw from my trip years ago, and the trail along the ridge gives one great views. Of course one trip I got snowed out before I even started so I went back home, a nice drive for the day, but then I didn't have as far to drive as you.

Those are beautiful pictures! I have never been to this area...I am originally from born and raised in Arcata lived in Humboldt County for many years and never went here only to the Trinity Alps...I do miss Northern Cali.
It looks like a beautiful and unique area
I love your doggies..they must have really loved being out there with you..how nice you took them
Thank you for posting these

The Rainbow People held their gathering there a few years ago. It was unknown and used mainly by locals before then. Now it has suddenly become popular...

On a semi-related side note, the old railroad track that ran from Alturas to Wendel, east of Susanville, was formally abandoned. Lassen and Modoc Counties, BLM, and local organizations are now in the process of rail-banking the route (getting the rights-of-way for the corridor). Without rail banking the corridor reverts to the local private landowner. The goal is to create a 100 mile long rails-to-trail from Alturas to Susanville.

Ok, parts of it will not be too scenic or interesting (the stretch across the Madeline Plains where it parallels Hwy 395 would be hot and boring. Flat and straight as a tabletop for 25 miles, and not a tree or piece of shade to be found) but other sections pass thru the Modoc National Wildlife Refuge, meanders over Sage Hen Pass and edges the Tule Mountain Wilderness and its PJ forest, and follows Snowstorm Creek. The trail has great potential, but it will take time and $$ to make it happen.

Thanks for the post and the photos. I truly love the Warners. For many years I daydreamed about the place and I finally went on my first trip there in 1988 and it certainly lived up to expectation. I too went to Patterson L. via Pine Creek Basin. A party of two with horses did come to camp at Patterson while I was there, but I still felt that the Warners in general were vastly less crowded than equivalent areas so close to trailheads in the Sierra (or the Klamaths, for that matter). The scenic highlight for me were the beautiful monkeyflower-lined rivulets, cascades, and hanging gardens off on the east side--much of this was seen hiking off trail below and SE of Patterson. A very cool contrast with that scenery was the very local badlands maze in the white volcanic ash in that area. I also remember seeing more raptors up there than almost any other place I'd been to. And of course, the fishing was quite good, too, although I felt that DFG was too generous with their air drop allotment for Patterson. The Warners benefit from being so far from major population centers and the driving distance from the Bay Area was always a significant barrier to taking a trip there. Now in Fresno they are even further away, making me appreciate those photos all the more.

If you liked the topography and vegetation of the Warners, consider the Steens Mountains of eastern Oregon. You can make it from northern CA in an easy days drive, if you don't mind gravel roads.

The Steens have the unique feature of going from desert floor to timber line without any conifer forest. The desert gives way to juniper forest, which transitions to aspen (expansive stretches of pure aspen forest for miles, not like the isolated patches of aspen groves in the Sierra), finally to the upper timberline. Spectacular gorges, a resident wild horse herd, and the Malheur NWR at the base of the mountain.