All our camping plans for the past year got 2020’d. There was that pandemic, and then California was on fire for a while. After canceling plans due to Covid-19 and extremely bad air quality, staying home became a habit. Finally, this Spring, we started feeling ready to go camping again. There was still snow on the high mountains, but I wanted to have a look at some lower-elevation areas on the western slope of the Sierra. We loaded up the truck and headed to the Stanislaus National Forest.
We started on Evergreen Road, the road that goes to Hetch Hetchy off Highway 120. From there, we wandered off onto some Forest Service roads, crossing Tuolumne Canyon, and coming out onto Highway 108. The scenery was a mix of rock-strewn rivers, granite and old burn debris. The forest roads started out good, but deteriorated as we approached the Clavey River. The stretch into and up out of that canyon was badly washed out in places, leaving my tires uncomfortably close to the crumbling dirt edges, above a thousand feet of steep canyon wall. Unwilling to return on the dangerous shelf road, we fought our way out the other side through narrow rutted roads overgrown with brush; my truck came out scratched and dented. The only other vehicles were a few of those little four-wheelers. Only later did I discover that the Forest Service has decided to stop maintaining these roads for full-sized vehicles. We won’t go there again.
This wasn’t the most auspicious start to our revived camping career, but we were glad to go out breathe the fresh air, listen to the birds, and watch the moon. I hope it won’t be long before we’re out again — but with better roads.
March 26-28, 2021
