A Walk in the Woods

While I was at our cabin and spending time as a volunteer for the Forest Service, I also took the opportunity to go an a hike a little closer to home. I started at Kewin Mill Road in Cedar Ridge, and then followed it down, down, down, into the canyon of the South Fork of the Stanislaus River.

It's a hike I'd done before, but somehow I had forgotten a key detail--that I needed to leave Kewin Mill Road and take Keltz Mine Road to get to the river. So I spent about an hour trying to figure our why Kewin Mill Road wasn't going downhill enough, until I finally found a connection down to Keltz Mine Road.

This road is steep. And it's steep down to where you turn right to go to the old ruins of Keltz Mine--now mainly a few pieces of very heavy mining equipment and a lot of poison oak.

But I didn't turn right, I kept going straight, down, down...okay, you get the idea. I drops more than a thousand feet in about a mile, and by the time I reached the river, my quads were quivering.

Not surprisingly, there was nobody else there. There are some mine tailings along the river, but the terrain in this area is so steep that I think you would have a hard time finding a flat place large enough to pitch a tent. Still, it was a grand adventure.

And the climb back up, in the warmer temperatures of the late morning, was memorable, too. I took the rest of the day off.