For the past several weeks, I've been trying to get my buddy, Nick, out on the trails, but unfortunately, things just weren't lining up. Finally, we found a day where he could get away. He seemed to be looking forward to it, but suggested not only hiking on Sunday, but camping the night before. Knowing I was running a half-marathon this weekend, I was a little hesitant, but I really wanted him to get outdoors again and so we decided to go for it. The destination was his suggestion, a place called Malakoff Diggins State Historical Park near Nevada City. "Near" was a somewhat loose term as we would discover.
After getting home from my half and showering, I started to pack. there were some delays on Nick's side, but he eventually got to my place about 3:30 PM and we made a run for the border . . . the California border that is. He had researched a couple of local campgrounds, but as we checked them out one after another, they were either still closed for the season or not in favorable locations. As we weighed our options, we decided to go on into the park and just get a taste of it. Though, it was getting late in the day, we ended up finding the gate to the park campground open. We decided to pitch our tents and just stay here, and to our delight, we were the only campers in the entire place. As tired as I was from my run, I hit the sleeping bag nearly as soon as I got unpacked and slept fairly well through the night.
We rose at about 5:30 AM, cooked a quick breakfast, broke camp, and hit the trail. Originally, we were intending to hike the rim trail, which we thought was about three miles round trip, but as we soon learned, it was point-to-point. While it was a nice trail through the woods, with mazanita trees and a few small streams, it wasn't overly scenic.
When we finally approached the end of the trail, we decided to double back and do the loop trail through the main attraction of the diggins. From what I have read, gold was discovered in this area back in 1852 and basic panning and other mining techniques were used to extract the wealth. When the deposits were discovered to be far-reaching and more rich than originally known, the mining claims were consolidated under a single corporate owner. A short time later, the destruction of the land began. The corporate owners build and started utilizing hydraulic water cannons to eat through the surrounding mountainsides in search of the yellow metal. Downstream communities were feeling the effects of this forced erosion in their water supply and filed legal action against the company, eventually winning and forcing an end to the practice.
Following the road just a couple of hundred yards from where the Rim Trail dumped us out, we quickly find the entrance to the Diggins Loop Trail and begin to explore the devastation. Though mining operations have been in active here for approximately 135 years, the deep scars of this raping of the earth are still as clear as day.
All around this man-made canyon, the streams of high-pressure water have eaten through whatever vegetation was once there and the earth under neath it to reveal orange-red cliffs, which resemble the walls of the grand canyon, but show the obvious signs of being formed not by the slow hand of time, but by the greed of man. On the canyon floor near the walls, white quartz sand carpets and crunches underfoot. In the center of the canyon, what is essentially a muddy swamp has formed. With no tree roots on the canyon walls to slow the erosion or run-off, the water seems to have simply drained off make this mess, which will probably be a mosquito paradise in another month or so.
We weave our way through the out-skirts of the swamp, but it's impossible to not get wet and muddy at times. seeing the destruction up close and personal like this makes me want to weep. I so hope this land will heal someday and that until it does, we can learn from our mistakes.
Finally, hitting the uphill section that will return us to the beginning of the rim trail, we re-enter the woods. It's somewhat steep and while my legs are tired from yesterday's run, I'm feeling pretty good. Arriving back at the car, we find that we hiked about 6.8 miles - not bad for the day after a half-marathon. We did get to explore a very interesting, if horrific, place as well. The people of California have dedicated this area as a state historic park with the hopes that it will discourage such destructive practices from being used in the future. I hope it works.
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