good afternoon youtube so this is where the grizzly flap trail crosses stevens creek right
here and this is the part of the old road the 1897 road that i hiked up last december
and i was thinking about trying to do this again
a little bit farther but there's been some growth in the last i guess five months
that's all poison oak in there and it's all like waist high i think that's just asking
for trouble if you go up there and you've got to just plow through it i mean there's no way to uh
no way to get around there so yeah i think this one is off the table for now
i'll have to wait like till next december after all this stuff dies back now i was planning to try
a new setup here i was thinking about something i could wear in place of my cycling tights and i
remembered i had a pair of these old convertible hiking pants they're like rip stop nylon
and they have the side zip so you can put them on over your shoes this should work for this time of
year when it's a little bit warmer because i can just wear my cycling shorts up and then pull these
on when i get up here and i was intending to do that but that looks a little bit more than
i would really care to climb over and through so i believe this is the downed tree that i got to back
in december and i had stopped there because number one the usgs map shows the road ending about there
so i didn't know if the road actually continued or not and then the other thing as i was concerned
about how stable that tree was because that's not a step over tree that is climb up on top
and put all your weight on the tree and then slide down the other side
and i just didn't want to have that tree suddenly take off down the hill but i think that thing is
pretty solid the root ball is still up in the dirt up there and it's pretty well buried so yeah and
then now i know according to the hill shade map the road continues on up this side of the creek
up to where i hike down from the grizzly flat road so it stays on this side of the creek up to the
first stream that comes in on that side i do want to go back up there but there's a little too much
of the green stuff coming up now all that poison oak but the other thing speaking of the
wrong or incorrect maps from usgs so this is the main branch of stevens creek runs up there
it goes up this way and makes a turn and heads up the canyon and right here this is what's called
branch d d is in dog and that's the branch that the old 1897 road follows and it's right there
and there's a steep canyon that it comes through but this is another one of those tilted blocks i
think because right here there's a ridge between the main branch of stephens creek and branch d
there's a big block of land there that's tipped one way or the other and according to usgs this
branch d goes over the top of that ridge and joins stevens creek about a quarter mile up here
it for sure comes in right here but according to the topo maps it comes in way up there and the
1897 map is wrong and then all the maps up till the current map
show that wrong it's physically impossible for that creek to join up there but it looks
like it if you look at the topo map that block there's a depression in the middle
so it looks like the creek could flow through that low point but it's still uphill to get there so
i don't think they actually came out and surveyed any of that they just sort of
looked at the contour lines and said oh well maybe the creek goes through here yeah this is
that uh bank right here all the way up and the the old road is up on the top of that bench up there
yeah so it's just a ways up the creek here they've got that spot leveled off on the bank so the road
comes up here and then they've leveled out a big flat area there that would be interesting to see
that i don't know why they did that but there's probably something there if they went to all
that work to uh cut a level spot on this rather steep slope here there used to be a bunch of uh
fish down here in the creek i haven't seen them come back yet i've seen some salamanders or
newts down here but i haven't seen the fish yeah this is usually one of the last pools
of water here it dried up this summer but yeah probably pretty soon you'll start seeing fish
they either float down from upstream oh there's one yeah i saw one there is one fish in there
he just went under this rock here yeah i guess they're starting to repopulate
something under there blowing bubbles
these plants i i didn't recognize them down here these are the local variety of stinging nettles
because i i grew up in the pacific northwest and the nettles there looked a lot different
they didn't bother me but these things man they have like tiny little hairs that stick
in and man they burn they don't make a rash or anything but they they feel almost like a bee
sting yeah i didn't recognize those and i brushed up against them with my leg once and it's like
whoa but yeah i figured i'd show you that and uh yeah here's the creek crossing at grizzly flat
and i got my bike over there so i gotta get packed up and head home here thanks for watching
you