Last weekend I went against my resolve to avoid the Mineral King road until/unless it was covered with fresh green growth or snow. The burned areas just held no appeal – scary, sad, ugly.
However, Trail Guy, The Farmer, and Hiking Buddy were curious, so I went along.
We stopped above the Sweet Ranch/Lake Canyon because The Farmer wanted to check out a flat area that he had seen many times from the road. You can see that the soil is just as weird here as it was in the burned area at the end of North Fork.
The historic Sweet Ranch is seen here in the distance, surrounded by green plants because it was very well protected, for which we are very grateful.
This is how the road looked: a bit of green on the shoulder, and barrenness all around.
We stopped again above Lookout and did another foray out on another knoll. 
I think these are soap plant, obviously a very hardy little piece of greenery that responded to the October rains.
We didn’t stop again for awhile. I only took this one photo – many many burned trees still standing until after Atwell. 
Normally I think that Mineral King isn’t very pretty this time of year – too much gray and brown. Compared to the road, it was BEE-YOO-TEE-FULL!!
Some observations:
- There is an old road cut above the current road, visible from around the Cold Spring water trough up to somewhere below Lookout. (I wasn’t paying very much attention – instead I was cowering in the backseat with my knitting).
- If there is a big warm storm, there will be mud, rocks, and boulders on the road in many places.
- The water troughs are standing and running. (Wait, what?? How can something be both standing and running?)
- Everything around the Trauger’s water trough is burned and it is easy to see up to where the homestead was with lots of standing dead trees.
- Slapjack water trough area is all burned.
- Redwood canyon is all burned, but the 2 redwood trees are fine.
- Willows along the road above the bridge are all gone – hacked down and piled along the road.
- The part below the bridge around Monarch Creek that needed to be pruned for visibility was not pruned.
4 Comments
Those pictures hit close to home. Thank the Lord for those that helped save our beautiful MK. I’m sure the ride up was tuff. Thanks for doing it
Laurie, it was kind of awful. Thank you for checking in.
Very sad, but very hopeful that spring will bring more green as the land heals and recovers. But I bet that was hard to see.
But the Mineral King Valley–spared because of the hard work put in by the thousands of fire fighters!
2022 summer’s ride up will be oh-so different than 2021, won’t it?
Indeed. Very very different. Interesting, in a weird and ugly sort of way.
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