BOOKS AND WRITINGS BY EARL ROGERS
AUTHOR EARL ROGERS © 2011 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED SITE DESIGN & ADMIN., ENGLISH SPECIALTY ARTS
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA HIKING
ARTICLES, TRIPS AND PICS
Poison Oak
Hiking Rockville Hills
Regional Park near Fairfield
March 17-2011
See archives for Rockville Hills March 2010
It is the middle of March. Already thickets of Poison Oak are growing beside the trails in the lowlands and foothills of Northern California. Always with an eye out for the scalloped green leaves growing in groups of three, I avoid it.
South Fork American River Trail Revisited
May 31, 2011
In January of this year we explored the southern end of a newly opened trail along the South Fork of the American River. The length of this trail was reported last year in the major Sacramento newspaper as 25 miles from the Magnolia Ranch trailhead on Highway 49 near Coloma to the Salmon Falls trailhead near Folsom Lake at the lower end. I can now say unequivocally, 25 miles is BUNK!! We hiked the distance at a leisurely pace in less than five hours starting at the Cronan Ranch trailhead on Highway 49 which cuts off perhaps 3 miles from the starting point
Article by
Earl Rogers
Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mexican border to the Canadian line demands perseverance. Who knows how many people make the trek in a single season. Not many. More than perseverance is needed. Fortitude, determination, stamina and all the other things that build character. So maybe hiking is a character builder, at least for those who go the distance.
A small, but hardy group from the Sacramento Valley Pilot’s Association hiked into the mountains northeast of Union Valley Reservoir (off Highway 50 west of Lake Tahoe) in search of the site of a B-17 Flying Fortress that crashed 70 years ago in the mountains of California. Unerringly we located the wreckage thanks to our leader’s navigational skills and the fact that he had been there before and punched in the coordinates on his Garmin GPS.
