I love this time of year! All the fall colors and the smell of wood stoves and fireplaces. Ahhhh the joy of it all. A couple of weeks back Camping Girl and I did our normal routine of scouting out a new locale before bringing the kids. Two weeks later I brought the kiddies back up for a hike. C.G. and I have passed this trail head many times over the years and never once stopped. The spot we chose to explore was the Independence Trail in Nevada County near Nevada City and the South Yuba River. I'd like to take this time and share another one of our Northern California Family Adventures.
John Olmsted (March 2nd 1938-March 8th 2011) was the brain child of The Independence Trail. It's history began as a an old miner's ditch that was known as the Excelsior Canal. The Excelsior Canal was built from 1854 to 1859 by the Excelsior Canal Co. to provide water for the hydraulic mines in the Rough and Ready and Smartville areas travelling well over 25 miles. When California outlawed hydraulic mining in 1884, the ditch was used for irrigation until 1967, when it was abandoned. In 1975 John Olmsted, re-discovered the whole water system consisting of the ditch, the berm, where the ditch-tender walked, and the wooden flumes which bridged the ravines where ditches weren't feasible. John had the vision to recognize that this could be the answer to a friend's lifelong dream: "Please find me a level wilderness trail where I can reach out and touch the wildflowers from my wheelchair." The Excelsior Canal having such a slow grade made it the ideal candidate for a handicap accessible trail and eventually it became the first wheelchair accessible trail in the nation.
This is another trail that is easy to find. From Sacramento take Hwy 80 East towards Tahoe. Take Hwy 49 North towards Grass Valley, continue past Grass Valley on Hwg 49/20. When going through Nevada City you will need to make a left and continue on Hwy 49 towards Downieville. From this turn the trail entrance is only another 5 miles down the road on your right. I have put a link below to a Google Map for your convenience as well as a link to a Ca.gov map.
We came at the perfect time of the year (our personal opinion of course). The leaves were all changing color and the temperature was around 60 deg. Once parked we grabbed our gear and headed for the trailhead. At the trailhead there are vault toilets and a map of the area. If you choose to come here during winter and spring months beware, the trails can get a bit muddy. And as far as bathrooms, the only facilities that are available are the ones located at the trailhead. The rest are closed due to their poor conditions. We chose to go West first and headed down the trail that leads you under the road. The kids could walk standing up where as C.G. and I had to stoop down to make it through this passage. Once on the other side you only need to walk a little ways find the illustrated map of the trail and all it's features.
We continued walking towards Rush Creek enjoying all of the ferns that were growing out of the old stone that once made up the canal. The leaves on the trees were beautiful with their vivid reds and bright yellows with the sun cascading through them. The kids liked the fact that you could walk either in the old canal or up on the berm where the ditch-tender use to walk back in the day. Along the way we passed the Jones Bar Trail that takes you down to the river. You can hike the Jones Bar Trail loop which takes you to the river then west along the Yuba and back up to the Excelsior Canal; the loop is a 4.2 miles. Further down the canal you will come to the Telephone Pioneers Yuba River Overlook. From here you can see all the way down to the river. During the spring and summer months when all of the trees have their leaves, seeing the river can be a challenge. Around a few more bends we came upon the California 4WD Club Diamondhead Outhouse which is now closed due to badly needed repairs. The first flume that you come to is flume #25. This flume like so many others on this trail have been carefully reconstructed. It's pretty amazing when you think about all of the work and labor it took to originally make this 25 mile long canal. Let alone what they did just to rebuild these flumes. Horse and carriage, surveying the land for the slow gradual grade on which the water moved, blasting rock, milling the lumber to make the flumes and the list goes on. Just amazing!
A little over a mile from the trailhead we came to flume #28. Standing at the entrance to the flume and looking out across Rush Creek to the end of the same flume was amazing. This is definitely one of the many spots to take anyone who enjoys California mining history. As you walk over the creek you will see the addition of a wheelchair ramp that goes all of the way down to the water. During the fall and winter months this ramp is very slippery, you can almost skate down it. There is a Lunch Shelter that overlooks the falls; this is a good place to take a few pics and have a snack. We walked carefully down to the creek and took in the sights. If you look near the bottom of the ramp, wedged in between the rocks and across the creek you can see remnants of a truck that came from Hwy 49 above. At least that's what I think. At this point we turned around and headed back to the entrance to the trail and continue eastward.
Once back at the trailhead we ventured off eastward towards Miners Tunnel. Just as we started down the trail the kids noticed this Mud Man that someone lovingly created and put on the handrail. FYI, on our return he was gone. We'll surely miss him.
The eastern section of the trail has some pretty cool walkways that overlook the Yuba River and cross gorges. We stopped at the #21 flume and parked ourselves on the large bench to enjoy our sandwiches and some snuit fracks. From here we enjoyed listening to the rushing water and watching the traffic below and across the canyon. Just a short walk down the trail from here we came across flumes #19/#20 and a few tenths of a mile more we passed through Tunnel Rock and took a few pics. The kids were in good spirits and so was I, it was a perfect day! When C.G. and I were here it got dark before we could find the Miners Tunnel, sotoday we decided we wouldn't turn back today until we found the tunnel. Onward we traveled. We passed over many more flumes and bridges as well as a nice little picnic area hidden along the way. Along the trail there were so many different types of mushrooms, there was even a little spot where all of the trees and ferns had water droplets all over their leaves. As the kids walked past they couldn't help but use the walking sticks their Papi gave them to knock water off the leaves and onto the hiker behind them. The simple things in life. Almost 2 miles from the trailhead we came to Augustini Road; this is a 4WD road that once led to Hoyt's Crossing down at the river. From here we could either continue another .2 miles to the Miner Tunnel Overlook or go down the road to the left and see if we could locate the tunnel; we went left. It was only a few minute walk when we came upon a sign for Hoyt's Crossing Day Use Area. At this spot there were two ways to go. We could take the trail marked as Placer Mining Claim #295301 down to the water on the right, or we could continue down the road that was marked as Yuba Heaven.
We decided to explore the mining claim trail first before continuing down the road. The trail was pretty steep and it dropped us down onto a field of strewn trees and logs that obviously get washed up here during winter and spring run off. We wanted to go down to the river but we decided that climbing over so many logs was not a good idea. I could definitely see someone getting hurt, and we were a long ways from cell phone signal and help.
Back up the trail we went. Once back on the road we continued down to the river on Yuba Heaven. The road ends up stopping just short of the river. You'll know your at the right place when you see a rock fire ring someone built on the right. We headed to the left since there wasn't a clear trail beyond the fire ring. The twins took a potty break while the rest of us scrambled down the rocks towards the river. As I was trying to figure out where this other source of water was coming from, I looked to the left and low and behold it was the Miners Tunnel. We stumbled onto it by dumb luck! If you didn't know it was here you could easily miss it. One by one the kids came down and looked at the tunnel with mouths and eyes wide open. There was a considerable amount water flowing through it, so we agreed that come summer we would journey down here on a hot day and see if we might get the opportunity to actually walk through it when there would be far less water.
After our discovery we headed back towards the car. We kept a pretty good pace since it would be dark in a matter of minutes. Lucky for us we brought our headlamps and only needed to use them from the Tunnel Rock to the car. Overall we hiked approximately 6.3 miles and enjoyed every step along the way. I would so recommend this trail for anyone. Folks with children in strollers, persons in wheelchairs, families wanting to take parents/grandparents along for an easy hike and anyone who loves a bit of Gold Country history.
Thanks for reading another Northern California Family Adventures,
Uncle Leo & Camping Girl
Kids Corner
Lizzy:
Hi everyone, Independence trail was awesome. Let me tell you something, along time ago there were mines here and those mines needed water so the miners could find the gold. So they built canals and flumes. We walked through the flumes and canals and it was cool. That time of day was beautiful, the weather people said it was probably going to rain but lucky for us it was sunny. There was a rock that looked like a bridge and you can go underneath it. Oh, I almost forgot that everytime we go somewhere we have a mission, and our mission here was to find the Miners Tunnel. There were twist and turns and different trails, and we didn't know which trail to take but we took one. Now that we where at the very end of the trail, we stopped by the river. Then we took a little trail down to the river and all of a sudden my dad stumbled upon the Miners Tunnel. He called me and my brother down to the river and we looked around and we saw the big tunnel. We were glad we found the miners tunnel, now our mission was acomplished. I loved this trail very much, it was sweet and cool hike. I thanked my dad for taking us there, I love this place and thank you for joining with me and my family, goodbye every one. Love,
Lizzy
Inspiring account, cat wait to go. Always passed it by myself. A good read, thx!
Posted by: R.Calciano | 06/01/2015 at 08:28 AM