The big plan was to drive out to Castle Rock
That is kind of a long drive and it gets busy during Summer Weekends.
We went elsewhere.
I could tell you how to get there. . .
But what fun would that be?
When you first pop out of the tunnel you are here. Yea – lots of lime stone around here but you can see this one was man made (so tunnel not cave*)
You got to truck 2 miles thru this crevasse (or not) until you find the ladder below.
Start climbing that. . .
See that Structure up there? Gotta get there for starters.
Look veeery carefully for “Bum Forts” along the way. Center above.
Find this one, go inside. It is newer work*
Drop out thru the chute at the rear right. There are holds, but they are not well cupped. You have to have climbers hands.
You will see a lot of this (above – I almost always reference the above). You can wipe your butt with that. I wouldn’t, but you can.
Over the hill and thru the trees. . . to grandmothers house we go. … Speaking of grandmother, tried to visit her and first the hospital said “no kids” (dumped the kid) then they said “already been 2 visitors today”. Just to check them, I asked the names. Recognized them – so – they are probably not making green wafers out of my mom (yet).
Cross that log. . .
Find more of those – identical Indian Cliff Pueblos (carved by WhiteMan).
Here we go – start looking for these. We have gone over many times the tricks used to identify man-made objects in nature. Typically – 90 degree angles, perpendicular mounds, things like this. The Santa Cruz mountains have thousands of miniature dams, they can be found all up and down the rivers and they were used primarily for transporting lumber.
They gutted these valleys starting around the 1850’s – so lots of “old work”. That there, normally I would assume it was part of a dam-rig, but … here… something different.
You will find some relatively new work. Clearly a well pickup, and explains a few other structures found around the area. People need to get water up and out of the creek (pronounced Krik).
You can see the lines go up and away. There are two due to the type of pump they are using. IIRC thats a Jet Pump.
- You can have the pump at the bottom (not working well for Creek)
- You can have the pump at the top and one line down with a foot valve
- You can have the pump at the top with two lines down (still need a pump valve
IIRC a jet pump works by flinging some portion of the water down, and on the way up it creates a draw… so more comes to the top than goes down. You use different pipe configurations for different pump heads and depths. The best I have dealt with (for a well) is just dropping a 2hp pump in the hole – no priming necessary but… I have plenty of experience with top mount pumps configured in Jet or Single.
You can read or watch about it.
Lots of big trees. Even second growth is 170 years old now. You dont want to know how big the Old Growth was. . .
Prego’s hopping the rocks.
She was looking for lunch after we found the above.
Said she would boil us up some CrawDad in this fort if we caught 8 of them.
So we went look’in
Up river
Or was it down river?
People get lost out here all the time. They think it is like one of those “contained park” deals. . . where every trail leads you back to the parking lot (L O L). Friend of a friend is a cop, says they get calls all the time of people getting lost, sleeping out in the woods, freaking out – lol.
I have never been lost in the woods of Santa Cruz County. It is not a large enough area. If you climb to the top of anything. . . or follow any creek down long enough… you are gonna see the ocean.
You might have to walk 28 miles. . . but you will see the ocean.
Nice bum fort!
Tyler was into it. Looks to me like the roof is going to leak, but whatever. Its summer.
New Growth
You know you are in the native environment when you actually see new growth. People plant trees in the weirdest places. These things drink hundreds of gallons of water out of the air a day. Why would you plant them in San Jose?
Prego and the Dare Devil back at the opening. . .
Good throw-you-off perspective shot. Nobody expects trees to be growing out of an elevated and horizontal tree.
You find fossils up there, of course. All of this was deep under the sea.
Stuff like that everywhere in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Indian stuff as well. . .
Anyway, there are the crawdad. Center above. Orange body, white markings on the pinchers. Tail about as long as the body.
Picture does not show it but those were big’uns. You really only eat the tail and these had plenty of tail. They congregate – one spot had 4 together. Nowhere for them to hide (when they are that big) so you can just go tire them out and snatch them.
We did not of course. .. but you can. In many creeks around here that run year long.
Gotta Eat. . .
-Schinder