Last Saturday I returned to the Madera Sugar Pine Grades for probably the last time of 2019. My friend Gary has a Jeep that he felt needed some exercise, so we decided to try and get to the end of the Granite Creek Saddle grade which is the most remote on the north side MSP operations. We also wanted to make a detour to visit the section of Betsy's stack we found on last trip and measure it carefully (to be posted in its own thread). Here's a section of Don DeVere's map to show you where we were going:


After measuring the stack and doing some more walking along various sections of the right of way, we finally set out for Granite Creek Saddle and the end of the line in mid-afternoon. Hunters had cleared much of the right of way,so it did not take us long before we had reached the terminus of Madera Sugar Pine operations:

We are at the end of the road and looking south towards Sugar Pine which was 31 rail miles away.

Behind me was the very last bit of grade:


I walked down this last bit of grade to shoot back again towards Sugar Pine:

There were very few artifacts at this location. According to Johnston's Thunder In The Mountains, the line was not scrapped until 1934 when scrap prices were pretty high, so my guess is they took most everything when they left. There is a trail that leads you out further north along the ridgeline and a jeep road that heads down the west (right) side of the ridge to a mine, but the road has not been maintained in many years and is covered with fallen trees...

Looking to the east you can barely make out the MSP grade coming out of Granite Creek Saddle on the right before it curves around the north end of Chowchilla Mountain:

The distant peaks are southwest of Yosemite Valley and include Mt. Starr King. Some nice fall colors remind us that winter is coming...

To be continued...



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/29/2019 04:55PM by Dave Peterson.