Re: Another day on the Madera Sugar Pine grades

Continuing on, we entered an area burned by the 2018 Ferguson Fire. Just beyond the large bridge the grade was marked by depressions from burned out ties:


A little further on, we encountered another nice rock wall:


There were a significant number of rock retaining walls down in Big Creek canyon. This was the last large one we saw and was about 8 feet high.

About 1/4 mile beyond the large trestle site we came to another trestle location:


This had been a 10 bent trestle, but there were no timbers left at this site. Madera Sugar Pine seemed to salvage some trestle timbers when they were done with a spur and at other times they left the bridges in place. My guess is they reused timbers until they decided that the structural integrity of the timber was potentially compromised.

Finally, after about 1/2 mile and 2 hours of bushwhacking we reached a point where the brush was too thick to safely penetrate:


6.5 foot George again stands in for reference. Chowchilla Mountain is in the background. About 1/4 mile upgrade we could see the point where I had turned back in June and there didn't seem to be any point of continuing into brush so thick that you couldn't see where your feet were. Donald DeVere's map shows a spur in this area climbing up near the top of the peak we had been circling, but on foot examination of the grade doesn't show evidence of this spur. LIDAR data does show what appears to be a skid road towards the top of the mountain, but the imprint lacks the definition usually seen for railroad grades.

On the next trip we'll probably explore more of the Big Creek Canyon area and try to follow some of the railroad grades that skirted Wawona in Yosemite National Park.