It was perfect weather for the SEA/CNPS field trip on BLM’s Trail 58 just west of Redding on Saturday, February 24, with cool weather, sunny skies, and crystal clear views of Mt. Shasta and the surrounding area. This trail used to be an oak woodland with scattered shrubs, but since the Carr Fire, it is now all chaparral with scattered gray pines and a few canyon live oak that survived the fire.
This trail which roughly follows the south side of Middle Creek is an area of active gold mining during the gold rush. A large part of the trail follows an old water ditch used by gold miners which still has the fallen remains of a huge old pipe and flume in one small canyon if you look carefully. There is one steep uphill section that eventually meets the Middle Creek Trail at the south end of old Shasta.
Botanically, little was blooming except for many Henderson’s shooting stars. We did see many examples of oracle oak and resprouting black oak, interior live oak, and canyon live oak. Many of the knobcone pines have reached six feet tall and lesser amounts of gray pines were in the two to four feet range. Other plants we saw included coyote brush, willow dock, Pacific sedum, Lemmon’s ceanothus, redberry, and many toyon of which the American Robins had eaten almost all of the fruits. Many soap plants are leafing out and mountain jewel flowers could still be identified by last year’s seed pods (siliques) and leaves, and way too many invasive Spanish broom shrubs along the creek. Overall, an easy-to-moderate hike in perfect weather.