The lookout on Argentine Rocks, Plumas County, CA.
Yeah, I know, how do I make the connection from restoring some old forest fire lookout building to nature and phenology? Well, for one thing you can sure see from the title photo how nature and the changing of the seasons and the weather has had an enduring effect on our non-natural alterations of our natural environment. And, we are talking in very general terms of the history of forestry and wildfire firefighting and therefore ecology and environmentalism. Which, I believe, makes the connection.
The Daily Bucket is a nature refuge. We amicably discuss animals, weather, climate, soil, plants, waters and note life’s patterns.
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So where is this old fire lookout? Not too far away from where I live in Quincy, CA, of course. To be more specific, T24N R9E Section 17 on my Plumas National Forest map, as photographed and highlighted below. Now, what do I mean by T24N R9E blah blah blah? That’s an exercise for you, in the case that you don’t already know. I’ll tattle enough to let you know I just spent over an hour researching the question myself and have discovered that it has a very direct link to Mount Diablo down there just east of San Francisco bay.
I first got involved in this back in April of this year, through my local Audubon Society chapter doing a highway cleanup day. The date was April 21, and it was on this volunteer work day that I met the fellow that is heading up the restoration of the Argentine Rocks lookout. His name is Jeff, and during our trash picking walk along a short stretch of highway we talked and I learned from him about his lookout restoration project. I signed up with him as a volunteer for the project, and here we are, a mere five months later.
On the road up to the lookout, view through the windshield of Jeff’s pickup truck. First sighting of the lookout up on the top of the rocks.
Same as above, cropped in for easier viewing.
Woof! Hey, waiddaminnit! You expectin’ me to go up there? Uh...
Oh. Doesn’t look so bad from this side.
Bottom of the trail steps. Steps begin to immediate right of that barricade that is laying up against the hillside. Vehicles can proceed no further than this, unless you’re talking helicopter. 😁
Before we left Quincy we spent about fifteen minutes putting some of this lumber on top of the plywood and packages of composite roofing shingles that were earlier loaded at the lumber yard here in Quincy. Here’s the lumber yard truck having turned around and now backing into the spot shown in the photo above.
Parked in place, ready for the unload so the truck can get back down the mountain and on to other jobs.
A scenic view to the south from the parking patch.
You can see from the photos that the weather was superb. Indeed, it wasn’t at all cool up there even though the elevation was 7,100’ above sea level. There was scarcely a breath of wind this day. I had my overalls on with a single long sleeve cotton shirt and ended up rolling up my sleeves. But I forgot to put on any sun screen until I had already made a couple of trips and the sweat was rolling down my face and I could feel my face and neck and ears starting to cook. I took a few minutes to slather on my trusty SPF 70. Today, the day after, as I write this my face is fine, no burn after all. Whew! A sunburned face and neck makes for restless sleeping and I don’t need that.
Here’s a fair view of the building from about halfway up the trail. You can see that the restoration project is going to be extensive. The very first tasks will be getting the catwalk rebuilt to safe condition so the roofers can work in safety from there; the next task will be to get the roof rebuilt so as to mitigate any further structural damage to the rest of the building.
OK, true confession time. There is no way under this planet’s sun that I could have humped any of the materials on that lumber truck up this steep staircase path, with a couple of exceptions. I took one of the exceptions: 1x4’s, four at a time, eight feet long, for the equivalent of a 4”x4” x 8’ “timber” (more like a light fence post); weighed maybe fifteen pounds max. Those packs of asphalt roofing shingles the folks below are carrying easily weigh in at around sixty pounds each. Who are these guys/gals?
But not the fellow in the white shirt. He was actually a tourist, came up on a motorcycle, hiked up to the lookout, back down and gone. It’s the Incredibles in the green pants and grey-blue shirts I’m talking about.
They’re firefighters, crew of a) Plumas National Forest Engine 323 and b) Oak Creek Fire Rescue and they were work animals, I tell ya! Jeff knew who to talk to in order to get these two fire crews reserved for this day’s project and they were prompt to the task. They were on the clock, good for them of course, and we did have pizza brought up as added incentive. Were it not for them, as you will see on down below, today’s work would never have happened.
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And, you just know I gotta get my mug into the act, yeah? Hey, I did make three trips up carrying a small load (and a fourth actually, empty, looking for photo ops), which necessitates at least that many down, which also meant I did carry something somebody else didn’t have to carry, but in complete candor those three/four trips were nearly more than I could manage. To make excuses I will say that I’m not in as good of physical shape as I’ve been in the past and have put on weight in the past few years, mainly due to an emergency intestinal operation I had a couple of years ago, and the elevation was 4,000 feet higher than Quincy and therefore not being acclimated I felt the difference in lower oxygen level, especially due to the labor of the climbs, and hey, I am sixty-nine years old after all, hardly a spring chicken. But my heart was in the right place even though obviously I had left my brain at home.
Gawd. Those two boxes in front of me hold nails for a nail gun, they weigh at least fifty pounds apiece. All I can say is Thank You again to the firefighter crews. Note the cut through the rock to the upper right in the photo. Stone masonry steps used to be there, but they were completely degraded and unsafe so were removed. Steel beams for a set of stairs will be going in that place in the future.
I’m including this cropped photo of me to show that my red backpack holds a Platypus water bladder (you can just see my drinking tube), about two liters, and I added electrolyte tablets to the water so I purposely could stay fully hydrated. I thought of this before I left home, of course, when I still had a brain.
NOT A PRODUCT ENDORSEMENT. But these things really do make a difference. So many times in the past I’ve gone out and done some strenuous work and not kept myself hydrated with electrolyte and the result has been horrible leg cramps and hand cramps for the next twenty-four hours. This time, no cramps. Note: tablet shown is about the diameter of a quarter and is scored so it can be easily halved. It is recommended to add two tablets per liter of water. FYI, other flavors (and brands, of course) are available.
The last hump. In the future, where these people are making a line there is going to be a set of stairs on steel frames. We already know these steel beams, four of them at about twelve feet long each, weigh about four hundred pounds each. Just how that hump is going to happen neither Jeff nor I know. All I can see is at least eight people per beam, maybe with side-by-side teams of two, holding a strap under the beam and just humping a couple of feet at a time or something like that.
The old masonry stone steps through this cut were completely unsafe and were removed last year. You can go back to the first photo of me, in front of the lookout, to see the cut through the rock where the steps used to be.
The fellow in the “civilian” clothes is Jeff, the chief of the project.
As industrious as the noble and magnificent ant, the fire crews (about a dozen people, but I didn’t take a head count) made it all happen. Note Jeff, on rock below lookout, in proper supervisory position.
Work Animals, I tell ya!
Heave, ho! Heave, ho! Up, up, and away!
Ummm…. to Infinity and Beyond?
Just in case you are wondering why I didn’t clamber up that small bit of rock to get inside or around the base of the lookout building itself and take some photos from there, I’ll tell you why I didn’t: I suffer from fear of heights and get vertigo looking down over high ledges. So until the stairs are in place I may never get any farther than where the lady with the sunglasses is standing. I can be content with that if need be.
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I did say there would be a nature connection. Here’s the photographic proof of that. For all that I could manage.
Uncertain i.d. Perhaps Townsend’s Solitaire
Ah, but this one I knew the instant I saw it fly into the tree at about fifty yards line-of-sight from where I was sitting. Clark’s Nutcracker, and the second-only time I’ve gained a photograph of this species. They are not to be seen down at the relatively lower elevation of Quincy, 3,400’ a.s.l.
After all the materials had been carried up to the lookout and the pizza arrived for the crew, since I can’t eat pizza I walked down the spur road a bit looking for critters and birds to photograph. I was really hoping to spot a Chickaree, more properly known as the Douglas Squirrel, but heard only, not seen this day. My fingers were also crossed for a sighting of a Marmot, but that was not to be either. Oh well. There’s lots more work to be done and so I’ll be going back before too much more time has passed (or at least that’s the plan) and so hope for further nature photo ops up at this marvelous locale.
Now it’s your turn. What’s been happening in your world, nature-wise? Please let us know in the comments and share your location and any photos if you have them. Thanks!
