Understanding Old Trails in Stevens Creek Canyon, Part 6

Trying to understand how and why these old trails and roads were built where they were. To do that, I'm trying to find a route up an area of the north side of the canyon where I've yet to find any old trails or roads.

This is a return visit to this small side canyon, just past the first creek crossing, trying to push the route farther up. This is a more north facing ridge. According to the aerial imagery layer, it's mostly free of the Chamise/Greasewood brush, at least if you stay to the stream side of the ridge.

The slope is very steep and very rocky. The large quantity of surface rocks is likely why there's no brush here. I managed to get up nearly as high as I did the week before, where I hit the heavy brush. It looks like I can continue higher up this ridge, so will try that on an upcoming trip. Unfortunately, the weekend following this trip, we started getting a series of pineapple express storms off the Pacific that dumped lots of rain. This raised the water level in Stevens Creek, making the creek crossing too deep for my taste.

I'm finally starting to get a feel for how the vegetation mix changes with elevation and what direction it faces here in the canyon. In most cases, below 1700-1800 ft. elevation, it's impenetrable brush. There is also the sun exposure of the slope. The creek and canyon run from the NW to the SE. Slopes on the north side canyons will be more northern exposures on one side and southern exposures on the other side. Both the Waterwheel Creek trail and the old Ridge Road are on ridges with the northern exposures.

It's this combination of sun exposure, soil type and elevation that all work together to determine what a given slope will be like. It seems that some of the old, likely native, trails were built to take advantage of a favorable combination of factors to produce a trail that took minimal effort to build or maintain.

More to come... Subscribe for more content like this Comment, rate, share & click the bell icon And as always, thanks for watching ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlyEiznfUiQ