Hike of the week: Sagehen Creek

Sagehen Creek
Hike distance: 5 miles out and back
Elevation gain: modest
Difficulty: easy

While hiking or biking through sensitive wildlands, please remember to respect the terrain and the foilage through which you are traveling.

Trailhead: On Highway 89, 6.8 miles north of Truckee. There is a dirt parking area on the right (east) side just past the bridge over Sagehen Creek. There are no facilities at the trailhead and the trail is not marked, but it is clearly visible on the northeast side of Sagehen Creek.

This hike is known for its wildflowers, which peak in early to midsummer. For that reason it will be the first hike led this season, on May 16, by “Wildflower Roger,” who leads wildflower hikes for the local chapter of the Sierra Club. He will especially be on the lookout for Camas Lilies and Death Camas, for which this watershed is best known.

From the trailhead, the path heads downstream through a forest of pines, firs, cedars and junipers, along with the ever present wildflowers. After a little over a mile the trail slides away from the creek just a bit to the northeast through a field of mule ears, which bloom in early summer into a sea of yellow flowers. About two miles in you reach a clearing and a small rivulet, which you cross to reach a meadow that borders Stampede Reservoir. The trail soon disappears, but your destination, the lake’s edge, should be within view, and you can amble the rest of the way there. Return the way you came.

Nearby: Sagehen Creek on the west side of Highway 89 is home to two scientific research stations and a visitors center.

Read here about the University of California’s Sagehen Creek field station, including their underwater observation post where you can see the fish swimming by. Better than Sea World! An excerpt:

Located within the Sagehen Experimental Forest on the eastern slope of the northern Sierra Nevada approximately 20 miles north of Lake Tahoe, Sagehen Creek Field Station has been dedicated to research and teaching since 1951. The University of California operates the station under a long-term, special-use permit from the U.S. Forest Service. The surrounding watershed is also available to researchers and classes through an agreement with the Forest Service and includes extensive stands of yellow pine, mixed conifer, and red fir forests, as well as brush fields, scattered mountain meadows, and fens. Sagehen serves as the hub of a much broader network of research areas known as the Central Sierra Field Research Stations, which is comprised of: Sagehen Creek Field Station, Central Sierra Snow Laboratory, Onion Creek Experimental Watershed, Chickering American River Reserve, and North Fork Association Lands.

Sagehenn Creek is also the site of a US Geological Survey Hydrolgoic Benchmark Network stataion, or HBN. Read more than you probably ever thought you wanted to know about the creek at the USGS website here. An exerpt:

The Sagehen Creek Basin is located within the Sierran Steppe-Mixed Forest-Coniferous Forest-Alpine Meadow Province (Bailey and others, 1994). Vegetation in the basin is dominated by pine and fir forest with grassy meadows along the main channel (Rundel and others, 1977; Andrews and Erman, 1986). The most common trees are Ponderosa pine, Jeffrey pine, Douglas-fir, sugar pine, white fir, red fir, and incense cedar. The basin is about 90 percent forested and 10 percent meadow. Soils are classified as Alfisols and are mapped in the Windy series (Johnson and Needham, 1966). This series consists of deep, well-drained soils developed in material weathered from volcanic rocks that contain up to 90 percent rock fragments. A typical profile has a surface layer of dark grayish brown, gravelly, sandy loam that is 60 cm thick overlying a subsoil of yellowish-brown, cobbly, sandy, loam that extends to a depth of 115 cm. Soils in this series generally are acidic and have base saturation ranges from 2 to 35 percent (Johnson and Needham, 1966).

The oldest rocks in the vicinity of the Sagehen Creek Basin are metamorphic rocks of Triassic-Jurassic age, which crop out west of the basin along the crest of the Sierra Nevada (Lindgren, 1897; Burnett and Jennings, 1962; Birkeland, 1963). The metamorphic rocks, which are mostly banded siliceous hornfels, were intruded by granitic rocks of the Sierra Nevada View of basin from road (A. Mast; 7/91)
Batholith during the Cretaceous age (Bateman, 1992). Tertiary volcanic rocks, primarily andesitic flows and breccias, overlie the older granitic and metamorphic rocks throughout the region and are the predominant rock type in the Sagehen Creek Basin (Hudson, 1951). The Tertiary volcanic rocks contain plagioclase (andesine and labradorite), magnetite, and apatite phenocrysts, and are overlain by glacial till and alluvial deposits (Birkeland, 1964). The till is of Wisconsinan age, based on correlations made by Birkeland (1964) and Richmond and Fullerton (1986), and in the basin probably was mostly derived from the Tertiary-age volcanic rocks.

The Sagehen Creek Basin is almost entirely in the Tahoe National Forest, except for several hundred hectares that are privately owned by a lumber company. Historical records indicate that low-intensity grazing, logging, and wild fires have occurred in the basin since the late 1800’s, and there has been little change in land use since the early 1950’s (Erman and others, 1988). The principal human activity in the basin is hydrologic and biological research conducted by a variety of agencies, including the USGS and the University of California. A biological research station operated by the University of California is located about 0.5 km upstream from the HBN station. There are no impoundments or diversions in the basin. Two dirt roads traverse the basin, but access is limited by locked gates. There is an undeveloped campground about 2 km upstream from the HBN station. Other recreational uses include fishing, hiking, skiing, and snowmobiling. There are no mines in the basin, but extensive timber harvesting occurred between the 1880’s and the early 1900’s. The 10-year projected timber harvest from the basin is 9 to 10 million board feet (D.C. Erman, University of California, written commun., 1998). A sheep allotment of 1,200 units exists for the basin-animals are moved through the basin in August to higher elevations and back to lower elevations in mid-September. The sheep rest and feed 1 to 3 days in each of the large meadows in the basin on the way out (D.C. Erman, written commun., 1998).