Calaveras county's Corral Ridge is located at the east end of the county near the Calaveras-Alpine county line. Earlier in the day I had hiked the Amador county highpoint. Although the two counties' highpoints are about 10-15 airmiles apart, they are located in the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada Range and the road mileage from one to another is about 100 miles via Markleeville. The highway, CA-4, snakes up and over the Sierra Nevada at times a 24% grade and only a lane and a half wide. This went on for 30 miles and I was happy to get past all that. It's not a highway I plan to go back to any time soon!

The access to Corral Ridge is on the north side of CA-4 about a thousand feet inside Alpine county. It's not an obvious turnoff, and I passed it once. There is a small sign inside the entrance that mentions ORVs, hiking, etc. A passenger car will have to stop and park here as the road in is very rough. It would be about a 3.5-mile one-way hike from this point. I put my truck into 4wd but grew weary after only a half-mile on the road. There are lots of rounded rocks to negotiate and I just didn't want to bang up my truck on these rocks. I found a pullout and parked, and set in on foot. It was 6 p.m. and I gathered I had almost 3 miles one-way to the summit. I hoped I would be out by dark.

I started hiking. The road quality improved, then grew bad, and pretty much alternated this way, so driving in further would have been a laborious process. For about the first 1.5 miles the overall gain was minimal. I came out into a meadow and was met by barking dogs belonging to a camping group in the area. The dogs just barked, but didn't try to bite. But they wouldn't shut-up for the longest time. In this meadow the road becomes significantly steeper and sandier (my truck would have really struggled here). After this rise I came to a saddle and a junction in the road. Here, I made a wrong turn. I just continued straight but realized (by my shadow) I was traveling east and not west as I should be at this point, so I turned and resumed the correct trail. After some more uphill bits I came to an old barbed-wire fence, passed it, hiked in the trees for a short while, and finally came out into the open, where I could see the flattish summit about a half-mile to my north.

I decided to leave the road and just hike cross-country to the top, staying near the cliff edge. It wasn't much of a problem except for a profusion of plants with little burrs that caught onto any of my clothing that came into contact with it. I achieved the rocky flat summit area around 7:15 pm and found the obvious biggest rock and stood atop it to claim Calaveras. I didn't stay long as I wanted to get hiking while it was still light. I retraced my route, got barked at again by the same dogs and was back to my truck right at 8 p.m. My socks and my shoelaces were covered completely in these burrs. Rather than laboriously pick each burr off my socks, I sacrificed my socks instead to the great big sock place in the sky. Getting them off my shoelaces was easier. I had some caught in my hairy legs, too.

I bashed my way back to the highway and drove west about 40 miles or so to the town of Arnold and took a hotel. The next day I visited the towns of Angels Camp and Sonora, then made my way back up and over the Sierra Nevadas via Sonora Pass (CA-108), which had grades in the 12-15% range, plus great views. At Sonora Pass is the trailhead for the Alpine county highpoint but I decided to pass on it as I was pretty hiked out: 6 peaks in 3 days. I just drove past it, then took a series of highways through Bridgeport, Mono Lake and Hawthorne (NV) to the city of Tonopah, Nevada, where I met up with my dad for a couple days of exploring the ranges in Nye County. We even got as close as seeing the buildings of the Nellis AFB, but we decided not to incur the wrath of the MPs in the area and just spent our time driving through canyons, hiking, looking at old ghost towns and shooting our .22s.