My fiance Beth and I left Phoenix on the 21^st and flew into Sacramento, arriving in the evening. Our plan for this Memorial Day weekend was to explore the areas on and near the northern California coast, with Fort Bragg as our main destination. Beth had lived in Fort Bragg and she was eager to revisit her old stomping grounds and show me around. Both of us were eager to enjoy the cooler weather, with temps in the Phoenix area already in the 105 range. After arriving in Sacramento, we got our rental truck and drove about 80 miles north on Interstate-5 to Willows, the Glenn county seat, where we stayed the night at a Super-8. The plan for the 22^nd was to spend a leisurely day driving up and over the mountains that lie in western Glenn county, and to nab Glenn's highpoint along with Mendocino county's highpoint later in the day. At least that was the plan...

Gassing up in Willows just before we left, I could see a fair bit of snow still capping the highest points along this range. I figured it'd be patchy snow and not be a problem. The planned route would be CA-162, a highway that heads into these mountains, degenerates into a forest road for 35 miles, then resumes its life as CA-162 on the other side in Round Valley, near the town of Covelo. I had called the California Highway Patrol for road conditions and was told that there were no closures to report. I explicitly pointed out the dirt intermediate portion, where the highway designation is dropped, but was not lead to believe in any way that the road was closed. So off we went. We took CA-162 west about 20 miles out of the flat Sacramento Valley, through some beautiful grass-and-oak covered foothills, then came out to a junction, which we followed north shortly to Alder Springs Road on our left. Here, right at the turn, was a "Pass Closed" notice. Well... we'd driven this far and had nothing better to do so we chanced it and went in anyway. Turning left (west) onto Alder Springs Road (still concurrently marked as CA-162), we headed progressively deeper and higher into the mountains. The CA-162 designation ends at the Mendocino Forest boundary about 5 miles in, but the pavement remains for another 10 miles afterwards. Views are spectacular, and we stopped at one overlook/pullout to gawk at the valley below. Eventually we came to the end of the pavement. We drove further along the dirt road. No one was coming down from opposite direction; the only hint of activity we saw were some bicyclists. Finally, a National Forest truck came rumbling down toward us. I stopped them and asked for conditions, and we were told the pass was snowed in and closed. Any normal person would have turned around, but Beth and I figured we'd go see for ourselves, so in we continued. A few minutes later, as we started to see sections of snow for the first time, we came upon a plow crew just relaxing on the side of the road. We asked them if the road was open, and they said yes, that they'd just plowed it open! Talk about getting lucky with the timing- we figured had we been an hour earlier we would not have seen these guys and would have had to have turned around because of the snow.

So flush with a bit of nifty luck, I carefully drove the truck up the newly-opened road, still soaking wet with a snow-mud mix. The further we drove in, the deeper the snow got; in places the drifts were higher than the truck. Finally, after 32 miles since we turned onto Alder Springs Road, we came upon the Black Butte spur road. Normally, in dry conditions, one would drive up this road a mile or so, then hike another easy mile to the highpoint; in all, maybe a 90-minute side trip. And that is what I had planned. I hadn't figured on snow this low this late in the year, and had not packed any basic snow-travel gear like snowshoes or gaiters. The access road was still under virginal snow so I parked the truck along the side of the main road. We got our boots on and packed some food and drink, and started in.

Although the access road was still under snow, the route was obvious as an open path through the trees. There were no footprints whatsoever; Beth and I figured we were very probably the first people to hike this highpoint since the previous fall. Hiking in snow without snowshoes was tiring but not too bad. Mostly we sunk up to our ankles. Without gaiters, snow snuck into our boots and made for miserable discomfort. But we battled on. Early on we saw a fresh set of bear tracks, still very new and sharply defined. We also saw numerous bird and small mammal tracks as we trudged in. In about 40 minutes we covered a mile to the "large parking area", which to us was just a large snowy area. Here the snow was softer and we both periodically postholed, me up to my knee a few times and Beth up to her waist once. Just after the large clearing the gradient grew steeper. Hiking mainly in the trees and generally trying to follow the line of least resistance, we slowly made our way up the moderately steepening slopes. The snow was just a bit more firm herein, which made travel a little less frustrating. The top was starting to come in view through the tree cover, and we had fabulous views out over the hills and valleys below us.

As we neared the top, we came upon a significant section of open snow with steep slopes. Instead of going straight up, it seemed wiser to do a short traverse toward a glade of trees about 100 feet away. As we hiked out amid this section, the snow was much less consolidated and we were literally barging through up to our waists, often making no progress at all. This was very frustrating and we both felt we may have to abandon this attempt. But first, we agreed to get to within the trees then re-assess the situation. Many minutes later, we completed this traverse and relaxed in the shade of a large fir, cold and wet from the snow. The top was now in view, maybe 100 vertical feet above us. Were it not for it being so close, I think we would have turned around there. But instead, we decided to just gut it out. The next immediate section was also mostly brutal postholing, but then, happily, the snow got firmer and the last 70 feet up went quick. We achieved the rocky volcanic summit after about 90 minutes on the route. We took a much-deserved break on top, picking out peaks in all directions. Lassen Peak was the most obvious biggie to our northeast, while Snow Mountain and Anthony Peak were in our immediate view. I signed us into the register, seeing no entries yet for 2003. After about 30 minutes we got the itch to get moving. Coming down went pretty fast as we used our paths we made going up for the descent, too. Only the last half-mile along the flattish walk out went slow as the sun-softened snow was now just getting plain mushy. We arrived back to the truck after 3 hours. both utterly spent and soaked from the snow. After some recovery time, we started up the truck and continued toward Anthony Peak, the Mendocino county highpoint.

Normally, these two highpoints go hand-in-hand as they are nearby. But we'd tired ourselves pretty good and had used up most of our water on Black Butte, so we pretty much deleted Anthony Peak from our plans. Well, when I got us to the junction, I couldn't help myself and decided to drive up the access road (M-4) toward Anthony Peak. First of all, it was virtually snow free... and too tempting to totally ignore. But Beth wasn't too thrilled about the idea. I said let's just check it out. About two miles in the road started to get muddy with some vestigial patches of snow. I drove through one or two patches but was stopped by a larger patch completely covering the road. Just a couple of miles from the highpoint, I decided to do a 18-point u-turn on the narrow road. All was well until I got kind of stuck in soft mud. I had to rock the truck back and forth to get traction and get us out of the mud. With all this we figured we'd better not tempt fate and decided to forego Anthony once and for all (for this trip). Ultimately this was a wise decision as we finally got back into proper civilization in Laytonville on US-101, where we took a cheapy hotel for the night, before they sold out. I'm not too bummed about missing Anthony; if anything, we were both just happy to have showed up just as the road had been plowed open. Our timing was perfect, and we were grateful to get one highpoint. This is a spectacular region and one we both definitely will revisit in the future. Beth suggested we re-do Black Butte when it's snow free, just to see what it would be like. That's why I better marry her quickly!

We spent the next couple of days exploring Fort Bragg and the towns along the coast, and hiking in the Sinkyone Wilderness, or the so-called "Lost Coast". Three days later, we both bagged the Sonoma highpoint.