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UPDATE News is out that the public meeting
on Bittercreek Wildlife Refuge will be held in Cuddy Hall, Tuesday,
September 30, starting at 6:30 PM. Biggest points of contention
are whether cattle grazing should be disallowed entirely, partially
or as usual. Use of proposed prescribed burns is also worriesome.
Please do try to be there, if not to speak, to learn.
The plan is available on the Internet at: http://www.fws.gov/hoppermountain/index.html
. Public comments should be submitted in writing to Bitter Creek
National Wildlife Refuge, P.O. Box 370, Maricopa, CA 93252. Comments
can also be emailed to Refuge Manager Mike
Stockton at mike_stockton@fws.gov
Dana Bleitz of the Southwestern Herpetologists Society featured speaker for our SATURDAY October 6th meeting.
This is a program for everyone (yes indeed, your children and grandchildren will love it too)…and those of you who have squeamish feelings, this reintroduction to these animals will give you a broader , more appreciative view of our neighbors. Those who have experienced the programs Ms. Bleitz presents have nothing but high praise for their experience
Ms Dana Bleitz is a member of the Southwestern Herpetologists Society, a nonprofit corporation in Southern California dedicated to education concerning herptiles (reptiles and amphibians), to conservation of reptiles and amphibians, and to cooperation between amateur and professional herpetologists in promoting the study of reptiles and amphibians. (lizard, snake, turtle, tortoise, gecko, skink, monitor, frog, toad) She will be accomanpied by some live specimens.
Preceding the program will be the traditional 6 PM Potluck. Please bring a dish to share and your own tableware. The program will begin at 7PM. The Pool Pavilion room in the Pine Mountain Clubhouse is
the meeting place. All are welcome, members and non-members of the Sierra Club.
Silver Creek Community Center, 7011 Harris Road, Bakersfield CA 93313
COMING UP IN OUR AREA ARE MANY OPPORTUNITIES FOR YOU TO SPEAK OUT ABOUT PROPOSED LAND DEVELOPMENTS! YOU NEED TO KNOW SOME OF THE BASICS OF CEQA LAW THAT GIVES YOU THE POWER TO REVIEW THESE PROPOSALS AND TO PRESENT YOUR VIEWS AS TO ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS IN AN EFFECTIVE MANNER.
CEQA (California Envionmental Quality Act) is the statute that requires state and local agencies to identify the significant environmental impacts of their actions and to avoid or mitigate those impacts, if feasible. AND it is the legislation that requires there be opportunities for the public, you and me, to have opportunities to speak our piece.
How to be truly effective in preparing presentations in regards to a project, written or oral, is what this workshop is all about. A lawyer experienced in CEQA lawyer will guide us through the basics of the CEQA law with emphasis on what are the important points to be looking for and how the various elements of this law have been interpreted in the courts. In addition, we will learn how the new requirement of taking into account the effects of global warming is being treated.
This type of information will help you know what to look for in the prepared documents in order to enable you to write a truly effective letter of persuasion to public officials as to your concerns. Just saying you don’t like a project doesn’t cut it.
To sign up for this workshop go to Planning and Conservation League Home Page and you will see Workshops. Click along and you will get to more details and an opportunity to register. The cost of the workshop is $35, which includes a copy of the newly revised PCL guide to the law. If you are not on the web, call Justin at this number to get details as how to register, etc. 916.313.4506
Please call 661.242.0432 for further local information.
This workshop will be well worth your time. Do plan to come!
Sept 27 (Sat) Here we go again–another try at Thorn Peak. 8 AM, PMC parking lot. Really a great hike with great views on all sides, and even of the Pacific Ocean on a clear day! Strenuous but well worth it. Call Dale 661.242.1076 to let us know you are coming and for more info.
Oct 4 (Sat) SNAKES Herptologist from LA ZOO (and snakes plus) presenter. Pine Mountain Clubhouse. 6 PM potluck 7 PM program
Oct 11 (Sat) SPECIALTY: Hungry Valley State Park Expedition. Meet 8:00, PMC Parking Lot First we will visit the Native Grasslands Management Area in Hungry Valley State Park. Before the coming of the Spanish, large areas of California were covered by native perennial bunch grasses. The grasses adapted to an annual cycle of burning and regrowing, but could not withstand the heavy grazing by the herds of cattle and horses introduced by the Spanish and American ranchers and the tilling of the soil to grow crops. Most of California's native grassland areas disappeared once non-native plants species were introduced. Despite the many years of use for farming and ranching, Hungry Valley is home to one of the finest examples of native grasslands remaining in California today. The Off-Highway Motor Vehicle Recreation Division is committed to managing and preserving the native grasses.
Our second stop will be an easy half mile hike to this 60 acre natural preserve in the northwest area of Hungry Valley SVRA. Here a natural seep provides water for immense 600 year old valley oaks and native grasses that can not be found growing together anywhere else in California. To protect this unique plant community for future generations to enjoy, this small natural preserve is permanently closed to OHV use.
We are very fortunate to have Kim Matthews, the park‘s expert environmental scientist who is very imformative and speaks with spirit and wit to be our guide. If you are coming from other areas, exit at Gorman, turn west to go North on Peace Valley Road. The Hungry Valley entrance will be less than a mile on your left. It is well signed. Call Mary Ann Lockhart, 661.242.0432 to sign up and/or get more information about this trip.
Oct 25 (Sat) 8:30AM SPECIALTY: Condor Viewing at Bittercreek National Wildlife Refuge.This is first a wonderful drive west of PMC on Mil Potrero to the Refuge. There we will meet Mike Stockton, Refuge Manager, who will take us to view a feeding area for the Condors. Meet 8:30 at PMC Parking Lot. Return time: about noon. Little walking. You MUST make a reservation. Numbers limited. Call 661.242.0432
Nov 29 (Sat) Craft Fair Pine Mountain Clubhouse, 9AM until ? Nice time of year to drive up to the mountains and do a little holiday shopping. All kinds of booths with a large variety of products of all kinds to fill your holiday shopping needs. Our Condor Group will have a booth featuring Sierra Club goods and local created tidbits for sale. It’s a great way to support Sierra Club activities.
Dec 6 Holiday Party More news about this via postcards. Please just save the date.
There will be no more hikes until spring. Hunting season keeps us out of the woods and weather conditions are too uncertain as winter approachs..
On Sunday, August 10th , the District Ranger Tom Kuekes of the Forest Service conducted a tour in two parts, first in the area of Grade Valley Road, with the aims of displaying a portion of the effect of the Day Fire of 2006, and explaining Forest Service policies in regard to forest maintenance and fire control generally, and then adjourning to a spot just west of Pine Mountain Club to explain a campaign being carried out in that vicinity. John Kelly, formerly Forester of Los Padres National Forest, gave a preliminary presentation, after which Kuekes, District Ranger, Mt. Pinos District, and Greg Thompson, specialist in forest management, were responsible for the rest. A group of perhaps thirty-five people, several of them members of the Condor Group, attended.
The preliminary power point talk concerned a forest in Baja California which is constituted much like our local forests as to species, rainfall, and to an extent altitude. The area underwent a major fire not many years ago. But pictures showed that the effects were far from the devastation accompanying large wildfires in California; in some places hit by the full force of the fire, large trees were still alive everywhere, and nothing was blackened. Over the decades fires had occurred in the area regularly, clearing out undergrowth and smaller trees, so that those remaining were spaced at very considerable intervals, which on the one hand allowed them to develop more fully, and on the other made the whole forest much more fire-resistant. The message was that this was a much healthier situation, one that we in California would do well to take as a goal.
At the Grade Valley road we were confronted with whole hillsides of dead trees, blackened and stripped of foliage, across the mountainsides to the east as far as one could see, and extending out onto the flatland to the west as far as the trees went. The majority of the trees affected were pinyons, but there were plenty of Jeffrey pines as well. It was easy to see how closely spaced the trees were. Natural regeneration will take a very long time. The Forest Service will do limited reforesting, making sure that the new trees are spaced much wider apart. In time prescribed burns can be used to keep the forest floor cleaner of fuel, though other means of clearing will have to be used while the new trees are still small and unable to survive even a low-intensity prescribed burn.
The group drove several miles down Grade Valley Road, letting the extent of the devastation sink in, but at the same time we noticed that here and there patches of trees, not only Jeffreys but pinyons as well, had survived wholly or partially. We were conducted to a site dominated by a massive mature Jeffrey, clear of branches in perhaps the first fifteen feet, with thick, unblackened bark, in prime condition. The fire had raged right past it without affecting it. This is to be attributed to the distance from other trees and the fact that in that situation the tree had been able to develop fully and become fire-resistant as mature Jeffreys naturally are. Standing alone, the tree had more water for growth and also for disease resistance, for bark beetles and other insects are always present, and it takes a healthy tree with plenty of sap to fight them off successfully. Again the message was clear, that the forest in general must become more like this favored spot.
In the second segment, at a place in the forest west of Pine Mountain Club between Mil Potrero Highway and the large meadow in that area, the Forest Service had begun carrying out masticating operations with some impressive and rather frightening heavy machinery, acting directly to create a thinner, healthier, more fire-resistant forest in the immediate surroundings of Pine Mountain Club, which is considered otherwise to be in considerable danger from wildfires. The machinery can do a great deal more in a given time than personnel in crews, rendering the project economically feasible. The Forest Service has managed to obtain funding specifically for this project, which includes a thinned forest to the west of the settlement and a full fire break right at its western edge, as well as a planned break on Cerro Noroeste.
The large masticator very roughly removes underbrush, small trees, and the lower branches on larger ones. A smaller machine chews up the debris until it is little more than duff on the forest floor. The result still looks rather rough-hewn, but natural processes should make the appearance more normal in a season or two, although much more park-like than before. The network of informal walking trails that Pine Mountain residents have used extensively for decades may be temporarily obscured in places, but walking over them should restore them in short order.
Those of us who observed the sites and heard the presentations felt that the measures being taken are well conceived, more in the interest of the preservation of nature than against it. Surely there is no element here of the alliance with logging which environmentalists often oppose, if only because there is no commercially viable lumber involved. The only thing that may be sold is some of the dead trees as firewood to local residents who will harvest it themselves. Jim Lockhart
No two peak-to-peaks are ever identical. The route is basically the same, the air is always nice and cool at that altitude, and in our era the leader has always been the monster hiker Dale Chitwood, but the people, the weather, and other things vary to make a new experience each time.
On the occasion of the July 26th just past, an unusual number of the participants were new to the hike. And in fact, nearly all of them were women, who surely not for that reason quickly made acquaintance with one another and conversed freely and happily all along the way, giving the whole event its special tone. They also all kept up with the pace very handily.
Perhaps the most special feature of the hike was another participant, Richard Hoegh, resident in Frazier Park, veteran of the Normandy Beach invasion of Europe and long a lawyer in Los Angeles, who we can confidently say is the most senior person ever to have completed the peak-to-peak. Richard admits to having been born in 1921. So future senior aspirants have quite a lot to compete with. What’s more, Richard plans to go next year too. It’s true that Richard and the two sweeps got to the finish line a little later than the others, but that can probably be attributed to the sweeps.
Thunder storms over Mt. Pinos had been predicted for the afternoon, and we took that seriously because the previous year a storm caused the cancelation of the hike. It turned out very well; clouds overhead provided additional coolness and a different dimension to the view, but no storm came. The trail is mainly in good enough shape, but on the long slope on Grouse mountain a number of trees, some of them very large, had fallen over the trail, creating obstacles that perhaps in due course something must be done about.
Some years the hikers encounter a myriad of highland bloom, still in its glory after flowers below have mainly petered out, but most of the route showed relatively little bloom this time, an exception being the descent by cutbacks on the western slope of Mt. Pinos, which was full of Indian paint brush especially, and pleasantly surprised some hikers who had not seen the area in other years. One thing truly was exceptional in the way of bloom, the single-color highland mariposa lilies all along the way from beginning to end, sometimes covering a whole small field in a way we had not seen before.
The much appreciated drivers did their usual great job, which this time included a bit of waiting at the end on the part of a couple of them. A good one for the record, and we already look forward to next year. Jim Lockhart
The chauffeurs: Liz Buchroeder, Fay Benbrook, Harry Nelson, Barb Nusbaum, Mary Ann Lockhart
The hardy hikers and the drivers, after the pre-hike get-to-know-you festivities, set off on the beautiful drive up to the Chula Vista parking lot on Mount Pinos, the jumping-off point for this traditional hike. Dale Chitwood, hike leader par excellhence, soon had everyone ready for the trail, and off they went. Three of the drivers joined the full-trail hikers for a bit of the way. As was expected, they soon fell behind rambling along taking pictures, admiring the mountain mariposas, enjoying views through the trees down to the famous iris beds, and then off to the cars for the lovely return drive to PMC.
12:30 was the time to be up at the hikers’ goal, Cerro Noroeste. The drivers were there. As they waited there was more wonderful picture taking, enjoying music from the car radio, and frequent looking down the trail to watch for the arrival of hikers.
This is the end first! Yes, Richard Hoegh. You have done the math to know he is rightly crowned as the most senior hiker to do the Peak to Peak hike. May we all be so determined as this hiking hero.
When a figure first appeared there was much discussion as to who it might be … Dale’s son? Who? Well, of course we didn’t know how many men there were on..and were not ….on the hike and so it was just wait and see and now you will see him too.
Derek Edwards is his name. First person to arrive at the hike’s goal. He was encouraged to go on hike by a person he carpooled with who knew about the hike Maybe from the Mountain Enterprise, maybe from signs, maybe from just old fashioned word of mouth but we all were glad to have him and all the other great troopers on the hike.
Congratulations and thanks to all the hikers and our great hike leader, Dale Chitwood, and sweeps, Chuck Wright and Jim Lockhart for taking part in this annual trek. Hope we see you all again next year. Richard promises to be there!
THE ANNUAL PMC CRAFT FAIR, SATURDAY, NOV 29TH AFTER THANKSGIVING.
YOUR CONDOR GROUP WILL HAVE A BOOTH
WHY DO WE TELL YOU THIS?
You are invited to be a host or hostess at the booth, create "materials" for sale and Oh yes, come to shop
Can you (and would you? ) make some items representative of the natural world for sale at our booth? Such things as simple holiday decorations, holiday cards, holiday mini gifts …let your imagination soar!! and volunteer for help at the booth. Saturday, 9 to 3 are the available hours for which to volunteer. Please call Mary Ann for more information 661.242.0432
There is more than one election in the wings!
WANT TO BE ON THE CONDOR GROUP EX-COM?
The Condor Group Exceutive Committee is the group of nine that plans the group meetings, the hikes, special events such as the Nature Fest and discusses and responds to current issues of interest (forest and development challenges primarily) to the Condor Group. We currently are meeting once a month on the second Friday.
We would welcome any and all persons to step forward who would be interested in participating as the members of the Ex-com. We are always late in gettiing in our nominations for these positions.
Earthquake Preparedness
At 10 AM on Tuesday, November 13th, millions of southern Californians will drop on the ground, take cover under a table or desk and hold. An earthquake prediction? No but it is one prediction that you can count on coming true. The Great Southern California ShakeOut is on track to being the largest emergency preparedness event in United States history.
You are going to hear more about this in the coming months but you can learn more about why such a program is now.
We all know we live in earthquake country….but there is earthquake and then there is more earthquake country.
In preparation for this program geologists have been preparing up-to-date hazard maps. These have been developed in terms of describing just what are the percentages of serious earthquakes occuring in what parts of the state. Geologists worked last year to put together all the new knowledge gained since the Northridge earthquake. The results are best guesses for the future. You can go to Southern California Earthquake Center, then on to Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast for more details. Hope you aren’t too surprised!
A TRIP ALONG THE SAN ANDREAS FAULTvia the web site about.com. then choose geology
It’s a great trip. …and takes no gas. It has various semi-tours in various parts of California. Our area is entitled 1857 Earthquake Segment of the San Andreas Fault
There are 48 pictures in each segment, each picture accompnied with neat explanations and comments often taken from historical sources. This tour takes you all way from Cajon Pass, over to Gorman, up Peace Valley Road, up Cuddy Valley and on to Pine Mountain Club and finally on to the Carrizo. You will view lots of familiar sights in your daily drives in this area. Now you will know what are their geological significances.
Other geological topics of interest on this website: identifying rocks, fossils, causes of quakes and more
BITTERCREEK WILDLIFE REFUGE, part of the Condor Reintroduction efforts There will be a public meeting in late September in regards to proposed management plans. Please watch for up-to -date information on that meeting and plan to attend. Biggest points of contention are whether cattle grazing should be disallowed entirely, partially or as usual. Use of proposed prescribed burns is also worriesome.
The condor picture above was taken on the porch of lifetime Sierra Club member Les Reid’s home during the time of the Condor "invasion" at PMC in 1999.
BUSH CREW IS UP TO OLD TRICKS: ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT THREATENED
Proposed Change in Rules: Exempt thousands of federal activities from review under the Endangered Species Act; - Eliminate checks and balances of independent oversight; - Limit which effects can be considered harmful; - Prevent consideration of a project's contribution to global warming; - Set an inadequate 60-day deadline for wildlife experts to evaluate a project in the instances when they are invited to participate -- or else the project gets an automatic green light; - Enable large-scale projects to go unreviewed by dividing them into hundreds of small projects. WRITE to Kempthorne with complaints: Department of the Interior 1849 C Street, N.W. Washington DC 20240.
