Bizz Johnson NRT — Devils Corral to Goumaz

Lassen National Forest

(map link)

I enjoyed my time on the Bizz Johnson National Recreation Trail yesterday so much, that I decided to try the other direction. It's the same easy railroad grade until it gets to the crossing of CA-36. The train went right across this highway that didn't even exist when the tracks were built, but the people get the only piece of this trail that is not considered accessible as it drops down to cross under the bridge, then climb back up to the railroad grade above, both at greater than 3% grade.

Gate upon arriving at the CA-36 right-of-way. Trail drops downward to the left. The actual old grade has already gone to the right.

Looking up to the CA-36 bridge over Susan River (and the moon below it)

The railroad bridge and the old Lassen Highway bridge

Trail gets back on grade just before the biggest bridge over the Susan River. It comes with a lovely interpretive sign about the bridge that includes a lot of pictures. The railroad bridge was the first of these, built in 1913. Only the center was steel then. Symmetric wooden trestles connected the steel to the ends. The bridge below that is so obviously of WPA era is actually from 1923 when the Lassen Highway was built. The wooden trestles didn't give it enough room, so the west side had to be replaced with more steel. It was abandoned in 1955 and the right-of-way was acquired for the trail in 1986. They decked it and put up railing in 1988 and you could cross it on the historic wood trestle and steel mix up until it burned in 2000. (You better believe there's a picture of burning trestle with a helicopter ready to dump water all over it. Californians love that sort of thing once the burning object has been rebuilt.) Everyone got moved over to the old highway bridge, the one that's even older than it looks, for the next decade until some new steel beams were added and the bridge finally became symmetric once more.

The crumbling 99 year old concrete bridge from the partly rebuilt 109 year old steel bridge

It's a long way down from that bridge. I bet from 1955 to 1988, there were a lot of folks enjoying an increasingly giddy crossing on this bridge, or at least a sit out as far as you could go. On the far side, I met the burn. The burn I bumped into the day before was the tiny 1-4 Bizz Fire of 2021, but this is a somewhat larger Hog Fire of 2020 that would be with me for most of the hike with varying effects on the surrounding trees. Through here, charred trunks stood tall, brown needles still hung on fire killed trees while others were still green at the very top. Bad, but not devastating.

Good and bad: Pretty river, columnar basalt on the far side, and badly burned trees with some burn piles below them

In this section, the trail passes on the 150 foot wide railroad right-of-way. I wandered over to the edge of the river to have a look, finding it marked frequently with posts with no markings. These quite likely mark that right-of-way. There's more on the other side.

Edges of volcanic rock on the far side of the Susan River (and scattered fire killed trees)

From the river below to a lovely singed tree to scattered fire killed trees to a devastated area at the back

The land is used for grazing cattle and there's plenty of trails from them. No danger confusing theirs with the Bizz, though!

The nearby ranch with buildings at the far end of the flat, cows dotted about, river flooded by beaver dam and the trees down in the pool at center were all clearly chewed off by the mammals

I passed a NW 1/16 section corner on my way into the forest. This was at one of many gates with a passage at the side for trail users. There seemed like a lot of random gates although none were a hinderance.

Miles are marked off by rails set in the ground with numbers welded on

Odd rock features due to the area's volcanism

They're among a lot of fire killed trees where the river is a small green line below the black char and grey ash

Salvage logging in progress

There's a lot of old metal trash along the side

Interpretive trail? Oh, Ranger! says find the brochure and map at any Lassen NF office, BLM in Susanville, or the trailhead kiosk in Westwood

The burn was, well, quite a lot. It was nice to get to an area where the trail had acted as a break, so half the trees were still there and untouched except for some small incursions. Then I passed out of the area of fire.

The topic of #18 might be the earth fill "bridges" for the minor tributaries through here

Just like the bridges, the culverts are historic

Interesting hard rocks and harder bands of some intruding quartz in a very soft rock the railroad cut through

The anti-earth fill bridge and stop #17 on the interpretive trail

I found a good section with autumn on display as I neared Goumaz.

Susan River with some yellowing trees at its side below the evergreens

A bit more yellow along the Susan River

The oddities in how the leaves yellow on these black cottonwood

Crossing the last bridge before Goumaz and there's a beaver dam on the Susan River

Next stop, Goumaz. There's a sign below it to note that this was an important maintenance station and water stop and was probably named for a Swiss fellow who settled in the area in 1866. It had the "best water" on the line coming from Bear Creek

Another little bit of shelter for the traveler waiting on the train to mark the trailhead at Goumaz Station

I had a look around the nearby campground. The water was just turned off and when I turned the handle on the water fountain, it briefly burst forth before stopping. Winter is coming. The kiosk had a better collection of information than the one at Devils Canyon including a better map. That's the one that told me about the 150 foot right-of-way sections, plus showing them. They flank Devils Corral within half a mile on both sides, it probably ought to mention them.

The last bridge even if there is one more to the west. One might miss this interpretive sign while going west

So I turned around, dreading all time miles of burn, but also wondering about the mounds of mountains with names and sometimes benchmarks that I might wander to the top of.

A particularly popular wild buckwheat with butterfly and bumblebee

Crossing back through the burn

There's always at least a little bit of green

Interesting shapes the water comes up with

I stuck to the railroad grade on the way back instead of the bit of down and up. This was easy enough since there wasn't much traffic on CA-36, but the one gate wasn't quite so easy to navigate.

Susan River from the tall bridge

I headed off to Goumaz Campground after and probably should have had another little go at whatever I could finish of the Susan River Canyon before it heads south. I had had enough of the burn and didn't know I'd already walked through all of it. It wouldn't even be coming back for more, at least not within the canyon. Although there were clues ("Hog Fire Closure" sign on a road on the way) that this wasn't Dixie (all encompassing, but only almost made it here in 2021) there wasn't any signal to check on such things at the campground. Maybe I'll take a quick through hike on it one day. I'll have to try to get hold of the interpretive brochure first. I wish it was common to have those available online.


*Lassen 2022 photo album*




©2022 Valerie Norton
Written 27 Dec 2022