CSERC Blogger

It was tough leaving Yosemite Valley on Saturday where the waterfalls cascaded over the spectacular granite cliffs as the snow melted in the high country. As beautiful as it was, the descending spring break crowds spurred me back to the Groveland area to stay with friends for the night, leaving the Merced watershed and hoping to find a more quiet corner to hike in the Tuolumne River watershed the next day. There are so many corners of this County that I have yet to explore, so I was excited to find a new trail, hoping for some sun and wildflowers. Luckily, my friends had a great suggestion: to hike along Cherry Creek and the Tuolumne River on the Andresen trail.

This particular section of Cherry Creek flows downstream of Cherry Lake where it meets the Wild and Scenic Tuolumne River, both drainages regulated by Hetch Hetchy Water and Power. This stretch of Cherry Creek and the Tuolumne River is referred to as the “Cherry Creek run”, one of the most difficult commercial sections of whitewater in the state. It is upstream of the more popular whitewater run referred to as “the T”, which starts from Lumsden Road and travels through 18 miles of spectacular scenery and whitewater ending at Don Pedro Reservoir.

The Andresen trail starts just below the Holm powerhouse, on the north side of Cherry Creek, where it meanders through large, moss covered canyon live oaks that cling to the hillside. Calling this drainage a “creek” is an understatement this time of year. Cherry Creek in late March was raging and crashing over boulder gardens with some seriously impressive rapids. It looked like a river to me, which got us to wondering…at what point does a creek get named a river? Hmmm…

We carried on through the filtered shade of the oaks where the poison oak was just starting to leaf out a deep red color that warned us to watch out when taking a closer look at more interesting flora like the western hounds-toungue. As the trail opened up, we admired the glowing green of the leafing buckeyes, which, with the ceanothus shrubs, dominated this hillside. The trail continued above Cherry Creek and soon we were to the confluence with the Tuolumne River and hiking above the river canyon. We traveled up and down through popcorn flowers, blue dicks, fiddleneck, prairie star, and poppies, over mossy drainages and granite steps. We stopped often to listen to the calls of the canyon wren or to notice a distant raptor catching a current high above the canyon.

Soon we came to Jawbone Creek, which raged down the hillside before dumping into the Tuolumne River below us. This posed a formidable barrier and we decided to eat lunch on the boulders at the creek, rather than trying to cross during spring run-off. We were deafened by the sound of the raging creek while we relaxed before turning back.

Rebecca Cremeen, CSERC planning specialist