Yolo County High Point Trip Report

Little Blue Peak

Date: February 6, 2002
Author: "Hang Dog Ted"

This route description assumes you are coming from the town of Lower Lake, California and are at the junction of Morgan Valley Road and Rieff Roads.

At 0.7 mile from the Rieff Road turnoff you will see a wooden, hand-painted sign on your right that says "Road Closed Deep Mud Ahead." This sign is permanently fixed. The sign should be ignored unless there has been recent heavy rain. Assess road condition, as you feel necessary. At 1.9 miles you will encounter a house on your right and "No Trespassing" signs posted on both sides of the road. The sign on the northern side of the road can mistakenly give the impression that the main county road you are on is private. Be not discouraged, faithful highpointer. Evidently this is an intentional and misleading trick by the house owner.

At 2.1 miles you arrive at the trailhead. There are metal posts and cable on north side of road as a reference point. The obvious jeep trail gradually turns into a foot trail. Follow the foot trail until you reach a point where a very large tree trunk lies across the trail. For further recognition of this balding tree trunk, there has been some erosion under this trunk due to water flow from a small, seasonal creek. This is also where the trail begins to head down into Davis Creek. About a hundred feet past this point you should see a steep, open slope on your left. Hike up this slope and head directly between the two large rock outcroppings (Twin Sisters on the topo). From the point between the Twin Sisters it is an easy, short, northwesterly bushwhack (parallel a dry creek bed) to a small meadow. This meadow is roughly 1/4 mile from the private, maintained road that is near the house. The meadow turns into an obvious deer trail that heads in a northwest direction. This deer trail will eventually lead you to an abandoned jeep track. Keep following the jeep track in a roughly northwest direction. The track will soon fade into bush. Follow game trail through this bush and you will very soon meet the road, very near the private house. Be aware that there may be dogs at the residence. On a previous attempt we heard dogs barking from the house.

Follow the private road towards Little Blue Peak. There are 3 white, faded signs on the right side of this portion of the road as a reference point. Follow this road for about 10 - 15 minutes and you come to an old gate. On the other side of this gate is the 3 foot-deep ravine that Edward Earl refers to in his trip report of October 6, 2001. This gate is evidently a property boundary. The road then turns into an open pasture area. Keep to following the north side of the pasture area (the lay of the land here is fairly obvious) and you will come to another jeep track. Follow this jeep track uphill all the way to within a few hundred feet of Butte Rock. The jeep track then makes a very sharp turn to the right at Butte Rock. Very shortly you will come to a junction where the track goes steeply down hill to the west and another track goes uphill towards Little Blue Peak. There was a white sign on the uphill track that was visible from this junction as of February 2002. Take this uphill track and from above you can see the saddle and the road going uphill to the summit of Little Blue Peak. As you hike up the obvious road from the saddle you will encounter one last intersection (3 way). It is a very short trail to the top of Little Blue peak and it is the trail on the right at this intersection. The trail has become overgrown with brush but presents little, if any, difficulty.