Italian Bar - North Fork of the American River

From Italian Bar 2007

My son Michael and I went on seven backpacking/camping trips this last summer. This was the first trip of the season on the weekend of June 2, 2007. The Italian Bar trail starts at Humbug Ridge off Foresthill Road and descends about 2400 feet in 2.1 miles down to the North Fork of the American River. We now know what the US Forest Service means when they classify a trail as "Most Difficult" :) It took an hour to descend and two hours to hike out the next day. Remarkably enough, we didn't see too many people there.

This is gold country, and we found the entrance to a gold mine by following a pair of small ore cart rails. We went inside the mine a short distance until I got a little creeped out by it all. You could see seams of gold-bearing quartz in the walls. We picked up a chunk of quartz, broke it open, and found real gold flakes inside! They made a nice little memento from the trip. We also found gold mining equipment left over from the gold rush lying around, including an ore-crusher about the size of a truck. It's hard to imagine how they got the equipment there in the first place!