Placer County Highpoint Trip Report
Date: June 22, 2009
Author: Adam Helman
This effort was part of a larger journey
collecting Idaho, Montana, and Washington county highpoints in late June and early July 2009.
After the 3.0 miles of paved forest road one finds a broad area for parking many vehicles.
From here it is 0.6 mile on a rocky, unmaintained dirt road to the desired trailhead.
To get there, proceed straight rather than turning left (north) on pavement.
At 0.4 mile there is a fork and you must go left. After 0.2 mile one reaches
the trailhead at measured WGS84 (39.29038° N, 120.02688° W) with elevation 8,382 feet.
For a multiple highpointer gathering I recommend parking at pavement's end -
there is simply no room for a half dozen vehicles at the cited trailhead.
Given the road condition, walking the 1.2 mile round-trip will hardly take longer
than driving anyway.
In addition to the now well-known pair of rock outcrops immediately west of the
Tahoe Rim Trail (TRT), there are also a pair of higher rock outcrops roughly 100 yards
farther to the east.
Given the current uncertainty in the exact state boundary, I highly recommend that
one surmount these two outcrops as well just in case they
happen to lie in California.
These two rocky outcrops each rise about 20 feet above the general terrain;
and are separated in the horizontal by about 100 feet along a roughly north-south axis.
The midpoint of this axis has GPS-derived
WGS84 coordinates (39.27973° N, 120.00482° W) with elevation 9,049 feet.
I suspect that the Placer County highpoint may be the southern of the two rock outcrops
which lie west of the TRT.
ON THE RETURN be certain to locate the TRT on the right side of the old jeep road
at WGS84 (39.28384° N, 120.01213° W), elevation 8,616 feet.