Union Valley Reservoir

Before cooking dinner I walked around the curve of the beach, from the arm of the lake by my campsite. Beyond the bend, I assumed, I'd see the main body of the lake and the snowy Sierra ridges to the east.

Granite boulders dotted the beach, and at the high-water mark, shards of granite lay jumbled like fallen dominoes. When you walk across them, they make a unique sound as they grid together, the way gigantic ceramic dinner plates would sound, rubbing against each other in Nuit's dishwasher.

As my footfalls made that sound, a man suddenly sat bolt upright between some boulders. We had startled each other equally. We each thought the other was a large animal, as I guess we were.

He had just finished dinner, and was laying out on the rocks, hoping it would settle. He lifted a paper napkin to his lips, searching for any left-over bbq sauce.

"Sorry I disturbed you," I said.

"Oh, no problem," he fibbed politely. "You camped here?"

"Yeah, a few spots up."

"Was that you in the VW camper? I saw you drive through earlier. Years ago my buddy and I used to go all over in an old VW bus. Noisy as all get out, but we had fun anyway. It looks like they changed some since then."

I sized up the man's camp. Two teenaged sons and wife. Two all-terrain vehicles next to the big Suburban. Inflatable boat with motor. Everything but a generator.

"You had one of the air cooled? Four cylinder?"

He smiled and nodded. I had used up all my car knowledge, but it was enough.

"The campground is awful quiet," he said. "Last year at this time, it was full of people. This place was hopping! Boy, things change!

"We wanted to do some water skiing this weekend, and the boys are going to be disappointed. I'm disappointed! We just left our boat on the trailer, back at the launch ramp. Not much you can do when there's no water in the lake."

I looked out at the nearly empty lake. The beach was a bathtub ring of coarse granite sand that sloped 20 vertical feet to the shallow water below. In the distance, the boat ramp hung out in empty air, no water anywhere near it.

"I'm surprised. Last winter didn't seem that dry." "No, they drew it all down to make electricity. That's all this reservoir is for anyway, is hydro power, so it doesn't matter," he said, looking as though it did matter, to him and his family at least. "They're not going to get much more electricity out of here. This place is used up." "Got that right."

"The other thing that surprised me on my way in was that, on the south end, they logged all the way down to the edge of the lake. I thought the Forest Service didn't allow that anymore."

"Not normally. But there was a huge fire here in '92. The Cleveland Fire, they called it."

Image courtesy of Ray Nutting.

"I heard about that."

"That was a bad one. Killed all the trees, all the way over to Kyburz. It put a lot of guys out of work, really hurt the economy. Although there were two years of boom times first. They cut down all the dead trees, because the core wood could still be cut up for boards. But once they were gone, this area was used up. A lot of this is private land, and the company had a good, long-term logging plan, but after the fire, they had to take all the timber at once. Then they went out of business."

"This will take generations to come back."

"Maybe when my great grandchildren are my age…" He sneezed. "'Scuse me. That fire gave me allergies, too."

I must have looked confused.

"After the fire, they came over with helicopters and spread all the bare acres with grass seed, so the hills wouldn't erode into the lake and streams. I'm pretty sure they didn't use native grasses, because I never had allergies before. I sneeze all spring and summer now.

"Then the other thing they did was spray herbicide over the burn, to keep the brush from coming back. The brush grows faster than the pine seedlings, so it chokes those pines right out. So first they sprayed the bushes to kill everything, then they put in the pine seedlings. That was controversial!" "I'll bet. They must have sprayed a lot of poison to cover this many acres." "What can you do, though? That brush is no good to anybody." "That's the truth."

I came to this camp because an outdoor writer I trust had rated it 10-out-of-10 for beauty. Yes, this campground was one of the nicest I've seen. Tall pines, lots of privacy, camp sites right on the lake, well, when there's some water in the basin. But aside from the campground itself, this place was damaged goods. Calamity Lake would be a better name.

The man gestured toward his camp. "You hungry? We've got some ribs left over." "No, thanks. If I'm guessing the age of your boys right, I'm not sure you'll have any leftovers!" He laughed. "You're probably right. We only cooked two racks of them. Well, have a good evening, then." I resumed my hike around the bathtub ring.

The man gave me his personal view of what happened after the fire. For another perspective, see the Placerville Nursery site. They think the brush fills a niche.

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