“One hundred eight degrees in Redding,” the radio announced. That brief message cemented my decision to escape California’s Central Valley and drive west into the Coast Range. Perhaps I could escape the heat by climbing Snow Mountain, the highest peak in the vicinity. It would also be an opportunity to investigate Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument, which President Obama had created only three weeks ago. Before the site made it onto the state maps and attracted more public attention, this could be a good time to see what the fuss was all about.
The monument made a pleasant first impression, with an entranceway framed by low, honey-colored hills coated with soft grasses like the fur of a teddy bear. Its second impression, however, was much less flattering. Beyond the golden hills lay a valley enclosed by singed, scraggly mountains. The slopes were patchy and riddled with ATV trails. If these mountains had a face, it was the face of the town drunk who had cut himself shaving several days ago with a rusty razor blade. It lacked dignity and beauty; why did the president think this place deserved national monument status?
The Antiquities Act of 1906 gave presidents, beginning with Theodore Roosevelt, the power to create national monuments from public lands in order to protect objects of historic or scientific interest. It was meant to be a tool of limited function, used to protect Native American artifacts in the Southwest from being looted by “pot hunters”. Congress thought they were giving the president the equivalent of a slingshot; in reality, they had handed him a bazooka. Two years later, Roosevelt created Grand Canyon National Monument to safeguard a natural treasure when the legislative branch was unwilling to act. The Supreme Court has consistently upheld these proclamations, no matter the size of the area or the nature of the object to be protected. Some of the monuments, like the Grand Canyon and Death Valley, have since been expanded and given additional protection by our Congress as national parks.
Although frequently criticized as a prime example of government overreach, the Antiquities Act remains the trump card in the presidential deck. The mere threat of its use can convince a reluctant or gridlocked Congress to negotiate an environmental compromise. In 1978, President Carter employed the law to force senators and representatives to return to the table and write the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which provided varying levels of protection to over 150,000,000 acres of land. The weakness of the Antiquities Act is that even though the president can designate a monument, he or she cannot allocate the money to fund a single visitor center or employee within it; only Congress has that power.
The creation of Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument came about only after a long campaign organized by a coalition of local cities and towns, Native American tribes, political leaders, conservationist organizations, recreation groups, local businesses and landowners, though I didn’t understand their passion in the slightest until I drove into the upper elevations. On those dirt roads I was surrounded by vast stands of fir and pine where any evidence of logging had long since faded away. The air was blessedly cooler at the Snow Mountain trailhead, so I packed a bag, locked the Jeep and headed for the summit.
The trail crossed several wide ribbons of bluish-green serpentine rock – a curious product of intense pressures that formed millions of years ago when the material lay buried deep within the earth’s crust. In my eyes, the veins of serpentine might have marked where dragons had fallen to earth, leaving slick, polished scales embedded in the strata. The decomposition of the rock had contributed toxic metals to the nearby soils, which led to the evolution of many unique species tolerant of those elements.
Near the top of the mountain, the trail became narrow, and I had to wade past burned trunks through patches of dense vegetation that had sprung up since the 2001 Trough Fire. Branches of thorny, subalpine ceanothus clawed at my legs, making my shins feel as if a school of underage piranhas were nibbling at them. I had difficulty locating the path to the summit, so I had to improvise a route.
Snow Mountain, it turned out, lacked even a hint of snow. It also lacked views due to the forest fires that had erupted in Northern California during the last few weeks. Through the smoke, I saw another outcropping along the ridgeline a half-mile away, and it puzzled me that the point seemed higher than the ridge I was currently on. Then I found the USGS survey marker, which read “West Peak”. West Peak? I thought I was on the higher East Peak!
