During a recent visit to the Willow Glen, a wildlife photographer regaled us with tales of a trip up Highway 70 through the Feather River Canyon and up to Lake Almanor. I was hooked and almost immediately proposed pursuing this lead.

Our crew decided to take a break from the remodeling of the Ames estate (the reason for all of the shit in the background) and headed out:

Getting onto Highway 70 outside Oroville… Do your passing now:

Because soon you get to this region and there exist few opportunities for passing:

Shortly, you get your first good views of the, unfortunately, heavily industrialized Feather River Canyon:

That’s not to say that some of it doesn’t look cool:

And I am a big fan of trains (although not some Union Pacific employees, but that’s another story):

PG&E has a significant number of hydroelectric facilities along the river. This elaborate water delivery system, crossing over several waterways and through several mountains, serves one of them:

The canyon soon narrows down to sheer granite cliffs:

But don’t worry, a number of them are equipped with climbing bolts. I wish I’d brought my gear:

The steep cliffs inspired a number of interesting engineering projects, such as this tunnel allowing a tributary of the Feather River through:

Or this tunnel (one of several) allowing us through:

Of course, the extreme landscape provides for attractive scenery:

And a number of interesting areas to explore such as these caves… Mining? Hydropower? Note the numerous holes drilled for blasting on the left side of the picture:

Despite the beauty of the surrounding mountains…

…And whitewater scenes such as this (Notice Brandon on the rocks for scale)…

…Something nagged at me throughout our trip… It was too many scenes like this:

And this reservoir created by a PG&E hydroelectric facility:

The North Fork of the Feather River felt harnessed and tamed. Emasculated:

Despite many stops, it didn’t take us long to arrive in Quincy where we paused for lunch:

Back on the road, it wasn’t very long before an all too familiar sight filled the rearview mirror… Fortunately, Brandon’s military ID carried the day and we were let go with a warning. Brandon has been pulled over three times in the past month and a half and I have been pulled over twice. Number of tickets Brandon has received? Zero. Number of tickets I have received? Two.

Now on Highway 89, we pressed on with renewed urgency:

Speeding through the snowy forest:

We made it to Sierra Valley in short order. There is far less snow this time than our previous visit here, but that did not prevent two of the routes we were going to take home from being closed due to high snow levels:

We still found time to stop for interesting sites such as this abandoned sawmill:

And these views of the Sierra Buttes:

Sierra City with a lot less snow this time:

A solid day, but I have to say that I prefer the more wild Yuba River…