EXPLORING: CARPENTER VALLEY

A few miles north of Donner Lake as the crow flies, behind a subdivision, a jeep trail heading toward the Sierra Crest plunges into a dense forest of pines and firs. Threading granite boulders that were stranded 10,000 years ago by melting glaciers, the trail leads to an expanse of golden grasses and a slow winding creek. Migrating birds flit through willows, and the primordial calls of sandhill cranes crack the stillness. This is Carpenter Valley, a long-fenced-off landscape that has recently — and for the first time ever — been opened to the public. There are plenty of meadows in the western Sierra, but not many of them remain this pristine, having been plated with homes or foraged by cattle and sheep. This summer, a 1,317-acre parcel of the valley’s lower section, long held by three families as a private retreat, was purchased for $10 million by San Francisco’s Northern Sierra Partnership, the Nature Conservancy and the Truckee Donner Land Trust. “The Lower Carpenter Valley is a little bit of heaven,” says Lucy Blake, president of the Northern Sierra Partnership, a San Francisco nonprofit group working to preserve lands north of Lake Tahoe. The valley links a constellation of nearby protected areas, including Webber and Independence lakes, Perazzo Meadows and Webber Falls — all of which are clustered west of Highway 89 between Truckee and the Sierra Valley. Buying it is part of the Partnership’s broader mission to dissolve a checkerboard of parcels stamped on the mountains in the 1860s during construction of the transcontinental railroad. “It’s amazing to see the landscape come back together again,” Blake says. Twice a week this fall, through the end of October, as well as next spring and summer, trained docents are leading hikers on a 5-mile route along the North Fork of Prosser Creek in the valley. The apex of the tour is a natural spring at the flank of Carpenter Ridge that produces startling gardens of hillside color. The valley is a haven for migrating birds, including willow flycatchers, of which only 200 pairs remain in California, says Helen Loffland, a meadows species specialist at the Institute for Bird Populations. “They perch on the tallest branches of the willows, and throw their heads back when they sing; their white chins look like cotton balls.” Book a Truckee Donner Land Trust guided tour of Lower Carpenter Valley at http://tinyurl.com/yatwnvqo.