From November 2023 to April 2024, I made a series of trips up Walker Ridge Road, just east of the county line separating Colusa and Lake counties. This road follows what is called “County Line Ridge” on the scanned topo maps, “Walker Ridge” by locals–at least on the Colusa side–and Molok Luyuk, the Patwin name given to these hills by California’s first peoples, descendents of whom still live on sovereign native land in the surrounding areas. A recent push by a coalition of conservation and tribal groups is seeking to restore the Patwin name of Molok Luyuk, which translates to Condor Ridge and honors the original range of the California Condor, an important animal both to American environmentalists and to native cosmologies. I’ve chosen to use Molok Luyuk in this writing to honor the ridge’s importance to indigenous Californians and to support the cause of conservationists looking to protect and expand this public land.

Underlain predominantly by serpentine soils, Molok Luyuk is known among geologists and botanists as a living classroom and one of the most biodiverse regions in the state of California. In some ways, it serves as a microcosm of California: nutrient-poor soils that encourage selection of endemic species, creating a unique chapparal biome that appears desert-like in character, despite its location in the coastal range and wet winters. Numerous small watersheds drop down the ridge from either side, many of which are spring-fed and sulfurous. Wildflowers are abundant in the springtime. Thermal activity, particularly strong around Sulfur Creek, feeds Wilbur Hot Springs, a resort that can be reached from Bear Valley off Highway 16. This same thermal hotspot sustained many other resorts during Lake County’s heyday as a resort destination. Hikers can expect to smell the sulfuric aromas of volcanic hot spots. Erosion along Walker Ridge Road, which traverses the entire ridge (in varying conditions passable in high clearance vehicles) reveals evidence of the great tectonic changes that created California.

The ridge, which divides the counties, also denotes the extent of the original national monument area. Due to county level resistance, particularly among ranchers and residents in the western foothills of Colusa County, the Obama administration excluded Molok Luyuk from the original executive order establishing the monument, despite being contiguous with the monument and already in the care of the Bureau of Land Management. In May 2024, after years of lobbying, the Biden administration used executive authority to expand the monument designation and officially included Molok Luyuk. As with any order undertaken by executive action, its fate is ultimately in the hands of future presidential administrations.

Molok Luyuk is something of an unusual case, even in this multiuse national monument. It burned extensively in the last twenty years, first in a series of 2008 fires and again during the 2018 Ranch Fire, which merged with the River Fire to become the Mendocino Complex Fire. At the time, this 400,000 acre-plus fire was the largest recorded in California history, only to be surpassed two years later by the lightning-ignited August Complex, which burned just north of Molok Luyuk.

Most of the infrastructure on the ridge relates to fire management. The walking and OHV trails were created to maintain fire lines and contain wildland fire. But they now have a second life as trails that are rugged and meandering, bringing adventurous visitors to countless points tucked into the rige’s complex terrain.

There is no easy access to Walker Ridge at present. Walker Ridge Road, which motorists can find on Highway 20 just past the county line, is passable for the most part but necessitates bobbing and weaving between deep gullies created by running water in the winter. Much of this road is washed out or nearly washed out, and mud tends to linger through the spring. Generally speaking, the northern terminus of Walker Ridge Road, which continues on to Bartlett Springs and day use areas along the northern edge of the Indian Valley Reservoir, is more easily passable, and the nearby county roads are better maintained. I drove the length of the ridge in early April 2024. Deep treads from OHVers using the road after rain have degraded the surface of the road immensely, and it is in bad need of repair.

From the northern end, a five and a half mile drive up the road through dense chaparral–which seems to have filled in much of the area that burned in 2008–brings motorists to a three-way intersection (loosely speaking; it is a large gravel clearing). The left-hand turn is in better shape as of Fall 2023 and brings drivers to the southern shores of the Indian Valley Reservoir. There is a pleasant, tucked-back campground down this way.

For hikers, I recommend parking here and using it as the starting and stopping point for your hike. During my first trip, I followed the road back south a mile or so and picked up a trail that drops down steeply on the left-hand side of the road. Though I visited this area in late October, when the flowers were long gone, the inhospitable “fringe” ecosystem of this serpentine ridge makes it a bonanza of drought-tolerant California endemics. The path is bordered by thick masses of toyon, coffeeberry, and ceanothus. In particular, the toyon berries were fully ripe and a brilliant shade of scarlet, bringing bursts of red to almost every turn.

Below, the serpentine barrens gave way to a winding green canyon–the drainage channel of Sulfur Creek, which flows down into the Wilbur Hot Springs. This glimpse was the first hint of the duality that is Molok Luyuk, by turns red and rugged, green and inviting.

The multi-layered character of the monument is also apparent from the topo maps. Scattered throughout Molok Luyuk are placenames like “Elgin Mine” and “Clyde Mine,” alluding to the long history of mercury mining in the area. Drinking from water sources downstream of mercury mining claims is not advised, particularly in the absence of a strong flow. Sometimes these areas have obvious mining equipment, like tailracings or even trucks, other times they look like nothing more than eroded and overgrown gullies. But they’re a reminder not only of California’s deep history–mercury forms readily near fault zones between the Great Valley Sequence and the Franciscan Assemblage and are associated with hot springs–but also its economic history, as these mines sourced much of the mercury used to process gold during the Gold Rush in the 19th century. It also mimics other episodes in the extraction industries’ treatment of ancestral indigenous land, as in New Mexico, where uranium ore destined for nuclear reactors contaminated ancestral Hopi lands and sickened countless people in indigenous communities.

Droopy California buckeye stand above the creek in this section of trail, their late-season seeds hanging low to the ground. I follow the trail across Fulfur Creek and wrap around a loose serpentine slope. On the northern aspect, mature leather oak grows, a California endemic. Its branches are laden with mahogany acorns. These are true drought workhorses–low the ground, dull green, these diminutive oak trees are like a cross between a blue oak and a shrub. Another great piece of inspiration for the California native plant gardener.

Here, the trail climbs up and contours around to Signal Rock, a huge chunk of Franciscan rock that makes a great resting spot or lunch break. Standing ten feet above the trail, the mottled green-brown rock is reminiscent of the rock formations more prevalent on the northern side of the ridge. I consider climbing the rock but think better of it. More adventurous climbers can probably find a way to scramble to its pointed peak.

I return to the trail, which abruptly shifts to a manzanita-dominated chaparral biome, and will remain so until the end of the hike. On a whim, I make a right turn off the trail onto a fire road, because I can see a patch of cypress, raising my hopes of finding a spring. There is no name for this trail, and it dead-ends at the overlook above Eagle Rock, which sits on the other side of a steep canyon. Molok Luyuk is full of routes like this, optional paths hikers can follow until they feel like turning back.

Along this trail, old-growth, unburned manzanita stands eight or nine feet tall in sections. When mature, the wine-colored bark of manzanita twists and braids around itself, creating a beautiful corkscrew bark like that found in high elevation foxtail pine or juniper, which bends itself around wind and snowloading. I love this plant, and it’s worth walking this fire break just to see it.

Where I suspected I might find a spring, instead I find fully-grown Mcnab cypress. These are beautiful trees, and a sign that there is groundwater here. They have a fresh, piney smell, and when you walk through their branches, green pollen blankets the air. This stand of cypress is especially impressive considering how much of the Mcnab has burned in the last fifteen years, perhaps alluding to the extent of cypress forestation in the past. The ground beneath the trees is soft, compacted pine duff–the best stuff.

Continuing down the fire break, the path terminates in another stand of cypress. The growth is dense enough to obscure the view to Eagle Peak, but venturing around the knob helps to bring it into view.

It’s fall, and the sun is already getting low in the sky. I turn back and jog back down the fire break, following the trail back to Walker Ridge Rd. A group of visitors is shooting at a target where the trail hits the road, and many of the pull-outs are littered with shell casings. Based upon my anecdotal observations, target shooting is a massive source of litter on public lands. Shells and casings can be found everywhere, in every corner–people apparently not caring enough to pick up their own trash. It’s infuriating to see this disregard of public land.

Returning the next day, I started at the remainder of the Clyde Mineworks off of Walker Ridge Road. I’d expected to find some sort of obvious minework, but all it’s really comprised of is a few aluminum pipes running down from a hill. My target on this outing is a meadow in a canyon below the ridge labeled Eaton Springs on the old scanned topo maps. This route is fairly uniform for the most part–long, rolling hills of chemise and red volcanic soil. At the bottom of the canyon, I find a low-lying grassland with a stream running through it, with willows springing up from a tangled, wild creek. In the shade of a gray pine, I run into a friendly man sitting on his four-wheeler enjoying the view. We chat briefly–he’s from Lake County and likes coming up here for the solitude. He laments some of the damage from OHVers using more substantial vehicles called “side-by-sides,” which more resemble armored golf carts with huge wheels to me. He explains to me that side-by-sides are responsible mostly for the erosion on hillsides, as their traction is so effective they can just rip up the slopes. In the middle of our conversation, he also points out a bullet casing from a target shooter that’s almost six inches long. “You could hit someone pretty far away with that,” he says, shaking his head, agreeing that the litter here is disheartening.

When I tell him I’m headed back up to the road, he laughs at me apologetically, and tells me it’s a long way up. Indeed, it is–an 800 foot incline in a mile, with plenty of up and down. It’s a dry, warm fall, and I break a sweat hoofing up the slope. But turning back on this route brings a stunning view of the entirety of Colusa County, straight out to the Sutter Buttes. It’s a beautiful view of the agricultural land of Colusa County, and one I think more residents of Colusa County could enjoy with stronger protections for public land.