Mt. Lola / North-Central Sierra Nevada
“Exercise, not philosophically and with religious gravity undertaken, but with the wild and romping activities of a spirited girl who runs up and down as if her veins were full of wine.” - Lola Montez
THE MOUNT LOLA TRAIL
It’s mid-September and there’s a light rain in the Deer Creek watershed this morning. Pluviophiles are ecstatic and the aroma of moist and earthy petrichor is positively swoony – meanwhile it’s snowing on Mt Lola. A few days ago it was warm and we hiked to the summit from the east side so that’s what this blog will be about. Mount Lola, at 9,143 feet is located in the extreme northeast of the South Yuba watershed and is its highest peak. Immediately below and to the west is White Rock Lake. On the east and north sides of Mount Lola, Independence Creek and Coldstream Creek flow to the Truckee River.
How to get there:
To get there take Highway 89 north from Truckee for 17 miles to the Jackson Meadow Road. Travel west for 2 miles to the well-marked Independence Lake turnoff. Drive 0.7 mile and cross the bridge over the Little Truckee River, then take the first right. This road is a segment of the historic Henness Pass Road. Drive 3.2 miles to the clearly marked trailhead and parking lot at Perrazzo Meadows.
This 5.4 mile long trail (one way) ascends Cold Stream Creek, a tributary of the Little Truckee River. At the lower segment there is some logging evidence but there are also wildflowers and beautiful Cold Stream Meadow. Above the meadow the slope becomes steeper climbing through stands of red fir and mountain hemlock. Right alongside the trail is the largest red fir that I’ve ever seen.
Coldstream Meadow
From the eastside Mount Lola is a 2,500-foot climb, and worth it. As for degree of difficulty, well that depends. This hike was an epiphany for me – when I last hiked this trail three years-ago I don’t remember it being particularly strenuous but now that I’m older (much older that most people reading this) it was difficult for me. Men don’t want to admit that their performance is fading, but for me there was no denying it, and I had the realization that I might not do this hike again. While I was humbled by the mountain and my own mortality, it didn’t diminish my experience, but my knees hurt. From now on I’ll be factoring my own frailty into planning for future hikes. All things considered this is valuable information for keeping hiking pleasurable for as long as possible.
Coming up the East Side of Mt Lola
The views from the summit are fabulous. On a clear day you can see Mount Lassen to the northwest and the distinctive Sierra Buttes in the same direction but only 20 miles away on the North Yuba River. To the west are Grouse Ridge, Fall Creek Mountain and the Black Buttes in the Grouse Ridge Roadless Area. Looking south you can see Basin Peak and Castle Peaks, and along the summit continuing southward to Donner Pass and Tinker Knob. To the east is Mount Rose and to the northeast is Sierra Valley. At the base of Mount Lola is White Rock Lake to the southwest and Independence Lake to the east.
White Rock Lake is the highest body of water in the South Yuba watershed. Originally it was an aboriginal campsite, then in 1850 it was dammed when the water rights were claimed for gold mining. The Pacific Crest Trail passes just south of White Rock Lake where there is a 2 ½ mile spur trail that ascends about 1,300’ to the top of Mt. Lola.
Dusk on Mt Lola. Looking southwest to White Rock Lake
SURVEY HISTORY
On the summit of Mount Lola you’ll see a small rock structure and may wonder what it’s doing here. In 1878 the newly named Coast and Geodetic Survey was surveying the west by triangulation, using very large constructs known as Davidson's Quadrilaterals with sides ranging from 57 to 142 miles in length. To do this work a station was established on Mount Shasta to measure the side between Mount Shasta and Mount Helena, which at about 192 miles would make it the longest triangulation line ever observed. The line Mount Lola to Mount Helena, one of the sides of Davidson's Quadrilaterals, 133 miles in length, was selected as the base for the triangle.
George Davidson was chosen to make the observations at Mount Lola and Benjamin Colonna was chosen for Mount Shasta. In his journal for August 1, 1878, Colonna described a momentous event:
At sunrise, I turned my telescope in the direction of MT LOLA, and there was the heliotrope, 169 miles off, shining like a star of the first magnitude. I gave a few flashes from my own, and they were at once answered by flashes from LOLA. Then turning my telescope in the direction of MT HELENA, there, too was a heliotrope, shining as prettily as the one at LOLA. My joy was very great; for the successful accomplishment of my mission was now secured.
In the center is the base of the heliotrope used in 1878
This series of flashes, through the wonders of trigonometry, allowed the team of surveyors to accurately calculate that the distance between Mount Shasta and Mount Helena was 192 miles. Colonna was ecstatic about besting the French, and wrote in his journal, “And the glory is ours; for America, and not Europe, can boast of the largest trigonometrical figures ever measured on the globe.” So, these rock features are the foundation for the heliotrope and a shelter George Davidson used while waiting for optimal conditions in the summer of 1875. Positions held by Davidson include president of the California Academy of Sciences from 1871 to 1887, Honorary Professor of Geodesy and Astronomy, and Regent of the University of California from 1877 to 1885. He became the first professor of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley and was one of 182 charter members of the Sierra Club in 1892 and served as a member of its board of directors from 1894 to 1910. This bit of scientific history may or may not be of interest to you, but surely you want to know who Lola Montez was?
Lola Montez 1850
Photo by Southworth and Hawes
Mount Lola was named for the legendary Lola Montez, who was born in Ireland in 1821 and originally named Elizabeth Rosanna Gilbert. As part of a military family she spent her childhood in India and married for the first time at age 16, apparently to get back to Europe. After her first marriage she traveled to Spain and developed a persona as a dancer, named herself Lola Montez and toured northern Europe. She was, by all accounts, a mediocre dancer but what she lacked in talent she made up for in chutzpah. Her fiery temperament, audaciousness and ambition landed her in the company of Franz Liszt, Robert Peel (son of the English Prime Minister), the French newspaper editor Alexandre Dujarier, Marius Petipa (the creator of Swan Lake and The Nutcracker), the Earl of Malmesbury, the Count of Schleissen, Lord Brougham, Jung Bahadur (the Nepalese ambassador to London) and other less notable men.
In 1846 she traveled to Munich and became a dancer with the Bavarian Opera. When King Ludwig I of Bavaria saw her he wrote, “Today I saw Lola Montez dance. I am bewitched. In this Spanish woman alone have I found love and life.” She thrived on scandal and she created enormous celebrity, even inspiring imitators. Some of her biographers claimed that Lola Montez garnered more press than Queen Victoria herself. King Ludwig was totally enthralled, while Lola shamelessly manipulated him. In August of 1847 he made her the Countess of Landsfeld, which assured her a salary, but the citizens of Munich were embarrassed by the foolishness of their King and distrusting of Montez. By 1848, under pressure from a growing revolutionary movement, Ludwig abdicated his throne and Lola fled Bavaria, alone.
From 1851 to 1853 she performed as a dancer and actress in the eastern United States. One of her biographers said that she received higher fees for her lectures than Charles Dickens who was on tour at the same time. Her most popular play was a trite, self-promotional story about her affair with King Ludwig. She then moved to San Francisco in May of 1853. While there she performed her suggestive “Spider Dance” in which she pretended to be attacked by spiders and searched for them in her clothing. Reviews of her performance were pretty bad, but they generated publicity, nevertheless. She married Patrick Hull in July and they moved to Grass Valley, California, in August.
Lola Montez 1858
National Portrait Gallery – Smithsonian Institution
Photo by Henry Meade
Glamorous and boldly unconventional, Lola attracted an enthusiastic following based more on her cultivated persona and her beauty than on her talent – she definitely had her wild side. In the summer of 1854 one of the most famous camping trips of the era occurred in the vicinity of what would later become Mt Lola and Lola Montez Lakes. She, and some companions, left Grass Valley for a sojourn to Donner Summit and Truckee Meadows (now Reno, NV). The party, which included Alonzo Delano, famous humorist and Grass Valley’s first city treasurer, set off with an animal pack train in mid-July and ran into difficulties after several rough days on the trail. The horse carrying the provisions bolted and dumped all their food in a stream. If that wasn’t bad enough, the imperious Lola quarreled with the other campers and antagonized them to the point where many of them left in a huff.
While living in Grass Valley she held salons in which the local intelligentsia gathered to meet artists, actors, writers, entrepreneurs and adventurers. Her benefactor at this time was John Southwick, manager and part-owner of the Empire Mine. By the time she arrived in Grass Valley she had been married twice and had many amorous alliances. She was also fluent in several languages, was abreast of contemporary literary and artistic trends and mixed with Gautier, Alexander Dumas, George Sand, Walt Whitman and others. The salons at her house included rich feasts with champagne. Guests included, businessman Sam Brannan; US Supreme Court Justice Steven Field; William M. Stewart, later a U.S. senator from Nevada; the great Norwegian violist, Ole Bull and humorist Alonzo Delano, among many others. Biographer Ralph Freidman (Lola Montez in Grass Valley, 1951) commented, “…she was probably the least provincial person to ever reside in Grass Valley.” When she left town in 1855, W.B. Ewer, editor of the Grass Valley Telegraph said “Lola is no ordinary person. She is possessed of an original mind, one decidedly intellectual and highly cultivated. She delights in change and excitement and is bound to create a sensation wherever she goes.”
In May of 1855 Lola Montez and an actor named Augustus Noel Follin decided to take a theatre company to Australia where gold had recently been discovered. The foray created more scandal and notoriety but no wealth. In June of 1860, while living in New York, she suffered a stroke that resulted in partial paralysis. She then found religion, but contracted pneumonia and died in 1861 at the age of 42.
Lola Montez, despite her infamy, created her own myth and wrote herself into history by the force of her own personality. The many biographies written about her dwell on her outrageous behavior, but I’m sure she was also charming and interesting to be with. Unlike many other women in the Victorian era, who may have been notable because of their birth, or marriage, she invented herself. Lola Montez described herself best when she dedicated her 1858 book, The Art of Beauty, to “those who are not afraid of themselves, who trust so much in their souls that they dare to stand up in the might of their own individuality to meet the tidal currents of the world.”
Dusk on Mt. Lola. Sierra Buttes to the Northwest
• • •
