Bowman, Sawillmil and Faucherie Lake - Trail Report

I've benefited immensely from all of the trip reports and info on here so I wanted to give back a little by providing the rest of you with some insight on a trail I did this past week. My buddy and I originally wanted to visit some sites off Highway 4 (Blue Lakes area) but realized it was snowed in. Thanks to TW, we found out about the Bowman Lake area. I called the ranger district and found out that there was no access to Bowman Lake via Bowman Lake road. A bridge just south of the lake was washed out but there was another way in. We jumped on Gaston Road, just north of Washington, and took that about 10 miles until we hit Meadow Lake Road, then went east for another 10 miles until we hit our final destination, Faucherie Lake.

Gaston is a dirt road, almost any car can handle most of it. 4WD is not necessary. We did find plenty offshoots and detours that 4WD was necessary (and way more fun!) If you're going up this way, I highly recommend getting a forest map or a pdf version of one that you can view on the Avenza app and explore these fun trails. Meadow Lake Road was a bit bumpier. With that being said, a ballsy prerunner driver could probably get away with most of the trail. We did find some puddles and water crossings that 4WD may be necessary for.

Faucherie Lake was absolutely beautiful. We hiked out to Upper Faucherie Falls and it was definitely worth it.

Plenty of dispersed campsites along Bowman, Sawmill and Faucherie Lakes. Definitely, recommend this trip and we'll be going back later this summer.

 

last year you could go the closed way to bowman via the spill creek bed. i did it with a water crossing then the second time it was dry.

 

How was the width of Meadow Lake Road? Was the brush rubbing the truck sides much?

 

As of this past week, the flow is basically dry now so you should be clear to pass through the creek bed.

 

Funny timing, I was just up there this weekend too. We went in at Bowman. The bypass was dry and totally passable, probably even in a stock truck. We did a lot of exploring looking for old abandoned mines. The trails can be tight. Some are definitely more ATV/side-by-side friendly but my truck has been thoroughly pin-striped by Mendo anyway so... yeah.

We stayed one night off the road to Carr Lake one night at Weaver, and I stayed one more night at Sawmill which is awesome. I had originally intended to check out Faucherie but forgot to on my way out. I was also going to check out Lindsey but gave a couple of guys with a broken-down dually (snapped tie-road) a ride down to Grass Valley instead.

I totally agree about GPS. I use Gaia and toggle between a few different layers (USGS, Gaia Top, and Open Hiking) which usually gives a full perspective of the trail networks and also some interesting things to explore (springs, mines, etc.). Also - if you intend to do the Grouse Ridge hike out of Sawmill, the spillway is currently under raging water so there's no reasonable way to access the trail unfortunately.

Also, watch out for the mud. Some spots are a bit deeper than they look.
Full disclosure, I put @moweryaviation 's taco in that mud pit.

 

I didn't drive the whole length but the section I drove was like a super highway. They are actively logging out there and that road is one of the main ones so it's pretty buffed out and super wide.

 

@rpowell25 as @tacomarin said, the main roads (Gaston, Meadow Lakes) were wide but the offshoots I was exploring were pretty overgrown. If you don't want to get any of nature's pinstripes on your truck, I'd stick to the main road

@tacomarin definitely saw your rig on 49 or 80 yesterday. I remember admiring that setup. Thanks for sharing the map. Any particular mines worth checking out?

 

Thanks @tacomarin and @ghostfart! I am new to offroading in the Sierra and am learning a lot from these types of posts. Appreciate the info!

 

I saw a handful of Tacos on the road yesterday. Which one was yours?

We only actually located one of the three mines we were looking for because of GPS ineptitude. The one we found looked like a pretty big operation. Lots of quartz all over the place. Otherwise it was pretty decimated but interesting to think of what the operation would have looked like in the hay day. We were hoping we might find some open shafts to poke our heads into but no such luck. I did find a nice straight six that I'm thinking of swapping to.

 

Nice Report steve, wish I coulda joined you. Looks ideal right now.

 

@tacomarin mine was the silver extended cab with the shell and all of the stickers

 

I remember that one!

 

Must be nice this time of year. I managed to get up to Lindsay lakes last August in my Mazda3 via bowman lakes road somehow. My future father in law didn't think my car and my fiancée's brother's truck would make it up there without 4wd. The initial plan was to leave his Chevy diesel down at a horse trailer staging ground near an abandoned cabin and we'd unload our cars, load into the big truck and head up the last mile to Lindsay lakes campground.

We get there, unload the car and truck, load up the big truck and we're all ready to go until i notice that where there's normally a lock in the driver side door, there's just an empty hole. We find that the truck is unlocked, steering column is all garbage up from someone trying to start it with a screwdriver. The brother makes the mile hike up to camp while we wait and they come back in the jeep they use for hunting. Apparently the truck was only parked there a half hour before we got there and in that half hour we had seen some ohv and dirt bikes go by when we missed the turn off for Lindsay lakes. Meth makes you do some stupid shit, there were an expensive pair of field glasses and an entire book of checks left untouched in the cab. They stole probably all the change out of the truck and then probably bolted when they heard us coming around.

The camping there isn't bad, but that certainly left a bad taste in my mouth for that area.

 

Last June I took the taco down from Jackson Meadows, around Bowman, across the bypass, and up to Lindsay for a night of camping. I was bone stock then, no problems. Beautiful area, and I pinned a bunch of those camping spots on the north side of Bowman for a later date, they looked great.

 

Sweet, thanks for the updates. Looks rad.

 

Awesome post. Thanks