Snowmelt is something my sister will never experience in New Jersey. I decided to take her to the far northern reaches of my adopted state, to the Trinity Alps, the fountainhead of copious snowmelt. Topping out at 9,000-foot Mount Thompson, the Alps are not as high as the Sierra. But they've been just as worked over by the mighty glaciers that quarried basins and divides. The Alps are one of the most riven landscapes in California, drained by the Trinity, Scott, and Salmon rivers.
Trinity County is rugged, remote, and beautified by vast tracts of old-growth forest.
It has only five people per square mile, a human sparseness I deemed necessary for someone who lives near the mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel in Union City, part of a metropolis with the nation's densest head count. Our first dunk came just an hour after we'd left the foggy redwood coast at Arcata. We traveled east on sunstruck 299, a highway so blessed with natural beauty it's been designated a national scenic byway. For 50 curving miles we lurched, trying to drive and devour the drama of forested mountains. At last we pulled over at Cedar Flat and found a patch of sandy beach.