The Highway 49 Yuba corridor is my playground. I am actively searching out gold mining claims to sell, so I am getting to know it better and better, week by week.
I agree with the previous post for the Gold Lakes Basin Campgrounds. Paved Roads, and beautiful campsites. We like to camp at the Lakes Basin Campground and hike to maybe a half a dozen small lakes situated nearby. But I sure all the campgrounds are nice up there.
I just "discovered" Camptonville this last winter. Normally the foothills are a very dry, oak filled environment. A friend of mine took me out looking for claims and I "discovered" that Camptonville, if you get off the main road, looks like being in the redwoods. Huge trees, ferns all over the place and it feels like you are in a dark forest on the coast. I have never seen any other location in the foothills that looks like this. If you want a beautiful place to camp for a while, a friend of mine and I filed a mining claim on a great camping spot near Camptonville. Drive north out of Camptonville about 3 miles to Joubert's road on the right. It's a really nice gravel road and drive maybe 6 or so miles out it and you will come to a creek that has a huge beautiful camping spot on the right. Big trees, nice creek, shady. Perfect location to spend some time.
If you in for a little adventure, I have another claim near Tyler Foote Crossing on the Middle fork of the Yuba. You will definitely need high clearance, and 4x4 would be a good option. Tyler-Foote is a 10 foot wide road that was carved out of a near vertical 1000' foot high cliff in the 1900's by Italian Stone masons. They literally drove steel rods into the rock cliff and stacked rocks on them to make a road. It is a one lane road, very windy (2 mph max) VERY slow drive, but is spectacular. No guard rail, and you can literally spit and hit the middle fork of the yuba river 1000 feet below. Warning- do NOT take anything larger than a passenger van on this road or you will most likely get STUCK in a location where the only option to extract your vehicle will be with a Chinook Helicopter. When you encounter another vehicle on this road SOMEBODY needs to back up to find a spot wide enough to let the other vehicle by- and most likely one vehicle will be jacked up on the hillside to allow this to happen. This is NOT a road you want to pull a trailer of ANY SORT- there is nowhere to back up or turn around. Trust me on this. If you come in on the south side of the river, you may not need 4x4 to get out. Down by the bridge, the road gets pretty rough, and coming out on the north side it is steep, but pretty flat road-with a couple of switchbacks where you will have to back up to make the turns. There is a great camping spot right next to the bridge for a couple of vehicles. The river is beautiful at this location and you won't see many people. To find this: off highway 49 traveling north, turn right Tyler Foote Crossing Road (3 miles up the road for the So fork yuba crossing). Go roughly 8 miles on pavement up to where you see a California Division of Forestry Fire Station on the Left side of the road, at the next left turn, make that turn. Stay on that main dirt road for about two miles and you will come to a 3 way "Y" intersection- go straight and it will immediately head down hill. You will know you are on the right road when you see a yellow sign stating a load limit. As you travel down the road, it will start to get narrower and narrower and then you go around a corner (and there is no turning back) as you are now on a 1000' vertical cliff. Amazing road, I have no idea why it isn't on some sort of tour site. ONCE AGAIN = MAJOR WARNING- DO NOT TAKE A TRAILER OR REALLY LONG VEHICLE ON THIS ROAD- If you do, you will be a major news story in the area and most likely the laughing stock for years to come (not to mention you may plug up the road so I cannot get to my claim).
One other warning for this area. In the spring time, TICKS are thick in here. I typically wear light clothing, and when I am walking through the brush, I stop every 100 feet to flick 30 or 40 of them off my pants. The ticks start to disappear around late June. Go to google earth and view the photos people have taken of this part of the yuba- very rugged and spectacularly beautiful. Where the camping area is, it is ok to pan for gold on the river at the bridge and upstream. It is private property owned by Sierra Pacific ind, and pretty much all the river you can see from the road from the bridge upstream is open and available to poke around. There is a beautiful swim pool below the first big switchback on the north side of the river. If you continue up the dirt road on the north side of the river and follow it upstream, it will take you to Alleghany, a small VERY RICH gold mining town that is quaint, to say the least. If you go up there on the weekend of June 19, they are having a mining celebration and if you sign up ahead of time, you can tour a famous underground mine, the 16 to 1 gold mine.
I probably need to stop writing now as it is starting to look like a novel.
