Sheep Camp Summer

In the last three weeks, I've had occasion to visit three High Sierra sheep camps (two in the vicinity of a research project I'm doing, one as the destination of a backpacking trip). Actually, now that I think about it, I've visited a total of five camps - three historic camps and two current (working) camps. I guess this is probably a sign that my professional and personal interests overlap to the extent that one is indistinguishable from the other. Perhaps that suggests I'm boring; I prefer to think that I'm fortunate to be doing work I love.

Wheeler Sheep Camp is located near Kyburz Flat on the Tahoe National Forest. Some of the original buildings (now gone) were built by Martin and Felix Gallues before 1921. The Gallues brothers, like many of the sheepherders of the 20th century, immigrated from the Basque country. While the camp was in use, it included a main cabin, a horse barn, a tack shed, a chicken house, sheep corrals, and a brick oven for baking bread. Today, only the oven remains. It was restored by a professor from UNR in collaboration with the Tahoe National Forest in the early 1990s - and it can be reserved and used for baking bread!

I've visited Wheeler Camp several times before; this summer, I have a research project in the neighborhood. I'm working with the current sheep grazing permittee - Talbott Sheep Company from Los Banos, California, to study livestock guardian dog behavior in an open range grazing system. Talbott Sheep Company turns one of it's sheep bands (1000 ewes) out in the meadow south of Wheeler Camp. Luis, the herder with this band, set up his first camp (a travel trailer) within sight of the old oven at Wheeler.

The Whiskey Creek Sheep Camp is located in the Granite Chief Wilderness west of Lake Tahoe. No longer in use, the buildings at the site today were originally constructed by the Ibarra brothers from Reno in 1959 (according to the Forest Service). Reno's Basque community has since restored the cabin, storage building, and oven.

My youngest daughter, Emma, and I backpacked into Whiskey Creek last weekend. The first part of the trail, from Alpine Meadows to Five Lakes, was crowded both coming and going. But as soon as we passed Five Lakes and entered Granite Chief, we saw very few folks on the trail. And once we set up our camp near Whiskey Creek, we only saw two other parties over the course of three days.

The cabin and store room at Whiskey Creek are log structures made from lodgepole pines harvested nearby. Both buildings have tin roofs; the store room includes screened cabinets that would have been sheathed in wet burlap to keep food cool. The highlight of the camp, though - at least for me - is the oven. While the interior of the oven is lined with bricks, the external structure is made entirely from dry-fitted granite. It's beautiful - and it looks like you could still bake bread in it today.

Whiskey Creek Camp sits just south of Squaw Peak on the banks of the creek for which it's named. I was struck by the fact that the Ibarra brothers were packing supplies and material into the camp at the same time the U.S. Olympic Committee was improving the ski hill at Squaw Valley - the 1960 Winter Olympics took place just over the mountain!

My favorite camp, however, is the historic camp at Russell Valley northeast of Truckee. This camp, which includes several cabins, an amazing sawdust-insulated cold box, a barn, a water tower, and an oven, is considered an "archaeological site" by the Forest Service - a regulatory way of saying it can no longer be used by sheepherders! My friend Chooch, foreman for Talbott Sheep Company, can remember staying there as a kid (Chooch is a little younger than I am, I think, so this would have been in the late 1970s and early 1980s). Set in the timber, the camp looks north across a beautiful meadow. Talbott's second band of sheep is usually unloaded just up the road - and the modern-day sheep camp (again, a travel trailer) is nearby. My research project will take me by the Russell Camp every week until late September!

Raising sheep (or any livestock, for that matter) has historically been a nomadic occupation. The sheep have always followed the green grass. In our small-scale foothill operation, this means we move the sheep to irrigated pasture in the summer. For larger-scale operations like Talbott Sheep Company, the idea is similar, but the annual migration is much longer. Our sheep winter between Lincoln and Auburn; they summer near Auburn. The Talbott sheep winter near Los Banos, spend the spring in western Nevada, and summer north of Truckee. Grazed without fences, these sheep must be actively managed by herders who stay with them day and night. The logistical necessities of tending sheep that far from home have always required camps - and before the advent of supermarkets and Walmart, these camps had to supply all of the needs of sheepherders. How fortunate that some of these old camps still exist!

Tuesday evening, I stopped by Kyburz Flat to change GPS collars on the livestock guardian dogs in Luis's band. As he rode his ATV back to his camp to retrieve a collar, I sat on a rock at the edge of the meadow to watch the sheep graze. Wheeler Camp was a mile behind me; Russell Valley Camp was four or five miles to my south. The only sounds were birdsong, the occasional bleat of a ewe, and the rhythmic ringing of a sheep bell. I think I could get used to sheep camp life!