Smoke smoke everywhere

[Drew Wiley]

Still too smokey for serious outdoor exercise here. It looks like the summit ridge and summit itself of Mt Wittenburg over at Pt Reyes survived, either due to that area routinely being cloud forest damper than the lower areas, or also because the trail as far as Sky Camp slightly below the summit ridge is a well maintained gravel service road. All four trails leading uphill from the Visitor Center area were heavily impacted by fire, as was the Woodward Trail up from the coast where the fire started. Two other trails lying slightly north are in the Vision Fire zone of 20 yrs ago, so did not re-burn this time due to lack of accumulated old tinder. The rest is fairly predictable. A year or two clearing the affected trails of fallen burnt trees, which they were already doing relative to sudden oak syndrome downfall. The coastal strand was mostly grass and lupine, and will recover very quickly. Marshier areas will be a riot of fireweed and other wildflowers over the next five years, and accessible from the Coast Trail. Pioneering species on affected upslopes will be poison oak, wild blackberry, huqe quantities of crowded Bishop pine, then as shade gradually arises, thimbleberries, alder, etc, with burnt snags and probably some surviving firs, just like in the adjacent recovering Vision fire. But on the drier slopes on the Hwy 1 side of the hill, I'll miss the owls and pileated woodpeckers that depended on old dead firs, the majestic old live oaks, colorful madrones, and the wonderfully intricate tree tunnel effects of old fir understory which I so often photograph. But there is still quite a bit of that left on the even longer ridges to the south of Bear Valley, where the fire was stopped. It was up to 4500 acres yesterday, but much of that area increase was due to deliberate backfires set on the grassier areas adjacent residential areas and park facilities. Gosh, I remember working the fires as a young feller. It's hard work, and I can hardly imagine what career forest fire fighters endure, sometimes at the risk of their lives, as you just pointed out.

[Peter Lewin]

Hope this is not political, I don’t think it is (unless possibly you live in CA). Big article in NYTimes on whether insurance companies have to continue insuring homes in fire zones. One side of review said it was needed to maintain a housing market. Opposite view was why should companies insure homes that had burned multiple times. Any views? (Mods please delete if this gets too lengthy or turns political.)

[Drew Wiley]

It's just a fact of life and has been for thousands of years. The politics are a mere footnote to it. California chaparral and certain forest conifers are genetically engineered to readily burn when they're mature; a number of species actually require fire to open their seeds or cones. What has changed is the rapidly sprawling population and decades of intervening fire suppression. And what you need to understand is that huge fires are more frequent not only here in CA, but occurring in nearly all the other Western states too, especially due to the staggering amounts of beetle-killed pines due to warmer winters, and even in enormous sections of western Canada and now clear up into Alaska; even in Siberia and Scandinavia now. Western pine beetles might well reach the eastern and southern US pine forests at some point. Another big problem is invasive cheatgrass in the Great Basin, which burns far more easily than native species of grass. I'll give a personal example. I just couldn't keep up with all the work involved realistically clearing my own mountain property multiple times a year as I was approaching retirement. So as much as I didn't want to, I sold the ranch to a young farm couple with the energy, commitment, and heavy equipment necessary. And themselves being realistic, just like me they have kept many acres clear around them. If you are within a Forest Service jurisdiction, they monitor landholders. Either you clear your mandated defensive space or they come in with a court order, a crew, and appropriately charge you a huge punitive sum. Still, the insurance companies don't keep track of how individuals maintain their private properties except for sake of issuing initial policies. They only draw broad statistical brushstrokes from a distance based on county, zip code etc. And this is in fact more realistic for them because big fires can ignite ashfall feeder fires not only across twenty-foot wide mandated fire breaks, but easily over twenty MILES away. And now with a lot of suburbanization and downright luxury homes worth millions of dollars being built deep into brush and forest, the insurance companies either have to re-strategize, outright default, or devise all kinds of excuses to significantly delay payments, which absolutely has happened more than once. So what they're mostly doing now in high-risk zones is refusing to renew policies, and instead referring former customers to high-risk insurers with obviously higher rates, which tend to actually be subsidiary companies they themselves own! I imagine that will become the trend in places which repeatedly flood too.

[John Kasaian]

The Creek Fire blew up overnight. The campers at Mammoth Pools were told to get in the water, they can't get them out.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/californ...245523200.html

[Drew Wiley]

We just received the report here, John. This one could turn into a monster. The last time there was a fire near Big Creek I saw the smoke in Utah retuning home, and the sky above Mammoth Pass looked like Vesuvius erupting all night long. It's already jumped the River, and it's almost impossible to fight down in there. I was the last kid the little bobtail school bus picked up after daily running the Million Dollar Mile blasted across the cliff (a hair-raising one lane road between two hydro power plants not accessible to the public). As soon as my best friend got his driver's license at 16, his dad caught us loading 600 ft of rope in the back of the pickup and fortunately stopped us. On a hunting trip with him a few days before we were eyeballing a still unclimbed today huge overhanging rotten rock across the River below Mammoth Pool which we named The Stove because it resembled the door of an old fashioned cast iron stove. Sure glad I got in a long hike from Granite Creek into Harriet Bench and the headwaters of the Lyell Fork of the Merced 3 yrs ago. The smoke must be atrocious there now.

[karl french]

Hopefully not. I'm heading up and over in about a week.

[Drew Wiley]

They might not even let anyone up the road. Where exactly do you plan to go? Hwys 120 and 49 were closed for awhile last wk. This is an unusual extremely risky year. High winds are anticipated mid week, and the smoke could spread far and wide. If the fire moves laterally, it would get into the second largest Ponderosa Pine forest in the world, now 95% dead from beetles. This fire is growing exponentially, and it's not going to get controlled anytime soon. That's the second highest canyon wall on the continent, only behind Spanish Mtn on the Middle Fork of the Kings further south. That pinch point in the canyon acts like a venturi, and Mammoth Pass like a sucking bellows. The smoke in Mono Basin and Mammoth could be even worse than last week when it was rising up to around 17000 ft and spilling over even the highest peaks above Owens Valley. The Bishop area was even worse. But on the way back a few days later, the wind direction had dramatically shifted, and Mammoth, Mono Basin, and Sonora Pass had exceptionally clear air, but Owens Valley was still a mess.

[tgtaylor]

That high pressure system is going to swing all that smoke into the bay area. The pm2.5 concentration where I live is now approaching the unhealthy range an midnight and in parts of SF it's in the very unhealthy range. It's really going to be a bad day today when the sun comes out and the ridge moves further in.

Thomas

[karl french]

Not bad in SF yet. The Creek fire looks like a bad situation.

[John Kasaian]

https://www.foxnews.com/us/californi...randed-campers