Aspen in the Inner Basin of the San Francisco Peaks, October 2011
A quick reminder that this coming Saturday, October 22nd, 2011 is Friends of Northern Arizona Forests next aspen fence workday. It will also be the last public workday we'll be hosting this field season. Full details on where, when, and what to bring are all over on the FoNAF calendar of events page.
Escudilla Mountain, Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, August 2011
So they're finally releasing details about the two people who started the catastrophic Wallow Fire that burned 538,000 acres of Arizona's beautiful White Mountains last May and June. It's a pretty standard story: a couple of boneheads didn't properly extinguish their campfire before they went on a hike, only to find the whole area engulfed in flames upon their return. But the part that caught my attention was the pair's pathetic little litmus test to see if the fire was out before leaving: One of them threw an empty Gummy Bear wrapper on the ashes of the fire and when it didn't shrivel up or melt they decided the fire was out and left.
Think about that for a second: The fate of 700+ square miles of forest hung in the balance for less than a second... hinged upon a freakin' Gummy Bear wrapper!
I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Aspen Exclosure Fence with Young Saplings, June 2011
Quick reminder - Saturday, July 30th, 2011 is Friends of Northern Arizona Forests next aspen workday. We'll be working on a fence out in the Hart Prairie area near the Hochderffer Hills. Details on location and what to bring are available on FoNAF's main calendar page. Unfortunately, I have prior obligations and won't be able to attend this one, which kind of bums me out as it'll be the first public workday I've missed since I got involved with helping aspen trees.
Thunderstorm over Mormon Mountain, July 2011
I don't want to jinx us by saying it out loud, but it looks like the monsoon rains have arrived just in time to put an end to the white-knuckle fire season we've been having here on the Coconino. With the woods lousy with yahoos and the strong winds on top of six weeks of zero precipitation I think we're probably lucky that all we got was the Engineer Fire. Had it not been for that little pulse of moisture in mid-May and the Forest Service imposing campfire restrictions (twice!) I have no doubt that we'd have had our own version of the Wallow Fire by now.
We're not out of the woods yet, but it's certainly looking promising on the monsoon front for the next five days or so. At least this afternoon wunderground.com is forecasting a 40-50% chance for rain each day. Let's all hope that the Forest Service can keep the lid on the lightning-caused fires long enough for the moisture levels to increase.
Weather Underground Radar, Flagstaff, July 3, 2011
Mule Deer, May 2011
Quick reminder: Next Saturday (5/14/2011) will be Friends of Northern Arizona Forests first aspen workday of the 2011 field season. We'll be working on an aspen exclosure just east of Highway 180 at milepost 234 that was damaged by last summer's tornados. We'll be meeting at 8:30am at the junction of FR760 and Highway 180 and carpooling from there as the access road to the exclosure requires a high clearance vehicle.
Details on what to bring, etc. are available at FoNAF's official calendar page. You do not need to be a FoNAF member to participate. I hope to see some of you blog followers there!
Well, it looks like I made it to the front page of the Arizona Daily Sun again. The first time was a couple years back when a Daily Sun photographer took some pictures of my sister and I flying a kite one sunny afternoon at Buffalo Park. That was largely a fluff piece - probably "filler" on a slow news day. This one is not. Cyndy Cole's article is spot on, covering both Friends of Northern Arizona Forests' aspen fence and propagation programs as well as the plight of aspen on the Coconino National Forest. The situation is made pretty clear in the second paragraph:
Without human intervention, it's estimated aspen will largely die out from Flagstaff's major mountains in the next 80 to 200 years, and some areas here have already seen 60 percent mortality in the past decade.
I've written about all this before on this blog, so I won't rehash it again. If you want to learn more about the trouble aspen are in go back through the "aspen" keyword archives, and particularly read my posts Of Aspens, Dams, and Scapegoats as well as Staring into the Face of Sudden Aspen Decline on the Coconino National Forest. Also, there are some good articles available over on FoNAF's "Aspen Program" pages.
Hopefully this media exposure will translate into more interest in FoNAF's aspen conservation projects, membership (you know you want to join us!), and financial support.
A couple of weekends ago before the strange Seattle-like rains settled in I hiked the Weatherford Trail from Schultz Tank and got some pictures of the new-and-not-so-improved viewscape. I hadn't been back there since the morning of the Schultz Fire and seeing how the area had changed was fascinating, a huge relief that all was not lost, and heartbreaking all at once for me.
It was early - around 7AM - and a little chilly as there had been late afternoon monsoon rains the previous afternoon. The light breeze, so very unlike the strong, dry winds the morning of the fire, was damp and carried along with it the smell of wet charcoal. At times it was very strong. It was a visceral kind of smell, the sort of thing that testifies to very recent bad happenings on a large scale.
As I walked slowly across the Schultz Tank dam and then looked back towards the north where there is an unobstructed view, the damage to the area became sadly apparent. I knew it was going to be bad and had tried to prepare myself for it, but the distant views from town and momentary glimpses through the trees on the drive up Schultz Pass road had not given the full impact. I felt like crying as I tried without success to reconcile my memories of that place with what I was seeing. Except for an area on the south slope that was strangely spared, Schultz Peak is very badly toasted.
Looking to the northeast you can see charred matchsticks in silhouette along the ridge line. Beyond is total devastation.
The southwestern flank of Schultz was deliberately back-burned the last active day of the fire. At the time, watching vast plumes of black and gray smoke rising into the sky, I thought: if sacrificing what is left of Schultz Peak means that Weatherford Canyon, Doyle Peak and Freemont Peak will be spared then so be it.
So fucking be it.
But after seeing the high price of that terrible, pragmatic choice I'm suddenly not feeling so great about the deal we had to make...
The Forest Service tried as best they could to keep the flames from burning too hot - and I suspect that they largely succeeded as the back-burned areas along the lower Weatherford Trail are expertly done and will recover in short time. Still, there are a lot of torched trees up there that won't be coming back any time soon.
During the drive up to the Schultz Tank parking lot I couldn't help but notice that none of the dispersed forest campsites along the way were in use. Not a single one. Of course, it might've been the rain keeping the campers away. But we all know what the real reason is, don't we? The area is spoiled now -- burned to hell and washed clear down to Doney Park in biblical-style floods that have ruined many peoples' lives and even killed a little girl. The people who've been using and abusing this place for years have no reason to go up there any longer. I guess they'll find somewhere else on the forest to play (southwest flank of Mormon Mountain, maybe) and the clock will start ticking anew...
I hate to end on such a down note so I will leave you with this one last picture from Schultz Tank:
That mother Mallard would've been sitting on a clutch of eggs around the time the fire was raging. I can't believe that she didn't abandon those ducklings, what with the big Sikorsky helicopters drawing water from the tank and chaos breaking loose all around. Life always finds a way, I guess.
If you haven't heard the news already, a 5,000+ acre wildfire is burning at Schultz Pass near Flagstaff, AZ. Here is a pano I stitched together of the smoke plume as seen from Sawmill County Park, taken around 5pm tonight (click for bigger version):
Schultz Fire, Coconino National Forest, June 2010
Details on the fire itself are sparse tonight. At least as of 9:45PM the InciWeb report for the Schultz Fire isn't showing any maps or location info. But judging from the position of the left-most smoke it looks like we've already lost the back side of Schultz Peak, which means Doyle Peak could be next to go. I hope I'm wrong about that, though. I really do.
This picture of Schultz Tank, taken this morning around 9AM when I hiked through that area on my way up to the Sunset and Oldham trails, may literally be the last picture of the tank before the fire consumed the area:
Schultz Pass, Coconino National Forest, June 2010
There were several ducks paddling around on the far side and many Violet-Green Swallows swooping and diving. It breaks my heart to think that there may be nothing left of this beautiful area but glowing embers and smoking, blackened soil tonight.
Goodbye, Western Bluebird. I hope you made it off the mountain...
Schultz Pass, Coconino National Forest, June 2010
Higher up on the Sunset Trail I photographed this aspen stand:
Sunset Trail, Coconino National Forest, June 2010
If reports are correct and the fire is burning on both sides of Schultz Pass road then these beautiful trees are almost certainly ashes by now.
This Western Tent Caterpillar - one of the ones I photographed a couple weeks ago and who I returned to check up on this morning - is probably dead tonight, too.
Western Tent Caterpillar, Coconino National Forest, June 2010
Later in the afternoon on my hike down from Elden I was given a front row seat to the horror show.
Here's a slurry bomber flying over Elden on its way to make a bombing run at the fire:
Schultz Fire, Coconino National Forest, June 2010
And here's another pic, this one taken just before I turned off Sunset and onto Oldham. It is this image that makes me think that the Sunset Trail and the north side of Elden is gone... gone... gone...
Schultz Fire, Coconino National Forest, June 2010
The above pic makes it look like I was stupid-close to the fire but actually I was at least a mile away and had a tall ridge between me and it. Sometimes the super-zoom camera can make stuff appear a little too close! Still, I was worried the wind would shift so I wasted no time making tracks down the mountain and getting the hell out of there.
Tonight I'm grieving for the all the trees and the wildlife burning up there. I've spent so much time hiking and biking that area these past two years that I feel like it's almost my second home. I'm worried about Doyle Peak and Weatherford Canyon and what the light of tomorrow may reveal. I'm worried about the neighborhoods over by highway 89 that are in the path of this monster. I'm worried about the Second Chance Center. And I'm worried about my coworker and her pets that lives near there and who was evacuated this afternoon.
Goodbye Schultz Pass. The old you is passing away, leaving only memories of green and good hikes and these imperfect jpeg files on my hard drive. The new you will be very different.
[ NOTE 9/17/2010 - Five weeks after I wrote the above I returned to Schultz Pass. My account of what I saw can be found at Saying Hello to the New Schultz Pass. ]
Thursday night the roof of Bookmans Entertainment Exchange collapsed under the weight of tons of snow and ice. This is a huge super über-mega-bummer as Bookmans was hands-down the coolest store in Flagstaff. JoAnn's, the fabric and crafts store next door also had its roof collapse, which is a bummer, too. Fortunately both stores were closed at the time and no one was hurt.
The entire middle and left portions of the store appears to have fallen in. I'm sure the water damage is extensive.
I work nearby and sometimes at lunch I like to pop into Bookmans to browse for birding books or to dig through the philosophy section and skim through the words of Plato or Pirsig. Years ago, back when Linux was still cool and new, I remember attending the first Linux User's Group meeting in Flagstaff at the Bookmans cybercafe. Sometimes there'd be quirky musicians playing up front or impromptu children's book readings in the kids' section back by the computer programming books. And if you didn't feel like going to a bar or a movie on a Friday night you could always count on Bookmans to help you kill a few hours.
Most of the books lining my home bookshelves are used books purchased or traded from Bookmans. Where the hell else are you going to find a copy of Heinlein's Red Planet or Russell's History of Western Philosophy in Flagstaff? Many of the DVDs I've accumulated over the years are from there, like my copies of Alien and Serenity. When I didn't need my USB ice-cube tray Macintosh keyboard anymore Bookmans took it off my hands and gave me some cool 'A'-trade credit that I used to buy a whole stack of books and DVDs with. And once, while paying for Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel I got into a spur-of-the-moment discussion with the guy behind the counter about agriculture in the ancient Americas. Man, you just don't get that kind of thing at Barnes and Noble.
God, I hope these guys bounce back from this. I'm missing them already...
EDIT: 1/26/2010
I just saw on the Bookmans Flagstaff page that Bookmans does intend to repair and rebuild at the current location. That's great news! I just hope it doesn't take as long as it did for Hastings to reopen. I dunno if I can wait 6+ months for a Bookmans fix!
I get the A.Word.A.Day daily e-mail and today's word seemed eerily fitting to my current mood:
nihilarian
noun: One who does useless work.
Perhaps the folks at wordsmith are trying to tell me I need a vacation?
