grand canyon lodge destroyed by fire

The reason for the trail closures within the Canyon is because the water treatment plant was also destroyed was/is leaking chlorine gas, chlorine gas is 2.5 times heavier than air, and therefore flows downhill.

Certainly in my area, old fire maps and planning no longer apply with drier weather and more insect-killed trees.  Areas that “can’t burn” like high-elevation ground cover now burn and fires spread faster than in the past.

I remember the first time I hiked in the Three Sisters, maybe 10 years ago, I came across a burned area, but it was small and quite a few years previous.  Other than that I can’t think of any recent burned areas that I walked through.

Now, there are recent fires almost everywhere I go.  A much larger area in the Three Sisters.  I walked by the Dollar Lake fire on Mount Hood right when it started, now burned large areas where I hike.  I was at Tilly Jane on Mount Hood and they told me to evacuate because of a fire.  On Mount Adams there was a fire that started the day after I hiked there.  And there had been another fire there a year before.  The Columbia gorge had a big fire – they are just now a few years later opening up some of the trails.  I went up to Hurricane Ridge in the Olympics and there was a fire nearby.  I was just on Mount Jefferson last year and there was a large fire a year before.  I was in the Trinity Alps and there was a huge wall of forest fire smoke chasing me – fortunately I got over a pass which the smoke didn’t go over.

I don’t know if it’s global warming, forest practices, or people are more careless or some combination.

I now refer to https://www.ventusky.com/ to plan hikes to avoid forest fire smoke.  Select “air quality” and “pm2.5”.  They give a few days history and predict a few days into the future.

This literally makes me cry. I visited North Rim last fall during my north to south backpacking trip. On night one, we camped at North Rim and walked down to the lodge, sat on the patio and enjoyed the view. What a beautiful old lodge, with giant old timbers, ironwork chandeliers, incredible craftsmanship. I made a note to someday come back and stay at the lodge with my husband.  They’ll probably throw up a La Quinta or some other monstrously built piece of crap, meant to last 20 years, in its place, since humanity can no longer think to the future, value art, care about nature. I’m just so very sad to see this happen. What a national treasure we have all just lost.

That sounds like timberline lodge.  I’ve stayed there before.

“Now, there are recent fires almost everywhere I go.”

Over 15 years I watched Lyell glacier, the largest in the Sierra, turn into a snow patch.

I’m further south than Jerry but the fires he’s describing are rampant here as well, and have been. One only has to experience the intensity of these fire, an how widespread they are, to understand something has happened to bring this all about. It’s not just forest mismanagement.

I grew up near the Canadian border. My brother lives near Spokane. We both have visited the Stehekin area over many, many years since the early 1960’s. My grandfather’s cabin was there and still is, but it’s passed out of my family’s hands into a wonderful couple who own it now. When I took the boat up lake Chelan  over the last several years, I was shocked. The glaciers I was familiar with over my lifetime had vanished. Sure, I was familiar with fires within and beyond the park. These have become of another order. My brother and I still have relatives in Chelan. Smoke kept us from visiting over the last several years. Too suffocating!  Seriously. The last time we attempted to drive back to Spokane, every route was closed due to fires.

meanwhile, Canada starts burning in early spring.

We’re old and native to the area. this isn’t usual. And it’s starting up in Oregon, which has a ‘bit’ of timber primed to burned.

Jerry… could not find an air quality or 2.5 setting on Ventusky… perhaps you have to sign up for this service???

Here’s a short report about the smoke we are experiencing in Fairbanks these days. In short, there were very few super smoky summers before year 2000, and since then, the frequency and length of time have increased significantly. We are burning ourselves up in real time. And now we can’t even get funding to study it, because the federal government now wants to pretend there’s nothing behind the curtain. Humanity has truly gone insane. And we mock lemmings.

Dwr – that was when I was on PC

For phone you have to click on temp near lower left, then click on air quality

And who knows what would appear on different PCs or phones.

I’ve never signed up for anything, but I’m sure it’s set cookies on my devices which could make things different

There are other apps that show air quality too, ventusky is just one

I just read that the North rim will be closed for the season

1. I was at the North Rim last year hiking with my daughter, we stayed for several days in a cabin. The lodge was fantastic, and the restaurant was better than I expected, and not as expensive as you would think for something that good in the park. We ate there every night.

Monday morning quarterbacking here:  The fire was originally allowed to continue to burn as a controlled burn until it wasn’t.  No attempt to stop it was made until way late.  There was a prescribed burn outside of Santa Fe, NM a year or two that got out of control to the tune of several hundred thousand acres.   It seems the pendulum has swung from old Smoky Bear, put out everything, to let it all burn.  We had a prescribed burn a few miles from our home in CO that got out of control.  No need to worry about a fire anymore, very little left to burn now.   Climate change certainly has not helped these tough decisions.  The AZ politicians are all over the Fed right now.  Having been to the North rim many times, I am sick.

“the fire was allowed to continue to burn…” This is more complicated than it may seem.

–it may be that conditions were benign for a controlled burn and then rapidly got out of hand

–it may be that cutbacks to funding diminished the response time of agencies and crews

–it certainly is true that the forest service has been damned for their old, long standing fire suppression policy, with good reason

–the alternative has been “let it burn” policy in order to slowly, slowly attempt to undo the damage from the previous policy

–whatever might go wrong will go wrong, eventually

–hence, the forest service didn’t “allow” the fire to burn into its current catastrophic dimensions. The fire got out of hand.

Why that is has yet to be determined. Yes, in retrospect, the controlled blaze should have never occurred or been better controlled, obviously. Bu then people would have complained about how the forest service suppresses fires and allows brush and trees to grow beyond self regulation by, yes, fires.

I walked by a smoldering tree.  I called 911.  They said they knew about it.  It would have taken one helicopter of water to put it out.  I assume they just let it burn because it was in the Wilderness.

That went on to burn many square miles, half of cairn basin, a few miles of trail, many trees outside of the wilderness.

Even if many fires are worse because of too much fire suppression in the past, it doesn’t mean we should just let fires to burn.

They should supress fires that will become huge.  Like earlier in the season.  They are pretty good at modelling fires.  Unless those people have been fired.

They should massively increase prescribed burns.  Learn from their mistakes to avoid major out of control fires.  If there are any tribal members left that remember how to do this it would be invaluable. I’ve read about that being successful.

Pendulum has swung from too much fire suppression to too little

This is really sad.

I camped up on the North Rim campground and visited the lodge for a meal not that long ago.  The campsite is fantastic and not far from the lodge.

It was a very beautiful building with nice views of the North Rim.  Sad to see it gone.

I was planning to hike south bound this year, but I had to cancel due to a bridge closure even before this happened.  I can only hope that I can do it next year.  My biggest worry now is the potential flooding that the ongoing fire can potentially cause in the future.

SO damned sad. Two years ago my wife and I and another couple with us shared a “duplex” cabin. So glad we went there before this tragedy. Got lots of photos, fortunately.