On September 6, we saw some smoke coming up the ridge from around Auburn area. We knew it was pretty far away - but with the dry conditions in the Sierra and the beetle-blight trees, our little community started tracking the fire. The start point was close to Foresthill, a mountain town across the North Fork of the American River from us. Only the smoke from the fire has touched us and we feel for the people over by Todd Valley, Michigan Bar and Foresthill who may have lost their businesses and homes. Our new camp lake (at least new to us) is close to Foresthill and we were concerned that it would get burned as well. Also the most north stand of Sequoias is in the area and we have been wanting to go see that for a long time.
The air quality here has pretty much sucked for the last 10 days. Jim has managed to keep working on the back of the lodge and the new fire escape, while I started moving firewood from the back of the property up to the street to be split and also moved already split wood into our stack bins in front of the lodge.
I continue to trim trees up 6 feet and remove small brush in anticipation of burn days before the big winter snowfall.
Today, things changed. About 15 big dozers and water crews drove down Emigrant Gap Road (Texas Hill Road) headed back to a staging point in already burn scarred Onion Valley. Cal Fire advised us that they will be cutting a large break up on the SawTooth Ridge, which is back behind the North Fork of the North Fork. Although I am glad that they are here to protect us, I wish that the fire was more than 20% contained since it has already burned 70,000 acres of the Tahoe National Forest.
All of this mess can be attributed to a lot of things. Global warming, Beetle Blight, Drought, but the biggest issue in my mind is poor forest management. Most of the wild fires in California occur on national forest land. Land that has not been cleared or control burned in ages. In our area, logging pretty much stopped in the 1930s, leaving us with scrub trees and cedars and little "cash" trees that any large logging company would need to make logging here viable. The National Forest Service has had their budget cut and cut and do not have the personnel to manage the forests properly. Ex-president Trump cut more money away from the forest service and blamed people to live in forested areas for not "raking the forest". Glad he is gone - but it is time for Congress to step up and allocate more money to forest management (which means either more taxes or tax money taken away from other things). If something does not change, the only management we will have are they enormous wildfires.
Anyway, off my soap box and time for some other updates. Many of the people here at Emigrant Gap and Fulda Creek have put together a neighbor contact group on Signal (an app that is rather like chatting for groups). Since that started, quite a few people have started showing interest in our area's history. I have referred them to the pages on our blog and to the various historical groups around Colfax and the summit. There is also a big interest in old hiking trails, waterfalls and missing narrow gauge train engines. So, I have started digging into the past, once more to help those interested learn more about the logging companies here at Emigrant Gap and Fulda (a town that was once between Emigrant Gap and Blue Canyon). So far, we have found a few contacts that know a bit about the possible missing train engines and the whereabouts of old track (see Stories from the Summit for new photos and information on the logging in the area).
For hiking trails, I referred our Signal Members to Russell Towles amazing website and quite a few people have now followed in his footsteps, relocating hiking trails that have not been tended in ages. This is great!!!! Many, many photos are being posted about these adventures!!!! One of our greatest adventurers is our own next door neighbor. He, and a group of hearty EGers, have belayed, hikes, swim, droned etc a lot of the trails described on Russell's website.
And finally, with the resurgence of interest in the History of Emigrant Gap and our area in general, I have gotten back in contact with Jim White (one of the authors of Stories from the Summit) and hope to interview him soon.
So that is our update for this week. Temperatures are already changing and believe it or not - it may snow next week. Hoping for a very white winter and an end to this hideous drought.
View of Mosquito Fire Cloud (illuminated by sunset).
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