Well, well, well. You knew it was only a matter of time before I had a post about the now-famous Schultz Fire. I’m sure, even if you read the blog from somewhere other than arizona (which, based on the stats, about 40% of you do) you’ve now heard about the Schultz Fire.

It supposedly started from a campfire left unattended, or not completely put out up by Schultz tank.

I actually got an email, courtesy of Chris Cameron, of a few pictures of the very start of the fire. I’m not sure if the pics were hers or if they were somebody else’s, but this is pretty much the earliest pictures I’ve seen of the whole thing getting started. It’s also probably one of the last pictures taken of the Little Elden Trail area in what was its ‘current’ state.

Another set of pics from the beginning of the fire are on Dan Greenspan’s site. He was, as chance would have it, on top of humphrey’s when the whole thing was just getting rolling.

The first I saw of it was when we were rolling back into town from gallup.

Everyone has been talking about what’s burning and what’s not. The best map I’ve seen of it (and it’s kept pretty up to date) is from a group at NAU. Here’s the link. You can see a lot of the commonly used trails with the fire perimeters. You can also turn on different layers in the upper right for avalanche paths and areas of ‘intense heat’.

The fire crews have been doing a great job of keeping it away from people’s homes and to my knowledge no structures have been burned so far. The full incident report, along with the absolute latest maps from the forest service are on this page.

The latest major event which was visible from town was a ‘burnout’ that they did yesterday starting around 11:45. We went in to get some lunch and when we came out, it looked like they had dropped a bomb on it. This was a controlled burn behind some pre-constructed fire breaks in order to reduce fuel and hopefully make the fire more controlled.

We actually have a pretty good view of the peaks from the second story of my work building, so I took my camera up and snapped a couple pics. I had the telephoto lens as well, so you can see just how massive some of these ‘controlled’ (maybe ‘planned’ is a better word) burns were. Note the helicopter for scale in the first picture (black speck, left of center).

So what does this fire mean for all of us? Well, as you probably know, in the immediate, it means that there are fire restrictions in place as of wednesday (can’t imagine why it wasn’t sooner. Maybe there’s some rule about public notice before it goes into effect?), and mount elden and the kachina peaks wilderness are currently closed. I imagine they’ll start incrementally opening up sections as they contain the fire and it starts dying down.

The trails that are definitely within the fire right now are Little Elden, Little Bear, Waterline Road, and a large portion of the Inner Basin trail. As Anthony pointed out on FBO’s site, “our trails are not being destroyed”. I actually fear that they’re not being destroyed, but that the first monsoon that comes will be doing some serious damage to them. Anyone ridden Heart Trail lately? I just hope that Little Bear doesn’t turn into something like that. It’s a washed out mess of a trail, and it goes through the old burn area on the side of Elden.

I guess only time will tell. When the trails open back up, we shall find out.

As far as my opinions on the whole debacle, I think we all feel pretty strongly that they catch the people who did this. I know it hurts me to watch this all burn and know that it’s all due to somebody’s stupidity. I’ve heard rumors of people being careless up by the tank the day it happened, and them scoffing at people who pointed it out to them that they didn’t need a bonfire on a saturday morning and should tone it down.

Those people have about 15,000 acres of guilt sitting on their heads right now. They actually better hope that the cops catch them before anyone who lives in Timberline find them first. If the cops catch them, they’re staring at some fines and maybe jail time. If somebody who’s been evacuated from their home for the last 5 days, and will be going back to a smoke smell that just won’t leave catches them, they’re going to be in a world of pain. And I don’t think that any of us are going to stop them.

In fact, we might just have somebody rig up a set of stocks down in Heritage Square for a few days before they get turned over to the cops. We could sell bushels of tomatoes, it would be a great time. That should drive the point home.

What a great punishment, why ever did we get rid of that?

I know that eventually this will all die down, and we’ll get back to our lives up here without the haze of smoke in the air and the vision of flames leaping up off our favorite trails. It’s going to be a changed landscape up there, and I can only hope that we can all pull together to do whatever repairs are necessary to ensure that the trails are in good condition again very soon.

Along those lines, there’s an upcoming workshop on sustainable trail building being put on by IMBA and FBO. It’s on July 17th, and is a half-day of classroom on trailbuilding and a half day of trailbuilding out on schultz creek. Details here. If you are really looking to help out with this whole situation, I think this could be a great way to get involved by gaining some knowledge about how to help fix the damages that have been done.

I know we all feel like we would love to do what we can to help fight the fire, but the reality is that the fire itself is going to last a couple weeks, and the vast majority of us are not qualified to help put it out. However, the rebuilding of the forest and the trails that run through it and we all love is going to take orders of magnitude longer than the time to fight the fire. Fortunately, rebuilding trails is something that is a lot more accessible to all of us. I encourage you to get out there and make a difference.

Just as an FYI, I got an email from the forest service yesterday about the 88, they want some electronic versions of the maps to clarify some course details, but it seems as thought the permit is still moving forward. We may have some re-routes if necessary, but we may just be riding through some different scenery as well. I’ll keep everyone updated as I hear more.

Finally, I’ll leave you with an incredible video that was taken of the fire. It’s mesmerizing.

(BTW, I actually saw this first through Keiji Iwai’s site, but there’s a different name on the youtube one, not sure if they’re the same or not, but this one is embedable)