Mulch, Rakes, and Bagpipes
First up tonight is a little email I got from Andy. I’ve raced with Andy a bunch of times, and besides being a damn good endurance racer, he also happens to work for the forest service here.
I hope that the ‘aftermath of the fire’ pics that keep coming across my inbox aren’t too depressing for all of you. I’m a big fan of ‘more information is better’ and I hope that you all agree. Anywho, on with the show…..
Hey Nathan,
Since there has been obvious interest on your blog about the events of the Schultz fire, I thought I would contribute these photos. I have been the contract administrator for the heli-mulching project that is going on right now. Basically the Forest Service has hired a company to spread 1 ton of wheat straw per acre over 2,750 acres of the most severely burned areas on the fire. Here are some pictures of that project. I also put in some pictures of the flood that happened today..
The first 5 pictures are of the heli-mulching operation
The one picture is of a huge dust devil in the burn area
Then the last two pictures are of the flood that happened today on the Schultz pass road FR 420. The one with flowing water is a minor drainage. The second is the aftermath in a major drainage across the road. (The forest service had already pulled out all the culverts in anticipation of these floods happening.)
Feel free to post, or enjoy for yourself.
-Andy
Holy shit. That’s crazy stuff. 2750 tons of straw. In case you were out of the loop, I believe the total tally of acerage burned was close to 16,000. So that means they are spreading straw over 17% of the fire.
I was up on Elden today for a little mountain bike shred after work and was actually wondering if there was something going on, because there was a helicopter overhead about every 10 minutes, I’ve gotta believe they have a lot of choppers up there if they’re moving 2750 tons of straw. Thanks a ton to Andy for sharing with us, and if anyone else has any other pics they would like to share, shoot ‘em on over and I’ll get them up.
On a much brighter note, in case you missed it, there’s an IMBA trailbuilding clinic tomorrow. Should be pretty good, and since I missed the last one, I’ll definitely be attending this one. There’s a classroom session on saturday morning, and then a hands-on session on schultz creek trail that afternoon. I actually think I saw where they’ve already flagged the section we’ll be working on. I admit, it needs to be re-routed, unfortunately this would be the second re-route of that section. Lets hope this one sticks…..
Just in case that isn’t what floats your boat this weekend, there’s also the option of the Arizona Highland Celtic Festival. I didn’t make it last year, but two years ago it was a ton of fun. Doesn’t sound interesting? Two words:
That doesn’t do it for you? Fine, I’ll give you two more:
Whiskey
Tasting
That’s what I thought, I’ll see you there.
Hey, do you have any info on the Rock Rabbit course up here in Flag? I rode it last weekend with friends and HUGE chunks of it were ripped up by the forest thinning process we’re doing up here. Did they even have a race up here? WTH is going on? Do we need to rebuild the course? Thanks for the post about the Schultz restoration and the photos.
- Stephanie Birdwell
Link | July 17th, 2010 at 7:53 am
Stephanie -
I haven’t ridden the rock rabbit course in a couple years, and to my knowledge it’s been at least 4 or 5 since they’ve had a race up there. They used to have MBAA races there back in the day, but since the forest service has been more open lately to having them up on and around elden, I think they’ve kinda passed over that as an option.
Beyond that, I’m not sure what is going on with the forest thinning around there. I know a lot of thinning happens through contract companies who aren’t exactly the most careful with existing trails, so it wouldn’t surprise me if some work needs to be done if it was thinned recently.
- Nathan
Link | July 18th, 2010 at 6:57 pm
This is all part of a massive erosion control project. I road to shultz tank and went for a swim while they were still pumping water into a tanker. The straw goes down and water is sprayed on top of it to keep the soil, relatively, in place. Then I went to waterline road, and found out later it was illegal for me to be there. Is that true? Anyway, what I saw was a lot like these pics. The road is undriveable and (almost) unbikable in some areas where mud/rocks rolled over the road. Be safe out there if you go!
- Kyle Boggs
Link | July 27th, 2010 at 4:02 pm
Kyle –
Waterline and schultz pass road (past the intersection with waterline) are definitely illegal to be on right now. They’ve declared both those areas a ‘kill zone’ due to the amount of dead standing burned out trees just waiting for any chance to fall on somebody. I imagine the fact that the whole area is a massive flash flood danger also has something to do with it. Supposedly sections of waterline road have almost totally washed away, and they are actually scared that some sections will erode back far enough to become potential sites for damage to the actual pipeline (which is under the uphill side of the road in most cases).
I’m impressed that you actually made it up that far without being stopped, as I’ve seen forest service personnel up there every time I’ve been in that direction in the past couple weeks (presumably waiting to write tickets).
- Nathan
Link | July 27th, 2010 at 4:37 pm