Dan's Outside

I go, I see, I do, I walk, I think, I like…

California Wildfire Blogs

Tom Mangan has recently pointed out two interesting sources of insight and information about California wildfires that I would like to share here:

Thanks to Tom at Two-Heel Drive for sharing the links.

September 6, 2007 Posted by | Commentary | Comments Off on California Wildfire Blogs

From the "What Are They Thinking?" Department

As anyone who is semi-conscious and living in California should know, big chunks of the state are subject to wildfires, especially near the end of summer in September and early October. This is on my mind for several reasons today:

When I got up this morning and walked to the kitchen, the sunlight was streaming in through our east-facing kitchen window. The red sunlight. Make that blood red. The sky is filled with smoke from the Lick fire in Coe Park to the southeast of us.

Today the word is that this huge fire – well over 10,000 acres and still growing – had its origin in “human causes” – now said to be some kind of careless burning at a hunting camp outside the park, perhaps trash burning.

Several years ago at this time of year and in conditions not too different from those of this year (e.g. – the whole state is primed to burn.) I was passed in a grassy area of a local train by a group of equestrians… smoking cigarettes!

This time of year, and this year in particular, it is very important that people take the fire warnings seriously!

September 6, 2007 Posted by | Commentary | Comments Off on From the "What Are They Thinking?" Department

Here We Go: Mount Whitney

(Sorry… couldn’t resist. See the title of my previous post if you want to understand a bit more about how my mind works.)

From the New York Times:

No More Privies, So Hikers Add a Carry-Along. More park stewards in the West are removing outhouses from trails and asking hikers to pack out their own waste. By FELICITY BARRINGER. [NYT > Home Page]

(You may need to sign up for a “free subscription” to read the article. Probably worth it for the lovely photograph of the Whitney trail during thunderstorm weather that sits above the article.)

Excerpt:

So from the granite immensity of Mount Whitney in California to Mount Rainier in Washington to Zion National Park in Utah, a new wilderness ethic is beginning to take hold: You can take it with you. In fact, you must.

If you haven’t already clicked the NY Times link or otherwise figured it out, the article is about “human waste disposal” on Mount Whitney, California’s and the lower 48 states’ highest point and the object of many eastern Sierra pack trips. OK, I’ll say it: “poop bags.”

On my Horseshoe Meadow to Symmes Creek pack trip this summer we passed through the Crabtree Meadow area, through which almost all west side approaches to the summit of Whitney are made. As we left the relatively unpopulated route we arrived on (coming in via New Army and Crabtree passes) and turned north here onto the John Muir Trail we noticed a large plastic tub sitting by the trail marker. (We also noticed a 27-person Sierra Club party arriving, followed by about another 50+ people over the next couple miles of trail, but I digress.) The tub was filled with “WAGbags” – to be used for carrying out what you used to leave behind in a six-inch hole.

I first encountered these “double-sealed sanitation kits” a few years ago on Mt. Shasta, where they have been required on the popular Avalanche Gulch route for some years. The problem on this Shasta route is very real; the most popular “base camp” on this route is Helen Lake. During the best climbing times, the entire Helen Lake site (where you usually cannot actually find a lake) is covered with snow. Climbers must melt snow to obtain drinking and cooking water. Guess what was ending up in the snow? Sometimes in large quantities?

So, the use of “poop bags” was required. I’ll leave a few things to your imagination, but here’s the basic deal. You pick up one or more of them in plastic packages at the trailhead. When nature calls you do your business onto a big sheet of paper, thoughtfully marked with a large target. You toss in a bit of sawdust from the “kit,” fold up the paper (yeah, fun…) and put it into a ziploc bag. You put this inside another plastic bag. Since you believed the people who suggested that this could just be placed in your pack and carried out you try this. Your pack smells like shit. You remove the bag and place it on the outside of your pack. Your pack still smells like shit. You put the whole thing inside another plastic bag or two or three. The smell diminishes but does not disappear. You hope for a head wind… and avoid hiking too close to the person in front of you. You remind yourself that this is keeping your snowmelt drinking water a bit cleaner. You wonder how in heaven’s name anyone will be able to backpack if some misguided bureaucrat ever tries to extend this beyond the few high use areas where it is arguably a necessary evil.

So, what about Mt. Whitney? I don’t like the idea, but having “done Whitney” a couple times I do understand the need for this. And the summit isn’t the only problem. Since I’ve approached Whitney from the west both times, I’m not real familiar with the problems at the semi-urban “trail camp” on the east side, but I can imagine they are real. I base-camped at Guitar Lake before ascending to trail crest and then the summit, and I know that Guitar Lake, despite being located in a lovely alpine setting, is overrun by backpackers on their way to Whitney – and here the value of the “carry it out” approach is probably going to make a difference.

While I understand the reasoning in places like Mt. Whitney, what about trying to regulate this elsewhere in the Sierra? There would be a whole bunch of problems with this. I have to say that in almost 40 years of backpacking I’ve almost never encountered any messes left behind by other backpackers. Most folks to follow good practices: walk a long ways from camp, dig a good hole, stay away from water, cover and disguise the site, and so forth. There are practical issues as well. While carrying a “WAGbag” for a day is something that anyone can put up with, carrying a half dozen of them for a week (or more!) is clearly not going to work – for sanitary and weight reasons. Finally, enforcement would be just about impossible – and, I believe, unnecessary and onerous for everyone.

WhitneyDanBrandonAugust2000.jpg
Dan and Brandon Mitchell. Mt. Whitney Summit, California. August, 2000. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell.

For my part, I think I’m done with Mount Whitney – unless I have the opportunity to approach from one of the back-country routes. I’ve been there a couple of times, so I don’t have much to prove by climbing it any more. And, frankly, it isn’t the most spectacular place in the Sierra Nevada. There are many places – many of them not even mountain summits – that have made a far greater impression on me, and I prefer to return to those spots. Without a WAGbag.

September 5, 2007 Posted by | Commentary | Comments Off on Here We Go: Mount Whitney

Here We Go: California's Fire Season

The sight of huge towers of smoke from the Lick Fire at Henry Coe Park last night reminded me again that the next two months could be a terrible fire season in California. (According to this morning’s reports, the fire has ballooned to over 5,000 acres in less than 24 hours as it burns through drier-than-usual grassland, chaparral, and forest between Mt. Sizer and the Mount Hamilton area.)

September and October are heart of the wildfire season in most of California. By this time of year, there generally has not been appreciably rain in five or six months. In addition, this is that time of the “off-shore” winds that come from the northeast, supplying continental heat, drying as they move downslope, and fanning any fire that does start. The smell of smoke from fires near or far is never far away in the Sierra this time of year.

And this year many parts of California are suffering from an extraordinarily dry winter season. In the Sierra, last season’s precipitation ranged from about 50% of normal in the northern Sierra down to about 20% of normal in the south. The effects of the former are obvious to regular visitors to the mountains, but the effects of the latter are quite stunning. I spent about a week backpacking in the southern Sierra in early August and I have never seen conditions like this year’s so early in the season – early August conditions looked more like mid- September, with almost all high altitude vegetation having gone brown already.

The fact that there is a fire in the Coe Park backcountry is not the big news. It is natural for these hills to burn from time to time, especially during this season. What is surprising to me is the incredible speed with which this fire spread during its first day.

(Note: Tom Mangan has included an impressive aerial photograph of the fire shot last night in a post at his blog.)

September 4, 2007 Posted by | Commentary, Environment | Comments Off on Here We Go: California's Fire Season

Best Time of the Year in the Sierra?

It is September, and my favorite time of the year in the Sierra Nevada begins now and lasts for the next two months or so.


Aspen Leaves. Bishop Creek, California. October 1, 2006. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell.

Labor Day weekend marks the last big rush of tourists to the Sierra – at least until the ski season begins. During the next two weeks the number of visitors to the high country will diminish greatly, and by the second half of September many places will seem downright (and delightfully) deserted. I’m lucky enough to have a schedule that gives me a lot of free time still for the next three weeks, so I’m planning to be up there several times this month.

What many people do not realize is that some of the best Sierra weather of the year occurs during September and early October. Early September can be like late August – warm, going on hot, and increasingly dry, especially in a drought year like this one. But some days are not like this, and a change is obvious – the sun sets earlier and the rate of change increases, nights are colder and days generally are comfortable, the light is softer and often there seems to be a stillness in the air. Grasses have all gone golden and some of the leaves on trees and bushes and even short alpine tundra plants are beginning to change color. An early Pacific front or two may pass by, and there may even be a dusting of snow on occasion as the month goes by. (And the mosquitos are gone!)

In many ways, early October is even better. The best days are sunny and warm but not hot. The light is soft and golden, and by the beginning of the month the aspens change colors spectacularly. In a good year, a stunning display of aspen colors can be seen all up and down the eastern Sierra – the amazing thing is that so few people seem to know about it.

If you can schedule your Sierra visits just right, you can follow the aspens down the length of the Sierra over several weekends, and then you can visit the lower country on the west slope and see more amazingly colorful displays a bit later, stretching the season over a good month of more. Yosemite Valley colors seem to be at their peak near the end of October and even into early November.

September 1, 2007 Posted by | Commentary, Places, Sierra Nevada | Comments Off on Best Time of the Year in the Sierra?

A Good – But Really, Really Bad – Web Site for Fire Conditions

Tom Mangan reports at Two-Heel Drive:

Fire news blog. California Fire News could use a visual-appeal consultant, but the content’s there. Has tons of news headlines and weather reports (still in all-caps, the way the National Weather Service likes it). [Two-Heel Drive]

Content, yes. Visual (and aural!) appeal? GACK!

The text doesn’t line up and some of it covers other text. The visual across the top of the page is… well, I’m at a loss for words. And then the audio comes on…

… A recording of a chainsaw! Sheesh!

But I bookmarked the site. It has a ton of information about fire conditions and related topics in California, and something tells me that this may be a critical concern between now and the end of October, what with historic drought in parts of the state right now.

I’ll just need to remember to turn the sound off when I visit the site…

August 30, 2007 Posted by | Commentary, Environment | 1 Comment

Timberline Forest on the Bighorn Plateau

TawnyOldNewTreesBW2007|08|09.jpg
Two Forests, Bighorn Plateau. Sierra Nevada, California. August 9, 2007. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell.

This photo is from a place that I regard as one of the most intriguing locations in the Sierra Nevada, the area near Tawny Point on the Bighorn Plateau along the John Muir Trail (JMT) just north of Mt. Whitney. This particular spot is quite high – over 11,000′ – and right at timberline, but instead of rocky and steep terrain it is rounded and rolling and open. From the highest points there is a 360-degree view of the highest peaks in the Sierra: the crest to the east, the north wall of the Kern Basin to the north, the Great Western Divide and the Kaweahs to the west and south.

This little section of timberline forest fascinates me. This year I encountered it while heading north from Wallace and Wright Creeks and ascending toward the high spot at Tawny Point. Right at timberline there is an extensive old forest of large but long-dead trees. Among them is a newer, younger forest of much smaller trees. What killed the original forest, and how did such large trees survive here? How old are these snags? What happened that allowed the new forest to reestablish itself here?

August 28, 2007 Posted by | Commentary, Places, Sierra Nevada | Comments Off on Timberline Forest on the Bighorn Plateau

Adventure?

Actually, I don’t think either is quite right, but just for fun…

Roald Amundsen. “Adventure is just bad planning.” [Quotes of the Day]

G. K. Chesterton. “An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.” [Quotes of the Day]

August 28, 2007 Posted by | Commentary | Comments Off on Adventure?

Bob At The Top!

Tom Mangan reports from Bishop:

Bob did it!. Bob Coomber, AKA 4WheelBob, summitted White Mountain last night as the sun set on the High Sierra.

I’m posting from the Super 8 in Bishop so I have to dash… it’s a six-hour drive back to San Jose, and I’m going to try to pitch a story for tomorrow’s paper. More on this when I’m back in town.

It was an excellent adventure in which Bob proved the doubters wrong a thousand times. [Two-Heel Drive]

Having met Bob, I’m not surprised – but, wow! Double wow! Congratulations, Bob!

August 25, 2007 Posted by | Commentary | Comments Off on Bob At The Top!

Where is Dan?

It has been a crazy month – and posting has suffered a bit here.

I’ve been on two week-long pack trips during August, first in the Minarets area and then in the Mt. Whitney area. After returning from the second trip I was called out of town on short notice and spent almost a week in the midwest and then the Seattle area.

Things should settle down a bit now, and I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to post on a more regular basis – including a report on those pack trips.

August 22, 2007 Posted by | Commentary | Comments Off on Where is Dan?

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