Colville Forest lifts wildfire closures in more areas, including Salmo-Priest Wilderness

WILDFIRES — More land on the 1.1-million acre Colville National Forest is being reopened from wildfire-related closures, including the Salmo-Priest Wilderness.

Another are was reopened on Wednesday as fire and firefighting activity decreased.

The map above is up to day showing the remaining closures.

The closure orders for the Salmo-Priest Wilderness area on the east side of the Pend Oreille River of the Sullivan Lake Ranger District of the Colville National Forest has been lifted.  However, the Pass Creek Pass road is still closed, barring access to some wilderness trailheads.

The closure around the Tower Fire was decreased slightly to the south (along the district boundary between Newport and Sullivan Lake). The Sullivan Lake area closure has been changed to include only an area and roads and trails adjacent to the Hall and Grease Creek Fires.

The Hall Mountain and Grease Creek area continue to be closed due to fire suppression activity (see map).

Sullivan Creek Road has been reopened open, but Pass Creek Pass Road remains closed, officials said.

Firefighters and equipment are still operating in many of the fire areas in Pend Oreille County, and especially on the following narrow forest roads:

• Sullivan Creek/ Pass Creek Pass Road
• Mill Creek Road
• Ce Ce Ah Road
• Kings Lake Road
• Smack Out Pass Road

Here’s more from the Colville National Forest:

While these area closures have been lifted, the Colville remains in Phase 2 Fire Restrictions, no fires, campfires or charcoal fires allowed.  We will evaluate fire restrictions on the forest next week, but until then we will enforce our current restrictions.  Even with the cooler temperatures and the latest rain, conditions are still very dry.  Many of the finer fuels (grasses, etc.) have gone dormant with the extremely dry weather we have had.  Since these fuels have not received a long enough duration of wetting rain, they have not revived – basically that means they are not absorbing the moisture internally and any moisture on them it external and will evaporate when the warm dry returns this week.