Flames wane but wildfire hazards remain for hikers, hunters

While the flames have been doused in most areas, Northwest wildfires continue to impact mountain access for hikers and hunters.

Long after burned areas have cooled, they present dangers related to landslides, falling snags and breaking through the ground surface into burned stump holes and root channels.

Idaho generally was spared from major fires this season, but burns are extensive in portions of Montana, Oregon and Washington.

Police tape and orange-and-white barriers wall-off the burned epicenter of Oregon’s Eagle Creek fire, a reminder that trails in the Columbia River Gorge won’t open soon – in some cases not until spring and elsewhere not for a year or two.

Rachel Pawlitz, spokeswoman for the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, said the U.S. Forest Service doesn’t know when those trails will reopen but that the agency is committed to making them accessible as soon as possible.

There’s no timeline for reopening the cherished Multnomah Falls area, she said.

Officials granted members of the media access to the Eagle Creek trailhead area for briefings and photo opportunities earlier this month. Views from the area are emblematic of those throughout the gorge: Burned trees stand on the nearby hillside and tower over the parking lot, and there’s plenty of scorched earth. Green foliage persists.

A suspension bridge that crosses the creek is mangled – one of its steel cables having been snapped – but no major structures at Eagle Creek have burned, according to Pawlitz.

Northcentral Washington’s Diamond Creek Fire started July 23 and was just declared under control on Monday after burning across 128,272 acres in the Pasayten Wilderness. For public safety, road closures at Yellowjacket Sno-Park and upper Eightmile Road above Copper Glance Trailhead will remain in place until the end of November, national forest officials say.

Large construction equipment will be working in the roadway, crews will be falling hazardous trees and logging truck traffic will occur on these steep and narrow roads associated with timber salvage and Burned Area Emergency Response work.

Normally these areas are quiet retreats for hunters, late-season hikers and early season skiers.

In the Sullivan Lake area, all road and trail restrictions have been lifted since the 4,000-acre Noisy Creek fire and a burn int he Salmo-Priest Wilderness were tamed at the end of September.

However, the snags and other hazards will pose a hazard for years.

The changes brought on by a burn struck Oregon hiker Cher Rydberg last week as she entered the Sky Lakes Wilderness on the Cold Springs Trail, one of her past favorites.

Some of the trees in familiar stands of Shasta fir and hemlock now sport black scars on their bases. Two more turns down the trail, and those stains give way to vast swaths of pure black.

Large stands of torched and nearly branchless trees point skyward like charcoal toothpicks over a brushless and sooty forest floor.

“It’s so profound,” Rydberg says. “You just stop and take it in. You can’t believe it, down to the burnt smell. This is not the forest I remember. This is not the forest I know.”

Forest officials are conducting post-fire evaluations called Burn Area Emergency Responses to assess the impacts of both wildfire and suppression activity on communities and forest resources, including trails.

Until those assessments are complete later this fall, huge swaths of the fire areas remain off-limits to the public.

“Right after the fire is when it looks the worst to most people,” says Gabe Howe, executive director of the Ashland-based Siskiyou Mountain Club, which maintains area trails.

“I tell people to go in with an open mind and be safe,” Howe says. “Right after these fires, there can be a lot of instabilities.”

Falling snags are a prime post-fire hazard, with some of them standing for several years before randomly crashing to the earth.

The sound of one such crash within earshot of Rydberg becomes a bit unnerving to her.

“We might not come out of this alive, especially if the wind picks up,” she says.

Oftentimes, fire will burn entire root systems beneath the surface, causing large exposed sinkholes as well as the more dangerous hidden caverns beneath a crust of duff.

“I’ve stepped in some and sunk in down to my waist,” says Brian Long, a Rogue River-Siskiyou recreational staff officer.