This is a great first hand description from Richard Wilt of Green Valley concerning the Santa Rita Mountain area burned by the Florida Fire; he recently hiked through most of the area and presents the best eye witness account of the damage to date.     Richard Olsen

Several people have asked me how much damage the Florida Fire caused. Like them, I’ve heard the figure of 23,000+ acres burned and I’ve studied the fire maps posted on the Florida Fire website. It all seemed scary, so I decided to go take a Sunday hike along the length of the Santa Ritas to see how bad “my” mountain has burned. After the hike the short answer is: yes, there has been some devastation and no, it’s not as bad as we thought. The long answer is found in my hike diary for Sunday, July 24.

Richard Wilt

Madera Canyon is still closed to all persons except for residents who live in the canyon, so I couldn’t drive there. I’ve seen reports that Madera Canyon was untouched by the fire. There was some brush cleanup and tree thinning around the houses and cabins but otherwise the canyon apparently looks the same as it did before.

Since I couldn’t drive into Madera Canyon, I headed for a trail that would take me into the mountains high above Madera. The trail head for Agua Caliente Trail is about three miles south of Elephant Head and leaves a dirt road at about 4600’ elevation. Starting at 6:15 am, I reached Agua Caliente Saddle at 7300’after two miles of a steep trail. With the high humidity yesterday morning, my clothes were drenched in sweat by the time I reached the saddle about 7:30. From the saddle, which is actually on the north face of Mt. Hopkins, I could look directly down into Madera Canyon and look straight across the canyon at the west slopes of the main ridge of the Santa Ritas, which we can see from Green Valley.

There was no fire damage where I was. The fire never got to the west side of Madera Canyon. Looking down, I could also see that the fire never got to the floor of Madera Canyon or within a mile of the end of the road in Madera. Looking across to the west slope of the Santa Ritas, I was first struck by how much green there was. Yes, there were some blackened areas where the fire had burned and killed all the trees. The largest black area was on the southwest slope of Mt. Wrightson in an area south of Josephine Saddle. The second largest area I could see from this vantage point seemed to be a triangular shaped drainage above Bog Springs (if my geography is right). Otherwise there were several black areas in the forest but they all seemed to one to five acres in size. Most of the black areas were up high near the crest of the mountain range.

Of larger extent were several areas that appeared brown. These were areas where the fire came through and stayed on the ground. It did not burn the branches or the oak leaves or the pine needles on the trees. Nevertheless the heat from the ground fire killed the leaves and needles making the area look brown, the color of dead vegetation. Some of these areas will recover as some trees will grow new leaves and needles. Undoubtedly some other trees will die from the stress, but there is hope for much of the brown areas.

But the predominant color I saw from my vantage point at Agua Caliente Saddle was green, the color of areas untouched by the fire. Of the whole west slope of the Santa Ritas from the mouth Madera canyon to south of Mt. Wrightson, I would estimate the black areas at 10%, the brown areas 20-25% and probably 2/3rds of the slope is still green. This was great news. More discouraging was my view of Josephine Peak. All I could see was its west face and it appeared to be toast. Here at Agua Caliente Saddle, bird life seemed plentiful. I saw American Robin, Townsend’s Solitaire, Spotted Towhee, Bewick’s Wren, and even a rare bird, a Black-capped Gnatcatcher.

I then hiked the Agua Caliente Trail three miles from Agua Caliente Saddle to Josephine Saddle. The trail traverses the eastern slope of Mt. Hopkins. I saw no sign of fire along the trail until just before the first saddle between the Madera drainage and the Josephine Canyon drainage, about a half-mile before reaching Josephine Saddle. In this area a ground fire had come through that did not get up into the trees so the fire damage was limited to just a couple feet off of the ground. Here, I smelled smoke and found a stump still smoldering and smoking. By the end of the day I would find over two dozen smoking stumps.

From this point on I would see evidence of ground fires most of the way to Josephine Saddle. I was in one of the “brown” areas. As I passed Jack Mountain, I expected to see burned trees because I had heard on the TV that Jack Mountain was burning but I saw little evidence of it. Later when I was higher on Mt. Wrightson, I could look back at Jack Mountain and see some burned areas on the south side.

At Josephine Saddle the fire had touched the land very lightly. Not even all the pine duff on the ground was burned. I suspect that after a month of monsoon rains there will be no evidence of fire at Josephine Saddle. From the saddle I headed up Baldy Trail towards Baldy Saddle. On the first half of this trek I alternated between areas of no fire and areas of light to moderate fire damage which burned only ground fuel or occasionally small trees up to four feet tall. At the halfway point, just below Bellows Spring, the trail turned right into a north-facing canyon. There I could look northward and see a few 1-3 acre patches of black, burned forest. Bellows Spring was totally in the green area and from there all the way to Baldy Saddle I spent much more time in green areas than I did in brown.

For those not familiar with Baldy Saddle, you can see it from Green Valley. It’s that small downward notch in the ridge just north (left) of Mt. Wrightson.

At Baldy Saddle itself I stopped in an area of green. The saddle was untouched. I could still sit on the same large log and snack on my trail mix. The only change was now the log was orange from the slurry drops of fire retardant. However, my island of green at Baldy Saddle was quite small. There were black areas to the north and south and especially to the east down the east slope of the Santa Ritas. Obviously a hot tongue of flames had come right up the drainage to Baldy Saddle.

I continued up the Baldy Trail towards the summit of Mt. Wrightson and quickly reached the small grove of Douglas Fir trees. Most had been burned but a few survived. Immediately thereafter I entered a black zone where everything had burned, even the largest trees. In this area I expected to find a large 20” log across the trail that I had to climb over every time I hiked up to the summit but the log was gone, all burned up with not even a pile of ash left. I noticed throughout the black zone that logs and fallen trees were totally consumed. There were no piles of charcoal or ash. This black zone lasted until just before I left the area of large trees and entered the rocky area on Mt. Wrightson, which has only small brush. Even here there was life. A Red-breasted Nuthatch saluted my from a still-green tree and a flock of Steller’s Jays was just as raucous as ever. Yellow-eyed Juncos were still abundant, even in the black zone. The last three hundred feet of elevation on Mt. Wrightson were untouched and I reached the 9450' summit for the 90th time at 11:00 am.

I expected to look down into Madera Canyon but my view in that direction was totally blocked by clouds filling up the canyon at an altitude lower than my perch on the summit. I was in bright sunlight and could look north, south, and east, but there was nothing to the west. To the south I had another view of Josephine Peak. Both the north and east slopes of that peak seemed to be at least 50% black. It appeared that the southern edge of the Florida Fire reached just beyond Josephine Peak. Riley Saddle was obviously burned badly.

I then backtracked to Baldy Saddle and then headed north on the Crest Trail. This trail follows the ridgeline of the Santa Ritas north for several miles and hugs the mountains on the east side just below the ridge. I quickly saw that the east slopes of the Santa Ritas had a very different fire experience than the west slopes. On the east side there were no brown areas. Everything was either black or green. Where fire burned, it burned everything. Large black streaks came up the side of the mountain, frequently in the drainages. These streaks were much longer that they were wide. From Baldy Saddle to the Armour Spring turnoff (about 1 ¾ miles), I generally alternated hiking through black areas 100-200 yards wide and then a strip of green again. So not everything was destroyed but within the black zones nothing lived. A particularly bad stretch of black was about halfway between Baldy Saddle and Pine Saddle.

Pine Saddle can be seen from Green Valley. It is that triangular-shaped area of tan color on the ridge a mile or more north of Baldy Saddle. The tan is grassland that replaced a forest burned here in 1992. About half of the burned area of Pine Saddle is burned again. Pine Saddle is a good example of how slowly the pine forest regenerates on our sky islands. The earlier fire was 40+ acres. In the thirteen years since that fire the land has grown a lot of grass and number of bushes but on earlier hikes I could find fewer than two dozen new pine trees. And now most of those new ones have burned.

As I hiked the crest trail it became obvious that again the worst fire damage was near the crest. Areas lower than me certainly had bad burned areas, some of them stretching a half-mile or more down the slope, but the lower burns weren’t as wide as those near the crest.

North of Pine Saddle I began to encounter some areas with only ground fires so some trees were saved here even though the low brush was all burned. Soon I could see Florida Peak. The fire started with a lightning strike on the east side of that mountain. Being this close to the start of the fire, I expected everything to be burned, but Florida Peak had less fire damage than many other areas. The top of the peak was still green. There were a number of black and brown patches on the lower slopes but they were all small as if spot fires had started and then died out.

In two different areas I saw proof that not all lightning strikes start forest fires. One dead tree had a recent lightning strike that charred a spiral all the way down the trunk. The scar was deep and full of recent charcoal that would have fallen off with age. A second tree was a live pine tree that still had some green needles at the top. The bottom four feet of trunk still showed the lightning strike in its bark. The rest of the tree was now hollow and open on one side for 20’ up because the lightning strike burned the heart out of the tree. In neither of these lighting strikes did fire spread to any nearby tree. There is a good chance that both of these trees (and probably others) were hit in the lightning storm of July 7th. I’ve read that 98% of lighting strikes on trees do not start forest fires and here were two examples. But as we found out, it only took one tree on fire to burn many acres.

Continuing north on the Crest Trail, I came to the junction with the Armour Spring trail. Here around a bend I got my first look at Florida Canyon, a north-facing canyon that empties out near the Florida Work Station just off Box Canyon Road. I was particularly anxious to see Florida Canyon because in my mind it is the most special area in the Santa Ritas. Being a north-facing canyon, it is cooler and wetter than most canyons in the mountains. Here a relict forest of Douglas Fir trees has survived while the rest of Arizona dried out over the centuries. Some of the trees here are huge. On these, two people cannot stretch their arms around the trunk to touch each other. Many of the fir trees are fifty feet higher or more.

My first look at Florida Canyon, at the Armour Spring Trail junction, was crushing. The upper end of Florida Canyon is bowl-shaped like a cirque. The entire bowl had burst into a firestorm, which blacken everything. This was the source of one of the biggest plumes of smoke we saw towering above the mountains in the early days of the fire. Nothing was left up there but charred tree skeletons.

The trail from this junction down to Florida Saddle does not go through the center of Florida Canyon. It skirts the east slope. Therefore it missed the major firestorm. Although the fire burned many trees in this area, the larger trees will survive. At Florida Saddle there was evidence that the Forest Service had cut down trees trying to make a firebreak of 10’ wide but the fire just blew through. Then just below Florida Saddle (now on the Florida Trail) I walked through an area that only had a ground fire and almost all the trees were safe.

Hiking down Florida Canyon area I saw a number of stumps still smoldering and smoking. There was also an unusual phenomenon—lots of holes in the ground, round holes of 12”-30” in diameter, often with tunnels, 3”-6” in diameter, radiating out from them. Entire trees had been consumed by the fire to the point that even the underground portion of the trees burned, even the roots.

Below Florida Saddle there was much evidence of ground fire but it seemed that most of the still-standing large fir trees would survive except in one small areas where the fire burned all the way to their 50’ tops. An interesting sight in this mid-section of Florida Canyon were several large 24” fir trees that had toppled to the ground with all their branches and green needles still intact. Here the ground fire burned the trunk in two at ground level and the tree fell. Interesting the fire did not climb up the tree. Obviously the fire at the base of the tree smoldered and burned for several days before the tree collapsed. By that time the general fire had moved elsewhere so the branches and needles never burned when the tree hit the ground.

In the lower half of the Douglas Fir grove few of the trees burned but all had been stressed by the heat of ground fire beneath the giants. Due to stress, the firs dropped many of their needles to the point that the burned ground was totally covered with a thick carpet of needles.

As I continued to descend Florida Canyon and leave the evergreen forest for the oak forest, it was obvious I was going to get wet. While still at Pine Saddle I had seen a thunderstorm break away from the Huachuca Mountains and head for me with thunder booming. I kept trying to hike ahead of it but it caught me halfway down Florida Canyon. Things suddenly got exciting. It was wet; I was wet. Thunder was crashing and echoing from the mountain cliffs around me. When you’re caught out in a thunderstorm there’s nothing to do but just keep moving. There’s no tree or rock to hide under. Anything could be a target. I knew that it was a myth that lightning only strikes the highest object but nonetheless I took (limited) comfort from the fact that all the cliffs around me were much higher and closer to the clouds than I was.

The storm was short-lived. It only wanted to get me soaked and move on. I was now down to the lookout point that the Green Valley Hiking Club treks to on their lower Florida Canyon hikes. Directly across the canyon on the main ridge of the Santa Ritas was another bowl shaped drainage. This one too had been a fire hot spot and totally burned.

As the slope of Florida Canyon lessened and the canyon widened out, I came into large areas of oak that had been destroyed. The now much lower crest of the Santa Ritas was blackened from the streambed to the crest for more than a half-mile and all the area I was hiking in was black. This one black area was more than a square mile and was the largest single area of total black that I encountered all day. Near the mouth of the canyon the fire went right to the fence surrounding the Florida Work Station, just yards from some of the buildings. On the west side the fire actually went past the station on out to the mouth of the canyon.

Just as I arrived at the trailhead at end of the Florida Trail, Shirley drove up with a magical sense of timing. I had finished 15 ½ miles of hiking in 8 ½ hours and I now had a ride home.

So what did I learn?

The fire was much worse on the east slope than on the west.

Yes, the Forest Service said the fire burned 23,000+ acres but that’s not the whole story. This fire has left a mosaic of burned and unburned areas. The Forest Service measures the perimeter of the fire and counts all the acres inside. I have no way to accurately measure but it seemed to me that the black, totally burned areas of the fire was perhaps 20-25% of the acreage. The brown areas that had only ground fires were 30-40%. This left 35-40% in the green. Again there was more green on the west side than on the east.

The fire did not destroy all wildlife. Birds seemed plentiful even up along the crest. I even heard a woodpecker. I found fresh bear tracks made after the rain on the afternoon before. There were plenty of lizards in the green areas and there were even ants busy in some of the black areas.

There is already some regeneration of grasses and plants. I saw some over 2” high already. Many areas are still totally black but there is life coming back in other areas already. Interestingly, I saw more new growth the higher I went up the mountain.

In black, burned areas erosion of trails and hillsides is already showing and will be a bigger problem in the future with more rains.

Although I hear rumors that Madera Canyon will soon open, perhaps this week, I do not expect all the hiking trails to open quickly. Baldy Trail between Josephine Saddle and Baldy Saddle will take a chain saw crew at least a day to clear the downed trees. Crest Trail will take a couple days and Florida Trail much more than that. If I were the manager of the National Forest, I wouldn’t let the trails open for a while because more burned trees are going to come down in the wind storms and thunderstorms of the monsoon. Then too, some areas of the trails are going to erode with rains.

How does the fire damage compare to the Mt. Lemmon fires? On the whole I’d say the damage is much lighter than what I have seen on Mt. Lemmon. The one exception would be areas of upper Florida Canyon with its heavy, perhaps severe, damage.

Madera Canyon is now open to the public except that the trailheads for Super Trail and Baldy Trail are closed.