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This morning (Wed. July 27)
the US Forest Service opened Madera Canyon to the public for the
first time since the Florida Fire was extinguished a week or so
ago. I hiked up to a favorite spot Susan and I know that
overlooks the canyon. It is clear all of the Canyon proper was
untouched by the fire, but large areas on the west face of the
Santa Rita Mountains did burn to varying degrees. Much of the
west face is still green and looks OK at this time, but there
are some black spots (mainly on the upper slopes) where the fire
completely burned parts of the mature Pine/Fir forest, and other
large brown areas where the fire burned slowly along the ground
beneath the trees without getting up into the tree crowns (these
areas are mostly at lower elevations, but some are at higher
levels up toward Mt Wrightson). With the tall trees burned away
at the ridge tops, the rock peaks on the ridge are now more
visible. |
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Water in the lovely little
creek that runs through the Canyon is pitch black as is the
stream bed, due to the rain washing ash off the mountains. It
remains to be seen how much of the forest that appears brown but
not black at this time will come back with our summer rains (all
vegetation was killed in the areas burned black by high
intensity crown fires). We should know by September if the large
brown areas, which are mainly Oak/Juniper forest and some Pine
forest, will survive and regrow. While the mountains will not
look the same within the life span of most of us, we were very
fortunate that the summer rains started when they did last week
and put out the fire before it consumed the 60,000-80,000 acres
predicted -- 23,000 acres was bad enough. We are very grateful
that no one was seriously injured and that all the lodges and
cabins in the Canyon were spared. The panorama picture below
shows the entire west face of the Santa Rita Mountains as they
looked this morning -- July 27, 2005 (the panorama photo was
pieced together from five separate digital images). You can
clearly see the extent of black and brown burned areas affected
by the fire. The other photos show close-up views of Mt
Wrightson and other ridge-top areas where the fire burned
through old-growth Pine and Fir forest (where most of the trees
were 60-70 feet tall and perhaps two hundred years old -- it
will take 50-100 years for those areas to fully regrow a mature
forest habitat). Richard Olsen |
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