In mid May of this year, I headed over to the north end of the Gila Wilderness to do some camping and recording. A small column of smoke was visible in the general direction of the center of the wilderness, but I had read on the USFS website that some controlled burns were planned for the area, so I wasn’t too concerned. I initially found a great campsite east of Snow Lake, but the place was thick with bees. The morning after we arrived, Shadow and I took a hike over Iron Mesa to the middle fork of the Gila River, where we had a good view of the rapidly expanding fire. It covered quite an extent of terrain, so I started to wonder if it was indeed a controlled burn. It was also quite breezy, insanely dry, and didn’t seem to be ideal conditions for conducting a burn.
After two days of trying to convince the bees I had nothing of interest to them, I gave up and headed down Bursum Road to the Willow Creek campground. The campground was closer to the fire, and the whole area was filled with smoke. In the afternoon, after I set up camp, Shadow and I took a hike over the ridge to Iron Creek. Near Iron Lake, we saw a small group of elk, barely visible through the smoky forest. The pines bore the scars of past fires.
On the way, we noticed another column of smoke to the west. While we were on our hike, the wind shifted, pushing the smoke of the southern (Baldy) fire away, but bringing the smoke of the westerly fire (Whitewater) closer. But by evening, most of the smoke had cleared from the area, and we woke to a beautiful clear morning. As I was enjoying my second cup of coffee, I paused to listen. Willow Creek gurgled nearby, and the birds were welcoming the sun as it took the chill away from the previous evening. A red squirrel chattered and chucked as it cut and gathered fir cones. I set up my recorder near the stream, and went back to finish my coffee and enjoy that luscious, quiet part of the morning.
Coffee finished, I took Shadow for a walk around the campground area and along the creek. The plume of smoke to the west was really starting to billow up. As it was in the direction of the road to Mogollon, which was the road I wanted to take out of the area, I decided to pack up and leave a little earlier than I originally planned. On the way, we passed many truckloads of hotshot crews, one of which informed me that these were not controlled burns, but lightning-caused fires., They were already starting to clean up debris along the road. We headed over to the Gila River bird area, and set up camp (see “Things that go bump in the night”). Smoke from the two fires was readily visible. Bursum Road closed the next day, and within a week the two fires would merge and become the largest fire in New Mexico history, burning almost 300,000 acres during the next 2 months.
Willow Creek was hit especially hard, and is one of the few areas still closed as of October, 2012. What will this mean for the birds and squirrels I recorded just before the fire? And what about the turkey I heard at first light? Can sound recordings be used to monitor the changes in a wildlife community? Stay tuned, I’ll present more information on monitoring sounds in an upcoming post.
Recording notes: Recorded with Zoom H4n and Audio Technica AT2022. Recording amplified and subject to low-pass filtering.
I was up on Escudilla Mountain (just across the state line in Arizona) for a couple of nights when Whitewater-Baldy was burning. After dark the whole eastern horizon turned apocalyptic red and it looked like the end of the world was coming. I’ve read that much of the W-B fire was low/moderate burn and that the more liberal fire policy in the Gila may have paid off. Still, looking at Google Earth there are a lot of burned trees up in the higher terrain. One of these days I’ll take the long drive over to the Gila and see for myself.
Del,
What a great description of the skyline, it sounds like it must have been quite a sight. I agree about the fire “damage” in the Gila, and it appears the Wallow fire had similar effects. I was just camping in an area south of Alpine last month – just before monsoons started – and the patchiness of the fire was really pronounced, with the severest burns on north facing slopes, I guess where the timber was thickest.
Back in early June I did a 3-day bushwhack down into Bear Wallow Wilderness south of Alpine. (Bear Wallow was the source of the Wallow Fire.) Lots of “damage” of course, but I was intrigued by the difference between the fire behavior in there versus farther to the north. In many places the old-growth ponderosa trees in the wilderness were so tall and so big they just shrugged off the fire, gave it no opportunity to climb up into the crowns. Near the roads and farther east and north where logging had fragmented the canopy the behavior was far more intense. I came out of there wondering how different things might’ve been had there been another mile or two of that kind of old-growth forest north of Bear Wallow instead of the cut-over patchwork of old timber sales. Maybe the fire would’ve crept and smoldered around the forest floor for a few days and gone out on its own…
Del,
Interesting perspective and sounds like a great research project – comparing past logging activity to fire intensity. Of course the loggers have been telling us for ages that logging reduces fire intensity, but it sounds like some independent research is warranted. I’m guessing logging may be a factor, but results may be complicated by slope, aspect, soil type, drought conditions, etc, the very things that create that wonderful mosaic after a fire, rather than total devastation. BTW, I did a blog post on the effects of the Wallow Fire on Escudilla (see After the Wallow Fire).