Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board The Lion Wildland fire, west of Olancha

To what degree, if at all, did the Lion Fire affect any of you who recently were on the mountain? Ash fall? Breathing issues? From the looks of the webcam this afternoon, you can barely see the Alabama Hills in the foreground. The webcam was clear this morning and yesterday morning, but as was the case yesterday afternoon the winds shifted and smoked out the crest on down through the Portal canyon and into Lone Pine. DMatt has reported that thus far the smoke has remained above his Owens Valley monitoring stations. Heading up this weekend. Thanks in advance for any information you might be able to provide.

BruinDave

I was camping at the Kern River this weekend and there was smoke from some fire. The smoke wasn't that bad (just slightly irritated my eyes) and I couldn't see the source of the smoke. I'm wondering if it was from this fire.

View east as seen from the western Golden Trout Wilderness on Sunday July 10

The official report doesn't tell the full impact on Whitney hikers. As we drove up to the Portal Monday night, the 18th, smoke and some ash were pouring over the Crest and down the canyon and the two to the north, and drove about half the campers out of the Portal sites by the next morning. Cleared a bit with the evening breeze up from the Valley, and was gone by morning, but smoke from this fire not all drifting down the Kern drainage by any means. Since its being managed for ecological impact, not fought for full suppression, this could continue for some time. I would check the webcam and by phone with the interagency Visitors Center for actual conditions on the trail if the smoke is of concern.

What isn't factored into this equation is the effect this smoke has on residents with impaired breathing. For them, it's isn't just a situation of smokey air. It can be a life or death situation, and their only recourse is to evacuate the area at their own expense. That means finding a way to bring their O2 generators with them as well.

It took many decades of wildland fire mismanagement to create the fuel loads that we now have. Because of that it will hopefully be a slow process of controlled burns to restore the fuel loads to what would be natural levels.

I have fought hundreds of wildland fires and I would much rather deal with the problems of a control burn. The alternative is pure hell for all involved. I have seen peoples homes destroyed and treated burn injuries; you just don’t what to go there.

I have sucked in a lifetimes worth of wildland smoke and can’t stand to be around it. But I will tolerate control burn smoke any day rather than see an out of control wildland fire.

Three of us were hiking up to Outpost on July 18. The smoke got pretty thick around 2:00-3:00 pm, a couple of miles below Outpost. It did make it a little harder for me to breath. When we got to outpost, we could see ashes falling. Something landed in my little brothers eye and sent him into a screaming fit. He really wasn't sure if it was an ash or not. The smoke started clearing out right before dark. Here is a picture of the sun through the smoke aroud 4:00-5:00 pm.

[img]http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/196/imag0750i.jpg/[/img]

Sorry. Let me try that again

I flew from San Francisco to LAX on Wednesday and the plume of smoke was huge. Sorry no camera on the flight

I dayhiked Mt. Whitney yesterday and was pleased not to notice any smoke.

The smoke is nearly always visible now - and has been for days - at the north end of the Indian Wells Valley. IWV is the valley immediately south of Owens. The northern end of IWV is near Little Lake. We constantly monitor the wind direction.

Found some recent interesting articles on the fire. They are treating it as an "ecological burn to remove 90 years of forest debris". It started July 8th with lightning and is only at 15% containment as of July 28th.

Here is a website that gives updates:

http://yubanet.com/fire.php

And a GREAT article on the packers and mule teams that are supplying the firefighters. I've ridden and shown mules before and have been to Bishop Mule Days and have watched these packers work with their animals. Amazing job, keep showing them that 4-legged "machines" are the way to go.

http://yubanet.com/regional/Mule-Train-Supplies-Lion-Firefighters.php

I was doing a trail maintenance project in that area for the last week, and I can tell you that the forest debris is heavy.

The fire was only about 15 miles or less from us, and the smoke was sometimes heavy. The packers supporting us also supported the firefighters. We were based out of Shake Camp, mentioned in the second article. A couple of days, we wondered if we were going to need to evacuate!