No... No... Not Again

Monday, July 29, 2024

The little corner of the world where I live is on fire again, up the Big Thompson Canyon, less than 30 miles from my home. Damn. Not again. It's been only four years since the 402,805-acre devastation wrought by the Cameron Peak Fire and East Troublesome Fire.

Twin Fires: July 30-2024

As I sit here in the backyard of my new house in Countryside Park, bits and flakes and chunks of ash fall all around me—and on me. I look up and feel the squeeze of my heart and lungs as the smoke from the Alexander Mountain and Stone Canyon fires wafts toward the east. My memories of the near merging of the Cameron Peak Fire and East Troublesome Fire of 2020 still raise my hackles, and tonight as two new fires threaten to join one another, I feel the prickle in the nape of my neck.

Earlier today, riding my bike home from work along four miles of the Poudre River Trail, the smoke, tinted dark orange from the backlight of the afternoon sun, chased me from behind. The sky above the Northern Colorado section of the Front Range glowed like hellfire, and though not a Christian, I felt as if the Devil had saddled the wind to chase me home. So I rode faster to see if I could outrun him and make his damned fire disappear. But I am no magician, and when I made it home I walked fifty yards to the southwest and stood at the trial head of the River Bend Ponds Natural Area near my new home. Looking at the two massive billows of smoke over the western foothills of the Rockies, I shuddered. I could see the flames of the Alexander Mountain Fire, just as four years prior I could see the flames of the Cameron Peak Fire just behind Horsetooth Reservoir, less than a 20-minute drive from the house where I lived back then.

Twin Fires Plus Two: July 31-2024

I stood for awhile after I shut down my laptop and looked out the patio door. I could smell the 920 acres that had burned throughout the the day. Two o'clock this morning, when I took my sixteen-year-old, blind and deaf Chihuahua out for his first potty of the day, the smell was no longer woody. It was a stench of dead trees. My little five pound dog had no idea what was happening, and I felt jealous of that.

My wife and I met here in 1981. We married that same year. Four years later we had a daughter. We lived our lives outside—winter, spring summer, and fall. We camped Poudre Canyon, fished and rafted the wild and scenic Poudre River several times each year during whitewater season. We often took the forty-minute ride up Big Thompson Canyon to spend an afternoon in Estes Park buying taffy, eating pizza, and buying new Colorado T-shirts and sweatshirts, or we'd hike a “new-to-us trail” through the stunning beauty of Rocky Mountain National Park. In the winter we would sled and toboggan at Hidden Valley inside the park, or sometimes we would take a kick jaunt farther up Highway 7 to ski Eldora Mountain in Nederland, or even farther into the Rockies to ski Winter Park.

State Highway 34 from Loveland to Estes Park was closed this morning, leaving no access into Big Thompson Canyon or Estes Park that did not require a two-hour detour. The fires crews are doing their best to keep the canyon from burning. But it is literally a craggy uphill challenge, made even harder by the encroachment of the Stone Canyon Fire toward the Alexander Mountain burn area. This afternoon on my bike, I could not see the foothills, just 7 miles away. Smoke from two other wildfires along the Front Range—Lake Shore Fire and the Quarry Fire—has blended with the smoke of the two Northern Colorado fires to blot out the Rocky Mountains. The lives my wife and I and our daughter lived forty years ago is being burned—6700 acres as of tonight.

In the wee hours of tomorrow morning, when I take my little dog out for his first potty, I may just sit in a patio chair for a spell and envy his ignorance of the world around us.

Burn, and Burn Again: August 1, 2024

The month of July ended with my town receiving 0.92 inches of precipitation. Not much when you consider most of that fell as ten-minute torrents in just a few days scattered throughout the month—lots of rain at one time each time, but not enough overall to make a difference in the skin-searing dryness that plagues the Rocky Mountains this summer.

The Alexander Fire and the Stone Canyon Fire continue to "blow up" every night since their ignitions. Today the Alexander Fire soared to 8,134 acres, reported by the "epnews” out of Estes Park. More than two dozen homes have burned. The Stone Canyon Fire, which started 25 miles from the Alexander Mountain Fire has reached to within 14 miles this evening. One person is dead. I am sure countless animals are dead: rabbits, snakes, coyotes, foxes, elk, deer... .

In 2020, when the East Troublesome Fire jumped the Continental Divide and joined in adding its destruction to that of the Cameron Peak Fire on Colorado's Western Slope, Hell took control of my world and scorched 296,066 acres, every square inch of a beautiful stretch of Earth at such a temperature that there is no chance life of any kind will return to the Poudre Canyon in my lifetime.

And this evening, as I stand again just 50 yards from my home and look west, I see two massive billows of black smoke that have begun to blend into one cloud of smoky death... and I begin to wonder if Hell has returned to Earth, just as it did in 2020.

Hell has a name: climate change.

Neverending Saga: August 2, 2024

Rather eerie today with so much blue sky, and two fires burning just a stone's throw up the road. The Alexander Mountain Fire has blackened 9,375 acres, and is only 5% contained. Todays rain was not enough to even dampen the smoke, which by evening returned to its prominence across the northern Front Range.

Tonight, three fires burn along the Front Range: Alexander Mountain Fire, Stone Canyon Fire, and Quarry Fire (Jefferson County). The Lake Shore Fire has been 100% contained since yesterday. But on the Western Slope, the Bucktail Fire near Nucla stood at 200 acres yesterday, and tonight has already surpassed 2000 acres. It seems in Colorado, what hasn’t burned is beginning to burn. Wildfires pop up almost daily, and I begin to wonder, with the onset of August and the continuing 95°F+ temperatures drying out and burning the Front Range of Colorado, and the rage of the California Park Fire, if the West is once again slipping toward a flaming autumn.

The Scorch: Sat, August 3, 2024

Jumping from 5% containment to 32% containment is great news for the evening, but still 9,668 acres have burned, and I would not be surprised if the Alexander Fire reaches 10,000 acres by morning.

My wife and I have hiked many of the trails that are now charred, and we are sad to lose the beauty that drew us back to a life along the foothills of the Colorado Front Range. The saddest part is the closure of Highway 34, and the loss of income for the businesses along the highway, like the Colorado Cherry Company, a fourth-generation owned and operated business in the Rockies, and the Dam Store, family owned since 1969, and a favorite of mine since I was kid, because at ten years old I could say without getting in trouble as we passed by, "Hey, there's that dam store we should stop at." Just a year after taking three years of fiscal hits resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, both of my favorite mountain shops are dead-in-the-water, because the only access customers from Larimer County have to reach either location is closed due to the the Stone Canyon and Alexander Mountain fires.

It is said the only constant in life is change. Many times in my life I have wished that wasn't true.

Headway: Sunday, August 4, 2024

The fires abated this morning, outmatched for the first-day-in-six by the amazing folks who accept the challenge of going head on, toe-to-toe with a wildfire—with no thought they will lose. The scorch on the Earth gained little today, while 327 heroes brought the Alexander Mountain Firer to 52% containment. As a general rule, when a fire is brought to 50% containment the fire teams have everything under control and the end is nigh.

Walking to the natural area today, the sky was more clear, the air wafted with diminished odor, and the world in the FoCo foothills felt much more comfortable.

The Last Leg: Monday, August 5, 2024

I busted out in a flood of tears this morning when I pedaled my bicycle up over the ridge that borders my neighborhood and saw Longs Peak, Mount Meeker, and Mount Lady Washington burnished in golden sunlight. Seeing the sky void of the familiar fan of fire smoke, I knew all the beautiful hiking and biking trails I thought might be burned to oblivion would remain. Some of the familiar faces I pass on the Poudre River bike trail every morning on my way to work were also streaked with happy tears.

There is a reason so many of us live in Colorado, play in Colorado, and thrive in Colorado—and in my little patch of Planet Earth some amazing people made sure all of that would be saved. Tonight, the Alexander Mountain Fires smolders at 74% containment. The burned area remains at the 9,668 acres recorded this past Saturday.

The local newspaper reported 929 homes in the vicinity of the fire are still under mandatory evacuation, and another 245 remain under voluntary evacuation. The fire is not out, but it will be. The 327 firefighters who battled the flames day and night to save livestock, pets, wildlife, homes, and outbuildings have, as always, gone far and above the call of heroic duty and have given their all by putting their lives in danger—have taken the bull by the horns and tamed it. They call them "hotshots," elite crews armed with axes, shovels, and hoses, who carved firebreaks through  burning trees, doused flames and embers, and beat back the relentless inferno.\

Addendum—Over and Done

The Alexander Mountain Fire in Larimer County, Colorado was declared out—100% contained—August 17, 2024, two weeks after it was first reported on July 29, 2024. The fire burned over 9,600 acres and was human-caused.