Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About The Observer. (La Grande, Or.) 1968-current | View Entire Issue (July 18, 2020)
B Saturday, July 18, 2020 The Observer & Baker City Herald G ROWING U P I N T HE F OREST Revisiting The Sloans Ridge Fire 24 Years Later ■ A new generation of trees is rising in the North Fork John Day Wilderness, where a blaze burned in August 1996 As we hiked through the young forest I was pondering the fi ery fate of the old forest. I remembered the days when a smoke plume towered over the Elkhorns, nearly as tall as a thunderhead, the afternoons acrid and the setting sun as red as arterial blood. It was hot the day we walked the Peavy Trail, in the valley of the North Fork of the John Day River south- west of Anthony Lakes. July 11 was in fact the hot- test day so far in 2020. The temperature topped out at 101 at the Baker City Airport. It was on much the same sort of day, just shy of 24 years earlier, that the old for- est began what was in effect a cremation, one that would extend over the better part of a week. On Aug. 8, 1996, a blaze which had been relatively placid since it was sparked by lightning 9 days earlier began to feed on the combination of heat, kiln-like humidity and a gusty northwest wind as though it were a Saturn 5 guzzling rocket fuel. The Sloans Ridge fi re incinerated almost every tree on about 1,500 acres that day, when the temperature hit 96 at the Baker City Airport. Two days after that it was 104 degrees. And the fi re continued to surge south, reaching the North Fork’s headwaters in the seeps and springs below the granitic crest of the Elk- horns where both the John Day and the Powder rivers begin. The blaze had blackened 4,200 acres of forest by the evening of Aug. 11. And 9,000 acres by Aug. 12. Before heavy rain on Aug. 13 and 14 helped fi refi ghters subdue the Sloans Ridge fi re, it had spread across about 10,500 acres. The fi re generated about ON THE TRAIL JAYSON JACOBY Lisa Britton/For the EO Media Group as much controversy as it did smoke. Offi cials from the Wallowa- Whitman National Forest acknowledged that fi re crews almost certainly could have doused the blaze soon after the lightning bolt ignited it. But Bob Richmond, then the Wallowa-Whitman’s supervisor, heeded the advice of the forest’s fi re managers and decided instead to let the blaze burn. The goal — and it’s one the Wallowa-Whitman continues to pursue in the Eagle Cap Wilderness — was to allow naturally sparked fi res to play their historic role in wilderness areas. The Sloans Ridge fi re started in the 13,700-acre Baldy unit of the North Fork John Day Wilderness, desig- nated by Congress in 1984. Wallowa-Whitman offi cials conceded that letting fi res burn is risky — particularly during midsummer and in an area such as the North Fork valley, where a pine beetle epidemic in the 1970s killed many of the lodgepole pines that grew thickly along the river. The blaze grew much faster than offi cials expected, or hoped, that it would. On Aug. 8, the day the fi re became an inferno, Rich- mond declared Sloans Ridge a wildfi re and summoned hundreds of fi refi ghters and a fl eet of air tankers and helicopters. But this army couldn’t prevent the fl ames from spreading across most of the Baldy unit. The fi re also burned about 140 acres of private property. That prompted a $1.4 mil- lion lawsuit that the Forest Service settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. The Peavy Trail, in the North Fork John Day Wilderness southwest of Anthony Lakes, runs through the area burned in the Sloans Ridge fi re in August 1996. The lightning-sparked blaze killed most of the trees around the headwaters of the North Fork John Day River, but a new crop of trees has become well established amid the skeletons of the previous forest. I’ve hiked parts of the Peavy Trail a few times since 1996, usually accompanying Wallowa-Whitman employees who were there to study the aftermath. The 4-mile trail, which connects to the Elkhorn Crest National Recreation Trail at Cracker Saddle, basically bisects the burn zone. I learned a great deal dur- ing those hikes about how fi re has affected the forests of the Elkhorns over many millen- nia. Two Forest Service ecolo- gists — Dave Swanson and Charlie Johnson, who died in 2007 — explained that the Sloans Ridge fi re, though it besmirched the agency’s repu- tation, was a “natural” event in that it almost certainly mimicked many previous fi res in that valley. The ecologists told me that the forest that carpeted the upper North Fork in 1996, a dense mixture of lodgepole, tamarack, subalpine fi r and Engelmann spruce, along with thickets of whitebark pine at the higher elevations, is the type of forest that, due to its elevation and heavy winter snowpack that combine to keep the ground moist, doesn’t burn often. Lightning might spark an occasional blaze, they said, but the vast majority of those fi zzled before they covered more than a couple acres. Also, for most of the 20th century the Forest Service had endeavored to squelch those blazes as quickly as possible, a campaign memorialized by the now-defunct “10 a.m. rule.” The idea was to try to con- trol every fi re by 10 a.m. the day after it was reported. But rarely — the interval likely ranging between about 75 and 300 years — a certain combustible combination would coalesce. Lightning would supply the spark. Summer’s dry heat and a desiccating wind would invigorate the normally placid fl ames. Another natural and peri- odic event, such as the tree- killing pine beetle infestation of the 1970s, would further prime the forest for a great burning. Foresters call this a “stand- replacing” fi re, meaning one that effectively erases the existing forest and makes way for a new one. That’s essentially what hap- pened starting on Aug. 8, 1996, Johnson and Swanson told me. The sequence, from crucible to the cool green of rejuvena- tion, is predictable, the ecolo- gists said. I fi rst saw the fi re’s after- math in the fall of 1996. Probably the seeds of the revival, of wildfl owers and co- nifers and grasses, had already been sown. But to me, ignorant of ecological matters, it looked like a wasteland. The fi rst autumn storm had drenched the Elkhorns recent- ly and the North Fork, nor- mally a crystal-clear sanctuary for some of Oregon’s healthier salmon and steelhead runs, looked like the chocolate river in Willy Wonka’s factory where Augustus Gloop came to a bad end. The trees had yet to shed their scorched black bark, making for a scene dramatical- ly different from the familiar soft forest green. I went back to the wilder- ness in August 1997, the fi rst anniversary of the week the blaze exploded. I followed Johnson, our boots creating a brief black cloud of soot with every step, between each of the 10 areas he had designated just after the fi re as “test plots.” He had returned a year later to study each plot and see how much vegetation, and what sorts of plants, had begun to colonize the scorched earth. See Forests/Page 6B If You Go... From the parking lot at Anthony Lakes Ski Area, drive west on the two-lane, paved Elkhorn Drive Scenic Byway, Forest Road 73, for about 11 miles. Turn left at a sign for Peavy Trail and Cunningham Cove Trail. Follow the gravel road, Forest Road 380, for about 3.5 miles to its end at the Peavy Trailhead, just beyond Peavy Cabin. There is no fee to park at the trailhead. (The rustic log cabin, built in 1934 and named for George Wilcox Peavy, a forestry professor at Oregon State Univer- sity, is public property managed by the U.S. Forest Service. The cabin can be rented through Oct. 31, for $54 per night, although it has already been reserved on most nights through August. More information at recreation.gov.) The trail immediately enters the North Fork John Day Wilderness. Motorized vehicles and mountain bikes aren’t allowed. The trail is relatively fl at for the fi rst 2 miles as it follows the North Fork John Day River upstream. The trail crosses about a dozen streams or boggy stretches. Logs make it possible to get through most of these sections with (relatively) dry feet — it’s not a trail suited for sneakers or fl ipfl ops. At the 2-mile mark the trail veers left, heading up the steep slope toward the crest of the Elkhorns at Cracker Saddle. A sign marks this junction. (The route that continues along the river is an aban- doned road that leads to private patented mining claims.) The fi nal 2 miles of the Peavy Trail are diffi cult, and for multiple reasons. Most of the trail’s 1,800 feet of elevation gain is crammed into this section, and in common with most trails in the Elkhorns, the grade is not eased by the switchbacks that make trail climbs in the Eagle Cap Wilder- ness so much gentler, albeit longer. The other challenge is simply staying on the trail, espe- cially the fi nal mile or so. The trail crosses an area where the Sloans Ridge fi re killed every mature tree, leaving a labyrinth of logs bleached grayish-white by the sun of 24 alpine summers. A series of rock cairns, and in some cases a single rock set atop a log that’s been cut by a trail crew, marks the way, but in the bewildering maze of logs, some of them 3 feet through the middle, it might be a challenge to stay on the offi cial route. If you do go astray, the last stretch of trail below Cracker Saddle is visible if you look up the slope to the southeast. Cracker Saddle is a major wilderness crossroads, and an access point for the Elkhorn Crest National Recreation Trail. To the left (north) the Crest Trail heads toward Lost Lake, Dutch Flat Saddle and, 10 miles away, the trail’s northern terminus near Anthony Lake. If you continue straight (downhill), you’ll reach, in several hundred yards, the rough road that climbs along Cracker Creek from Bourne. Options here include continuing south on the Crest Trail toward Rock Creek Butte, Twin Lakes and the southern end of the trail, 14 miles away at Marble Creek Pass, a 2-mile route to Summit Lake that branches off the Crest Trail, or roads/trails that lead to Lost Lake and the North Powder River, one of the major canyons on the east side of the Elkhorns. Lisa Britton/For the EO Media Group The view northwest across the valley of the North Fork of the John Day River from near Cracker Saddle. Sloans Ridge is in the center. Although the August 1996 Sloans Ridge fi re killed most of the trees in the valley, scattered clumps, including the subalpine fi rs and whitebark pines in this photo, survived.
