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.