Post Whitewater Baldy Fire Gila Wilderness NM

[RedRoxx44]

Interesting short video of rescue efforts for some of the native fish in the streams post Whitewater Baldy Fire. Those of us who know the area will find the landscape footage extremely depressing. Nice educational aspect.

[ youtube video ]

[nonot]

Interesting, I had no idea that people went in to rescue the fish. Thanks for sharing.

[PrestonSands]

X

[flagscott]

@RedRoxx44
Thank you for the link! Those poor mountains were trashed. Another fire (after a record dry winter!) that could have been stopped in its infancy.

Got a link for that? USFS says otherwise: https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/gila/hom ... rdb5376537

The Baldy Fire started on May 9th in a rugged, inaccessible area of the wilderness. Due to unsafe conditions and steep terrain, crews were unable to directly engage the fire to suppress it at the time. The Whitewater Fire was spotted on May 16th, several miles west of the Baldy Fire and, from that first day, crews worked for full suppression of the fire.

(I'll be the first to admit that USFS gets a lot of stuff wrong--is there another story?)

[PrestonSands]

Yes, "flagscott", there is another story. Stories from local Glenwood residents I spoke with disagree with your forest service link's statement about initial suppression efforts being aggressive. Oral accounts that are not "documented". I'm not looking to get into a debate with you. But I will say that the Whitewater area, which I visited in August 2013, post fire, looked awful. Appeared to have 80% tree mortality up there. It's a damn shame.

[whereveriroam]

Thanks Preston for sharing your youtube. It brought back good memories, The Gila was my favorite wilderness.

[flagscott]

Yes, "flagscott", there is another story. Stories from local Glenwood residents I spoke with disagree with your forest service link's statement about initial suppression efforts being aggressive. Oral accounts that are not "documented". I'm not looking to get into a debate with you. But I will say that the Whitewater area, which I visited in August 2013, post fire, looked awful. Appeared to have 80% tree mortality up there. It's a damn shame.

"PrestonSands," the Gila is arguably the most fire-prone part of the country, and it's getting more so thanks to climate change. Big fires are almost unavoidable in that kind of terrain. 20% tree survival isn't bad--a lot better than some other fires!

As for the stories that the fire could be put out, that was a super dry year, and the terrain is rough. In May 2013 I climbed up to the firetower where one of those fires was first spotted and chatted with the fire lookout who had been on duty in 2012--we didn't talk about suppression efforts, but that is some rough, rough country. I don't think that random comments from locals are a great source of information here.

BTW, there are still some really nice areas in the Gila that weren't burned.

[cactuscat]

BTW, there are still some really nice areas in the Gila that weren't burned.

Anyplace in particular that you would recommend? I was hoping to make my first visit later this summer.

[PrestonSands]

@flagscott Very well then. Every forested mountain range I've cared about has had catastrophic fire damage in the last 20 years. Sure, this is all inevitable at this point, but I can't not care about these lands that are so much a part of who I am. My forests are dying and I'm devastated. This is my final post.

[flagscott]

@flagscott Very well then. Every forested mountain range I've cared about has had catastrophic fire damage in the last 20 years. Sure, this is all inevitable at this point, but I can't not care about these lands that are so much a part of who I am. My forests are dying and I'm devastated. This is my final post.

I think you're misinterpreting me. I care about the fires and the places lost as much as anyone in Arizona, especially since I think that almost all of our fire problem is human-caused (climate change + terrible forest management by USFS). We've entered a whole new world where places that people love can disappear overnight due to fire (or development, too). Until recently, this sort of change was rare. Not anymore. There's a fantastic book called "The Place You Love Is Gone" that talks about this issue, though mostly in a non-nature context.

That said, I don't think that conspiracy theories about USFS help the situation. Nowadays, big fires are largely unavoidable. I find it easier to accept that reality than to blame an agency for each fire. I see a lot of threads around here blaming USFS when big fires happen or someplace they care about burns. These fires are often unpreventable, and putting out every fire would just make things worse in the long run.

Anyway, bottom line is that if you want to blame anyone for Whitewater-Baldy, blame everyone. Climate change is a monster, and even if the world went zero-carbon tomorrow, we'd still be living in a warmer, drier Southwest than we had in the 20th century for decades to come.

[flagscott]

BTW, there are still some really nice areas in the Gila that weren't burned.

Anyplace in particular that you would recommend? I was hoping to make my first visit later this summer.

Gila River! On the CDT, we hiked along the main stem of the Gila for about 15 miles and the Middle Fork for another 30 miles. That's a beautiful area, with hot springs and lots of wildlife. There was a flood (probably related to the fires) on the MIddle Fork a few years back, and the trail was mostly washed away, but people still hike there. The navigation should be easy since you just walk up or down the canyon. Jordan Hot springs is on the Middle fork and is an awesome spot--I'd suggest avoiding it on weekends. We got there on a Monday morning and had it to ourselves, but we passed several weekenders hiking out on the way in.

Gila Cliff Dwellings was really cool, too. You can see that in an hour.

[Jim]

Keeping in mind that there are currently a lot of seasonally normal fires in the Gila and Aldo Leopold Wilderness area, after the summer rain arrives and some green up occurs, Lilly Park, McKenna Park, Turkey Park, and a lot of other relatively easy to access back areas are available for people to visit. Most are about a day to get to, stay over night, and return.

I really want to see some photos of McKenna Park, since that is an area that has had multiple low intensity fires over the last 15 years, some parts have had 2 or 3 in the last 6. I visited McKenna Park in 2010. Very nice. Sadly, the FS suppressed a lightning fire in McKenna that year, in May, when it might have backed up into much of the WWB fire area, at a much slower rate and in much higher moisture content fuels having far different affects. It might have gone down into Little Creek, same thing. The 2011 Miller and 2012 WWB didn't have to occur the way they did.

At least right now, they are allowing a number of fires to progress through the forest.

[flagscott]

The 2011 Miller and 2012 WWB didn't have to occur the way they did.

Do you have a source for this?

[Jim]

https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/5237/

This fire in particular may be of interest if you plan to venture into the Gila, as it was mostly burning in areas that burned in 2003, and now is coming into areas that burned in 2012, and 2016. The western flank is most interesting to me as that is where McKenna Park begins. The McKenna fire was last year and it pretty much treated that entire park. In 2012, WWB entered the western edge, but died out. McKenna also burned in 2003, and there was that 1000 acre Horse fire in 2010. There is a lot of dead down material from a big blow down in the spring of 2010, and I wonder how that area looks now.

Keep in mind that the places in the Gila Like I mentioned in my earlier post are generally very fire resilient, and look great, often with a lot of under story plants that will grow after a fire.
https://hikearizona.com/photoset.php?ID=11307

Add Woodland Park to that list.

[RedRoxx44]

The lower elevation areas like Rain Creek ; https://hikearizona.com/photoset.php?ID=35801, are nice but it will be hot in the next few months. Plus the nice areas there are basically off trail or on a decommissioned trail. The higher elevation trails are in the burn zone mostly. The river forks are nice as you are in or near water but will be rather hot also. https://hikearizona.com/dex2/igallery/album.php?id=208, one of my favorite backpacks, up the Middle Fork, cross over at Trotter, then down the West Fork. Another favorite is off Aeroplane Mesa to the Meadows area, however imagine that could be toasty also.

If all goes to plan I will be doing an old loop into Redstone Park and out to the Crest and over to the Apache fire cabin ( not sure if it made it haven't found much on the web indicating it did or did not) and back. All of this burned some of it quite severely in Whitewater Baldy but I am curious and it's been a few years. The trails are around 8-9+ elevation drops below at Redstone park but that area used to be heavily shaded. Want to see how some of the springs are doing also, Hummingbird, one at the cabin and another nearby that used to run full force out of a pipe.

[cactuscat]

Thanks all!

[PrestonSands]

@RedRoxx44 I look forward to seeing your photos and hearing a report on your visit to Redstone and the Hummingbird Spring area. I'm hoping aspens are making a comeback up there.