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| Hiking | 1.50 Miles |
500 AEG |
| | Hiking | 1.50 Miles | | | |
| 500 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no partners | | This weekend, I went to check out some of the East Clear Creek trails to see how they fared the Tinder Fire of May 2018.
Horse Crossing: the trail down to the creek is severely burned. The trail is mostly still easy to follow, but I did lose the trail a couple times as I got nearer to the creek. The creek bottom has some burned and some unaffected areas. The water in the creek was very cloudy and dirty. I hiked down-creek a couple miles before turning around. Hiking back out was much hotter without the shade. I only saw 2 other people.
Kinder Crossing: the road to the trailhead is same as pre-fire. The hike down to the creek seems mostly unchanged, only a couple small burned areas. Conditions along the creek are a mix of burned and unaffected areas. I went down creek almost to the Horse Crossing trail and then turned around. Water along this stretch was also very cloudy and dirty. I saw many people on this hike, including a huge group of backpackers (Scouts? Church or community group?).
East Clear Creek looked better than I expected after the Tinder Fire. I thought the whole area was going to be severely burned. I'm no fire expert and I couldn't tell where the fire originated. The area along the creek seemed more overgrown than what I remember. I'm not sure what caused the poor water quality in East Clear Creek - the Tinder Fire, the more recent fire South of the area, monsoon rains? It made the creek crossings much more difficult as I couldn't see what I was stepping on. The water looks much clearer in the other post-Tinder Fire photoset.
I used to frequently fish East Clear Creek, and I saw absolutely zero signs of fish activity in the creek. The only signs of life in the water I saw were some crawdads and some ducks.
When I was a couple of miles down-creek of the Horse Crossing trail, I ran into a particularly brushy section. I couldn't see much besides the tall brush when I heard something growl at me (or make some kind of noise). Startled me yelled at the startled animal, and then I heard it run away through the brush and splash across the creek. About a 1/4 mile later, I saw a dark animal way on the other side of the creek - I'm guessing this could be the same animal. It's in my photoset. My first thought was "bear", but after looking at it more closely, I think it may have been a dog. It stared at me for 10 or 15 seconds before turning and running away. If it was a dog, I didn't see any people nearby. The next day I ran into a set of bear tracks. |
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Route Editor
Route Scout
