Aftermath

We have been busy enough lately with the new old van (more about that in future posts!) that I've gotten behind posting things again.  So, some catch-up for the next few posts...

When last you heard from us here, the state was burning up.  For a while, that meant not much bike riding -- either the areas I wanted to ride in were actively burning, or the smoke was just so bad that exercising was a bad idea.  We did have one day in September when the air near the coast was clear, at least at ground level, so I headed over to take a ride and see what I could see.

Weird, eerie, orange light is what I saw.  Despite the air quality being pretty good down low where I was riding, there was a high layer of smoke that led to the world being very orange for most of the ride.  These pictures were all shot between about 11am and 1pm -- and as you can see, it was dark!

The road going by Butano where the fire started was still closed, so I couldn't get in to see what things looked like back there, but Highway 1 along the coast had opened up.  There was much evidence of burnt vegetation on both sides of the road,

and also of the ongoing work to mop up the fire.  This was clearly a fire equipment staging area.  The world was less orange in this more southerly location.

Heading back north to the car, the sky re-colored itself, leading to some decidedly odd views.

On the way home, I drove by the junction of 9 with 236, which heads into Big Basin.  236 was closed, and the world was dark and smoky.  Remember that this was about 1pm -- all the smoke made it seem like sometime after sunset.  I stopped for a moment and listened to the silence, punctuated by the occasional sounds of falling trees and machinery in the distance.  Though my intent was to take 9 back over the hill, it too was temporarily closed, as a tree had just fallen across it, so I had to turn around and drive home the long way.  

On a hike a week or so later on a much clearer day, I looked out from the top of Skyline toward the ocean.  The fire over by the coast basically started on the far side of the distant ridge in the picture below, and I could see the faint red line of fire retardant in the distance.  I know those fighting the fire did a tremendous amount of work to keep the fire from crossing the drainage at the base of it, so it wouldn't roar up and over the ridge to the more populated areas.  At one point, parts of Los Altos and Palo Alto (on our side of the main ridge!) were under an evacuation warning, which was sort of a wake-up call for many.

Switching gears to the other big local fire, in October I finally rode up Mt Hamilton for the first time this year.  The fire here swept right over the summit, but fortunately, the fire crews were able to save the observatory and all but one of the associated buildings.  You can see the burned building on the left of the photo below; I think it was formerly housing.

Some areas burned with a lot of intensity; other areas were unscathed or just lost underbrush.  It is clear that much tree removal had to happen before it was safe to open the road for traffic.

Lower down the hill, one can again see the lines of red fire retardant that were dropped to stop the fire from progressing any closer to San Jose.  It is a bit hard to tell, but in general, stuff behind the line is burnt, while everything in front of it remains unscathed.

This fire also eventually burned south into Henry Coe State Park.  I haven't been down there to check out the trails, but from the reports and pictures that I have seen thus far, it appears that much of the fire there just cleared out underbrush without doing as much damage as was seen in other areas.  I am hopeful it conveniently removed all the poison oak while leaving the big trees unscathed!  Now that parts of that park have opened, I need to make it down there to see for myself.