BOOM!

Yowza. Tanks for Sharon

So does that complete The Clark Range?
(seen u go up Gray Peak in July)

Fur me... I still got this one (gotta be Ottoway) still to do...

Have fun

---

What dramatic, moral-sapping pictures. surely there must be more than trees and brushwood burning there.

just seen the foxnews item: 'the fire has been smouldering since july.' it looks like it could have begun with the small funnel of smoke that I and others saw in the distance from the top of HD. how do the firefighters feel about the decision (not made by them) to 'let it burn'. am I correct in thinking that this is not the first time that a decision to let a 'controlled' burn has gone tits up?

Pines, I don't think this was ever a "controlled" burn. It seems they let these (hopefully) natural fires burn until people or structures are threatened. There also seems to be strong support that some of these natural fires rage out of control now because they were suppressed for so many years. I just hope this fire didn't explode because of careless, or worse, humans.

Wow...what was it like seeing it take off like that? A combination of frightening and exciting?

Yeah - both. I was up on Red Peak the afternoon prior. Saw the plumes of smoke from behind Starr King that had been burning for the last two months - nothing else. It was really windy Saturday night into Sunday. I thought that had sparked up.

The wind had been changing directions fairly dramatically, the typical winds from the west, then winds from the north (high pressure zone up in OR/WA) and next from the south (Mexico hurricane). I was planning on heading up Merced after Ottoway. It went from "hmm" to "holy moley" real fast. Prudence is a acceptable excuse. And an excuse to go back.

I want to give a shout-out to the douchebag impressing his girlfriend with a bonfire at Lower Ottoway Lake. When I greeted you with "nice bonfire!" I was being sarcastic.

That night my AM radio told me the fire was on the other side of the Merced so I should have no problem hiking out. But the other fellow I met (and warned) at Lower Ottoway would be hiking right into it....

Nice bonfire. Thanks for reading ur permit.... guess that went in the fire...



Douchebag

---

Let it burn. WILDERNESS

I probably come from the other side of the spectrum. When they say "no structures are threatened," I think "drats!" If they let the structures burn and saved the forest, we'd have...

More WILDERNESS!

Maybe we should make like the Indians, burn down Yosemite Valley every fall after we pick the apples, chase the DNC out.

If the whole place (Yosemite) burned down, someone somewhere would find something to sell: think of all those bags of charcoal!!

That is an incredible sequence of photos! Thanks for posting.

What is the time frame those pictures represent? Minutes, hours, ??

I time-stamped the photos here:
http://hotlist.wildlandfire.com/threads/42888-Re-CA-YNP-Meadow?p=176315#post176315