Smoky ride

[LongRanger_imp]

Smoky, as in wildfires, not the Great Smoky Mountains.

Seems like half of Colorado is on fire right now, including Glenwood Canyon, which is a beautiful area to visit if you don’t mind riding on the freeway. But there are a bunch of other fires nearby, including on Cameron Pass and near Hot Sulphur Springs, and they’re really smoking up the sky. Took the CB on a hot lap over Berthoud Pass this afternoon and came back covered in ash, like I had just cleaned out a chimney. The normally brilliant blue sky at elevation is opaque, yellow and brown, with zero visibility. Crazy.

[SportsterDoc]

Nice in Cortez Thu night/Fri AM but not in Denver. Last time we were here, I70 was closed by avalanches.

[the Ferret]

Saw you were having fires on the 6pm news. Pretty sad to see that beautiful country burning.

[Cormanus]

I saw enough smoke and fire in 1967 to last a lifetime and then there was earlier this year. Sorry to hear it LongRanger.

As a postscript, some species of Eucalyptus like to be burned occasionally as it helps their regeneration process. It’s strange to ride through country that, in February, was black and desolate, and where trees are now showing green shoots up their trunks.

[offroadfx4_imp]

Sorry LR.

It was really sad to see burnt a mountain with a lone house at the top.

The time it would take to regrow was disappointing.

What did you say on those Ponderosa Pines like three generations?

[LongRanger_imp]

Certainly it takes generations for the forests to return as they once were. Take a look at Yellowstone. Those massive wildfires happened in 1988. Here we are, 32 years later (one generation) and the forests have not yet returned. While there has been growth and renewal, it’s still a moonscape in many parts of the park.

Around here, due to the amount of dead forest, it’s usually hopeless to expect to contain and control the burning until the snows come, usually in early October. The firefighters work to save structures, but that’s about all they can do.