Fire, fire, and more fire

c) Andrew Carter, 2021

Sadly, fire has become a fact of life for me on the PCT. Unfortunately, this is a drought year during a time of man-made global warming.

I walked through a number of fire zones in So Cal, including two from fires last year. You may remember the photos and video I posted in April of a landscape totally obliterated by a very hot fire in chapperel country. All that remained was dirt & twigs. The earth itself was sanitized.

I’ve been passing through more fire zones in far Northern California and Southern Oregon. At least a part of every day over the past 10 days has been spent walking through cathedrals of burnt trees. In addition, there have been numerous active fires visible from the trail.

As you may recall, I wrote about hiking a 24-mile day to put distance between me and the Lava Fire on the slopes of Mt. Shasta near Weed. Then I saw the Tenant Fire “blow up” east of Mt. Shasta. I missed the Salt Fire on Shasta Lake only because I was home in Hanford at the time. It forced friends of mine who had hosted me only a week earlier at their second home in Lakehead to evacuate. (Fortunately, no damage to them and their house.)

Well, there have been more fires since then, particularly in Oregon. The biggest is the Bootleg Fire northeast of Klamath Falls. Today, that fire passed 250,000 acres burned. It is less than 10% contained. 250,000 acres is 390 square miles. The fire is about 60 miles east of the PCT.

Here’s a video I shot last Saturday when I first saw the huge cloud formation caused by the Bootleg Fire. I happened to be in an old burn zone when I saw it. Very depressing.

Beyond the destruction in the fire zone area, there is also the impact on air quality even 100 or more miles away. Notice the haze in the photos below.

You can smell the smoke as you walk. You can almost taste it. And one night in my tent, I felt like I couldn’t get enough oxygen. What more can I say.