The Sun Valley Idaho area is suddenly a burning question!

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Fritz

Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
Topic Author's Original Post - Aug 17, 2013 - 07:29pm PT
The question of course is: will it burn?

The number 1 priority fire in the U.S. is the Beaver Creek Fire and it has impacted the Big Wood River Valley, home of Sun Valley, and cherished outdoor playground for many folks.

I grew up in Ketchum, one mile from Sun Valley, then lived there again from 1982-91, before fleeing to Choss Creek.

Best wishes to Dick Dorworth, my friend Stein Sitzmark (who had to evacuate yesterday), and any ST readers with homes, friends, or interests in this wonderful area.

Heidi & I have room reservations in Ketchum next week to celebrate our 25th anniversary with friends from the area. It now looks like that may not be happening.

Some photos:



rottingjohnny

Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
Aug 17, 2013 - 07:46pm PT
Here's to a smokeless anniversary...RJ
TwistedCrank

climber
Bungwater Hollow, Ida-ho
Aug 17, 2013 - 08:14pm PT
It big bad news all around. I can see the pyro cumulus clouds from Boise of the three big fires between here and SV, a hundred miles away. Lots of prime mountain bike real estate is toast. Bald Mtn is under threat and is actively pumping water originally stored for snow making. Mandatory evacuations all up and down the Wood River valley. The orders are to grab your pets and meds and go - don't hesitate and don't look back. It's hard to watch, being so close and so familiar. I have many friends over there. I wish for strength to all.

Next year, it'll be mud slides.

I guess that's life in the intermountain west.
Fritz

Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
Topic Author's Reply - Aug 17, 2013 - 08:38pm PT
Yep! Life in a fire ecosystem. I put myself through college working on a Forest Service helicopter fire crew in the Sun Valley area. Times have changed and now I am supposed to believe that fire is good for the forest. Much of the area just west & north of Sun Valley burned in a big fire in 2007.

The question is: will that area be resistant to burning in this fire?




guido

Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
Aug 17, 2013 - 08:46pm PT
Bump

crusher

climber
Santa Monica, CA
Aug 18, 2013 - 01:51am PT
Yep, I've got friends evacuated from sun valley and others in Boise. Was this lightening or human caused? Looks really bad....stay safe everybody.
ionlyski

Trad climber
Kalispell, Montana
Aug 18, 2013 - 03:59am PT
Yikes! That looks like a bad one for sure. And we've seen em bad before too. Had enough of all our forests lost right around us. All they do is come back as lodgepole instead of the Larch, yellow pine, fir and spruce they were.

All the best with this one.

Arne
jaaan

Trad climber
Chamonix, France
Aug 18, 2013 - 06:33am PT
Hope all you guys stay safe. I've got friends who live just west of Hailey out in Croy Creek. Looks like they might have been evacuated: http://maps.co.blaine.id.us/beavercreekfiremap/ Can anyone confirm that this area has been evacuated? Thanks.
Delhi Dog

climber
Good Question...
Aug 18, 2013 - 07:58am PT
Bummer, hoping for the best for folks in that area
Drove through there in June on my way for a river trip and man it was pouring down rain and fairly soaked, amazing what a couple months later looks like.
Ezra Ellis

Trad climber
North wet, and Da souf
Aug 18, 2013 - 08:10am PT
Love that Valley, hope it's not too bad.
110 years of fire suppression, coupled with climate change, are recipes for BIG fire!!!!
Best,
E
kpinwalla2

Social climber
WA
Aug 18, 2013 - 10:43am PT
Hey Fritz - Crazy coincidence... My wife and I are (were?) planing on celebrating OUR 25th anniversary in the Ketchum/Stanley area in late September. We were hoping to enjoy the area's fantastic mtn. biking. Any idea if the fires have affected any of the popular areas such as Adam's Gulch?
Fritz

Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
Topic Author's Reply - Aug 18, 2013 - 10:45am PT
Things are looking a little better on the Beaver Fire this morning. The fire that was burning above Hailey has been stopped.

This fire and all current large fires in Idaho were caused by lightning.

Jaaan: Croy Creek was evacuated and much of the north side of it burned after crews set backfires at the mouth of Croy to protect Hailey early Sat. morning. The backfire raced up the canyon with fire crews chasing it. No structures were lost, but it was apparently a close-run fight.

Here's a view from Hailey looking west up Croy Cr. at 3:00 A.M. Sat morning.
jaaan

Trad climber
Chamonix, France
Aug 18, 2013 - 10:51am PT
Thank goodness for that. Thank you Fritz.
paganmonkeyboy

climber
mars...it's near nevada...
Aug 18, 2013 - 10:53am PT
I don't know how it is in Idaho, but based on my observations of UT and CO anything over 9-10k feet is more than half standing dead evergreens at the moment...N and S side Uintas, Rabbit Ears and the Zirks, Cameron Pass/Rawahs, Central UT - all of it is over half standing dead by my drive-by assessment...

It wasn't this bad 5 years ago - the speed at which this happened astounds me...

Extrapolating this all the way to Canada one can see the potential for quick and catastrophic events with far reaching consequences...its spoooky...
Fritz

Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
Topic Author's Reply - Aug 18, 2013 - 10:55am PT
Kpinwalla2: Small world ain't it?

So far Adams Gulch is spared. Since much of it burned in 2007, it is somewhat more fire-resistant, although a Forest Service official was whinning yesterday that due to "new-growth" in the 2007 burn area, the Beaver Fire was making some inroads into the old burn.

Upper Greenhorn Gulch, Upper Warm Springs, and most all of Deer Creek have all burned and were all popular mountain bike areas for better riders.

Still lots of unburned areas around there. It should be great in September.

Here's a fire map that was accurate as of yesterday morning.
Fritz

Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
Topic Author's Reply - Aug 18, 2013 - 11:06am PT
Ron: Sawtooths and Stanley are fine. It has been smokey on and off there the last few weeks, since the area is more or less surrounded by large fires.

The Sawtooth web-cam shows a nice-clear view of the mountains this morning.

http://www.sawtoothcamera.com/

By contrast, the Sun Valley cams 60 miles SE of Stanley show a smokey morning. http://www.sunvalley.com/mountain/webcams/

This photo is a current view from the Sun Valley Golf course of the great ski-mountain Baldy about 3 miles away. Looks like visability if a little less than 3 miles.
Jennie

Trad climber
Elk Creek, Idaho
Aug 18, 2013 - 11:56am PT
Happy Anniversary, Fritz!

Very dramatic photos...thanks for posting.

Haze over the Tetons, this morning. 100 plus miles downwind...

Brokedownclimber

Trad climber
Douglas, WY
Aug 18, 2013 - 12:09pm PT
Fritz-

All the best to you and Heidi celebrating 25 years together! Bad news about the fires, though.

Rodger
Fritz

Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
Topic Author's Reply - Aug 18, 2013 - 12:12pm PT
I don't know the gent, but John R. Parsons has an interesting Facebook post on the fire this morning. He is initially talking about the fire west of Hailey on Sat. morning. It is now confessed that the back-fire the Forest Service set on Carbonate Mt. to save Hailey then raced up the north-side of Croy Creek with fire-crews chasing it. The fire burned as far west as Rotarun ski area, before being controlled.

It is also now confessed that the DC-10 used on the fire lost it's rear engine over the fire last week. It somehow did not fall out of the sky.



Joh R. Parsons
"The Battle of Hailey" was won in the trenches sometime between 2-4 am this morning. It was a genuine hand-to-hand battle just as we surmised it might be. In fact, at today's Hailey Community Meeting "Out in Deer Creek and Green Horn, we got our butts kicked," said Blaine County Fire Chief Bart Lassman.

There were 40 municipal fire engines and their crews who went face-to-face with the fires, often being backed right to the walls of the houses they were protecting. Not a structure was lost last night. Miracles happen. Prayers ARE answered.

Resources are now pouring into The Beaver Creek Fire.

10Tanker had a Hollywood Moment Thursday. The DC-10 lost an engine over The Beaver Creek Fire and almost stalled before the crew could recover. Consider that this DC-10 routinely comes in 300 feet off the deck to drop its retardant. There's not a lot of margin for error in a DC-10 when you're 300 feet from those Wood River Valley Hills. Witnesses said they heard a loud pop and the plane sagged toward earth. The crew somehow rallied the giant aircraft and limped toward Pocatello calling out "Emergency, Emergency" on their radio. Luckily, the giant aircraft landed safely and is now being repaired.


Meanwhile, 10Tanker's twin DC-10 has taken over fire bombing duties. Meanwhile, the Forest Service ordered up yet another MAFFS C-130 and so three of The Big Birds were playing Tag Team on the fire today. And, of course, meanwhile, the fire has five huge Type 1 helicopters swarming overhead to remind us of Mohammed Ali's famous line, "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee."

Municipal fire trucks continue to stream into Wood River Valley. Federal resources are pouring in as well. The Beaver Creek Fire is making national news on network and cable TV and has virtually taken over the regional media outlets.

A total of 2250 homes are under mandatory evacuation and another 7,350 under "pre-evacuation" notices. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people are moving in all directions seeking shelters, motels, campsites and just Friend's homes in which to bunk down.

As we said last night, if Hollywood tried to dream up a script such as this, no one would believe it. However, this is true. it's reality. It's really happening.

Meanwhile, believe it or not, the fire crews are winning. It's such a truly awe-inspiring story to follow in real-time, we simply can't stop watching and reading. The West is filled with about 200 years of stranger-than-fiction Real Life Dramas. This is yet another chapter in a saga of courage, determination, pluck and, yes, a little luck. This is an evolving story of the role of sheer human effort winning against all odds.

It is quite simply a mesmerizing story unfolding to behold.
Jelf

climber
Aug 18, 2013 - 04:37pm PT
The following link will always display the most perimeter of the Beaver Creek Fire straight from the GeoMAC server. This is the same server that also provides data to the crews on the fire line. Sometimes the data on the InciWeb site is not as current as the data that comes from the GeoMAC server. (The InciWeb site gets its data from GeoMAC.)

To see high resolution topographic maps first open the ‘map type’ menu and then select “t4 Topo High”. The ‘map type’ button always displays the name of the current basemap and is in the upper right corner of the map (lower right corner on mobile devices).

To see the basemap prepared by the Blaine County GIS staff, including parcel lines, open the ‘map type' menu and then select "Blaine_County_basemap". Zoom in for more detail. You can also try Menu ==> Search.

To always open the map zoomed in on a specific spot, first make the map look the way you want it to look on your screen. Then click (or touch) Menu ==> Link to this map.

If you open this link on a smartphone or other mobile device then you will automatically see a touch-friendly interface.

http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.php?ll=43.58445,-114.467517&z=11&t=m,Fire_perimeter,Fires,Blaine_County_basemap&wms=http://wildfire.cr.usgs.gov/ArcGIS/services/geomac_dyn/MapServer/WMSServer?name=Fire_perimeter&layers=23&transparent=true&wms=http://wildfire.cr.usgs.gov/ArcGIS/services/geomac_dyn/MapServer/WMSServer?name=Fires&layers=24&transparent=true&rest=http://maps.co.blaine.id.us/bcgis/rest/services/BlaineCoBaseMapFGDB/MapServer?name=Blaine_County_basemap&layers=0-51

For more information on GeoMAC see:
http://www.geomac.gov/index.shtml

The map is displayed by Gmap4 which is an enhanced Google map viewer that I developed. To see the perimeter for other fires simply zoom out and pan the map.

Gmap4 homepage: http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.html

Joseph, the Gmap4 guy
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