Creek Fire and Beasore Road

Here's a fascinating report from a backpacking group who had to make some complicated decisions in the middle of their one-week planned east-to-west traverse of the Central Sierras: Escape from Creek Fire. There's additional information here, though I don't know how to do a great job of Twitter linking.

I don't think I realized just how close our hike was last year to this area. The maps are a bit hard to read but I'm pretty sure that Beasore Road, our access road to the Fernandez Trailhead, has been crossed by the fire at this point.

In 2002, on a backpacking trip to Mosquito Lakes from the Mineral King trailhead, we had to cut our trip short and make a hasty exit due to a fire about 20 miles south of us.

That was dramatic, but nothing like this!

Generally we have been well-prepared for fire conditions on our backpacking trips. We are alert to the dangers, and have talked regularly about how we would handle such situations.

But we were never tested like this group was tested.

It appears that if we had been on that trip at this time, our primary plan (detect the fire early, abort the trip, hike out and leave), might not have been an option. We might have had to choose a different option (for example, we knew that an alternate plan was to hike about 10 miles north, where a trail led through a pass and into Yosemite National Park and then out through Wawona).

I'm glad they shared their experience, and their thoughts as they were reacting in real time.

Lots to think about.