Fire Two

The next fire coincidence came a week later.  The plan was this:  the whole fam would drive to Idyllwild, go for an extended hike, then make our way down the mountain and bask in the oven-like luxury of Palm Springs for a few days.  The hike I selected was Taquitz Peak -- always a favorite and something the whole family could appreciate, even in the rising heat.  When I used to ramble further in the summer, I would make it to Taquitz once a summer.  I'd climb up on the lookout tower at the top and take in the 360 of Southern California -- and still make it home before dinner.  A number of times I had to beat it out of there in a hurry in advance of threatening thunderstorms.  Once, a few years ago, I was shocked to find a person manning the tower.  His name was Nate ... or maybe Nick... and he was trained at the nearby ranger station to use the available equipment to search for potential fires.  We talked a bit, and it turns out that like me he had read the accounts of Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, and Philip Whalen when they all worked as fire lookouts in the Pacific Northwest in the 1950s.  He was staying for three days and had a journal open to a poem he was working on.

Here's where the fire comes in:  the day before we left for Idyllwild, I was checking my latest obsession, the HPWREN cameras, mostly scouting for thunderstorm activity.  I was actually hoping to find some t-storm activity, because nothing gets me fired up like a good summer thunderstorm.  Didn't see any.  But as I was scrolling through the photos, I came across a camera set at Toro Peak facing north.  And I saw a small column of billowing smoke.  What the?  From my internet search I come to find that there is a "small fire" burning near Mountain Center, at the junction of Highway 74 and State Route 243.  The road to Idyllwild.  For the rest of the night I monitor the situation, and not surprisingly the fire keeps getting bigger and bigger.  The next day we head out on our trip, with the fire growing by the hour.  We've already abandon the idea of going to Idyllwild -- and we even debated Palm Springs for a while.  We ultimately decided we'd be safe down on the desert floor, but we did get some very dramatic views of the fire burning just to the south of Taquitz Peak (see below).  We also had to contend with a lot of drifting smoke in Palm Springs (also see below).  The Mountain Fire ended up burning over 27,000 acres, including one of my favorite hikes up to the desert divide (Spitler Peak).  Luckily the awesome hikes out of Humber Park were spared.  Two vacations altered by fire in ten days.  What's next?