Last year I started doing the Kitsuma loop twice. Great training for ORAMM, but somewhat monotonous after a while. Last night I decided to continue on the route up to Star Gap. I decided that I could continue on up Heartbreak from there, or turn around and head back home.
The single track on Kitsuma:
When I got to the rail road tracks this is what I saw:
Apparently this happened just last week. The forest floor was scorched all the way up to Star Gap. Farther up I came saw something interesting. Looking at the picture below, you can see where the fire was not able to jump the trail. The forest below the trail is scorched while the forest above the trail is untouched. Hmmm, another reason for more mountain bike trails: they contain forest fires!!!
I felt good, better than I have in a couple of weeks. I can now understand what the pros mean when they say they are "coming back into form". The Black Mtn Range:
(the dates in the pictures are not correct. Jubal turned the date stamp on inadvertently!!!)Have a great day.
3 comments:
i was over there the other day as well. i had no idea that the fire actually bured the lower heart break area so much. It looks like the crews used the trail itself as a firebreak to contain the fire below in many spots. you might have noticed a lot of fresh cut trees that they felled to keep the fire from jumping the trail. The day of the fire they had quite a few crews over in the area as well as a giant bull dozer and 2 helicopters. I didn't see too much smoke that day so i was really surprised by the size of the burn. Looks like most of the big trees survived though as the fire must have stayed on the ground. I suspect the vegetation will come back nicely later in the spring....
Geez, we just rode that 2 weekends ago. Impressive, but I doubt that the burn would be contained on anything shallow? Still, neat pic to send to Woody Keen to put in his arsenal of trail benefits.
I agree with you Stephen! Contain fires, build more mtb. singletrack!
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