I went up with my camera and got some photos of the this fire, from a point, about a half mile on the south east side of Round Mountain ( The Bowen Ranch is on the west side of Round Mountain ). From that vantage point I had a clear view of the fires location, and progress. The fire was initially south and east of HWY 173, then around 2PM the fire, heading north, jumped HWY 173 in a number of places, and continued towards Deep Creek. It came north along a line that extended from down at the Mojave Dam, all the way east, to an area maybe a couple of miles west of Squints Ranch. The air tankers were dropping loads along its eastern front to stop its progress towards the direction of Lake Arrowhead. The fire was burning heavily in the area of the Kinely Creek Bridge, were the Bradford Ridge trail starts, and it continued on down the kinely creek canyon from all appearances, all the way to Deep Creek. The fire also advance along the route of the Bradford Ridge trail, and eventually crested the last high point and began coming down into the Deep Creek Canyon. The fire was burning on both sides of the Bradford Ridge trail, and everywhere in between, so its gonna look alot differant the next time you hike it :-( The fire was burning in areas south and southeast of DCHS, and looked to be little over a half mile, as the crow flies, from the springs, on the high southerly ridges overlooking DCHS. Around 4PM the prevailing winds made a major shift from north easterly to northwesterly and knocked back the fire intensity quite a bit, causing it to burn back on itself in many places. Also cooler late day temps were helping in this regard. When I left the round mountain area at 5PM, the fire was burning slowly down the hills, gradually towards DCHS. Also down the creek, in the area where Kinely Creek hits Deep Creek, and further downstream a bit where the arch bridge is, big collums of smoke began increasing in intensity. Just after this a new large collum of smoke showed itself, and I could see water dropping helicopters working an area, which by all appearances looked to be on the north side of the deep creek canyon, somewhere down by the arch bridge, so this fire " may " have jumped Deep Creek to begin burning further north in that area. I was up there veiwing the fire from about 2 to 5PM, and during that time there were no fire planes making drops on the northern front of the fire, just on the eastern flank. The fire also appeared to be burning heavily down towards the Mojave Dam area, but I had to look through more smoke so could not say how far the fire advanced down there. Using some high power binoculars I have, I did not see any hand crews working anywhere along the eastern and northern flank of this fire, which I can completely understand, given the terrain, and the brisk winds that were out there today. I'll work to get the fire photos installed at the Wizard's pictures link below, and should be able to get them ready in the next half hour or so. I'll post again here when they are ready for viewing.
