Re: Fire near the Village off Bowen Ranch Road!

I hiked to Deep Creek today. As I was hiking out of the canyon back to my vehicle which was parked on the public dirts rds in the area I could see a plane and it kept going in circles roughly where my vehicle was. Then when I got closer to my truck suddenly two fire tanker planes flew right over me coming from somewhere on the north side of Round Mountain which is a hill east of the Bowen Ranch. I could see no smoke or flames at this point. I got to my truck and proceeded to drive the dirt rds heading back towards the Bowen Ranch Rd and when I got to a high ridge where I could look on the north side of Round Mountain I saw the flames and the glowing of the fire which was located east of the village area by about one half mile and it was creeping toward that area. I stopped at the Rock Springs Ranch at the L turn with gate on the Bowen Ranch Rd and talked to Ann the caretaker there to see if she needed help with anything. She had just got her dogs and some important belongings and was waiting to see what was going to happen with the fire. We parked by the Rock Springs Ranch front gate. As we talked a fire rig headed up to her place to do structure protection. There were at least a couple dozen fire rigs on the fire and a dozer on a trailer had just pulled up.

It wasn't really that hot today with temps at the peak maybe 75 to 80 range. I saw Jobe when I was driving in on the Bowen Ranch rd in the morning around 10AM and he was just heading out with his bus. We chatted for a while and he showed me some stuff on his bus. At one point we talked briefly about the huge Arizona Wallow Fire and I mentioned that with all of the heavy grass this year we may be in for a bad fire season. Well there was a fire already about a week ago in the Ord Mountains near Round Up and Kiowa, and now this fire too so early in the season. Don't park your vehicle to close to any heavy brush when you leave it for the day when visiting DCHS, at the Bowen Ranch or elsewhere. In the Willow Fire ( 64,000 acres - 1999 ) I was at Deep Creek and this fire burnt big time right past my and my friends trucks and when we got back to them one of my tires had caught fire and was flat. It burnt about a 15 inch long hole in the tire but thankfully did not go up like you see some tires burn.

There is a whole lot of tall dry grasses in the hills around DCHS so obviously any kind of fires ( like at the springs ) is going to create a very real danger, not to mention its illegal too. I did take a few photos of this fire off of the Bowen Ranch rd. It was night so the pics might not have come out ( maybe blurry ) but if there is a fairly clear one I'll try and get one posted at the Wizard's pictures link below, maybe tomorrow if I get to it.

Also Jobe told me there was an air rescue at DCHS yesterday. An young man had drunk way to much vodka and apparenty was suffering from alcolol toxicity. Jobe said that JCrew was going to post about soon as he was there.

Neogeo, depending on what this fire does overnight there may be no access up the Bowen Ranch Rd in the morning. Its quite cool this evening but it was pretty breezy out there and the fire was advancing towards the general area of the intersection of the Bowen Ranch Rd and 3N14 which is the main dirt rid that cuts off to the left before the village area. Fire rigs were also heading up 3N14 to the Oak Springs Ranch area, about 3 miles up the road from the Bowen Ranch Rd. The winds are pushing the fire northerly tonight. You might consider heading up through the Lake Arrowhead area and hiking to DCHS by way of the Bradford Ridge Trail. Directions for it are at the DCV website.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/09/2011 10:59PM by Wizard.