DCR, I know what you mean. Fire is a natural part of the life of wildlands but it is a bummer for us as humans with our relatively short life spans. Beautiful areas we love can be burnt and will not look the same in our lifetimes. I saw a report on the news about a hot fire that burnt a large mountain to the North West of the town of Flagstaff Arizona. The report said that because of the wildlands altered condition because of the fire fighting policies that this fire burned so hot that this area that burned in this fire in 1977 was still baren and would most likely take a thousand years to get back to what it looked like before the fire. And realistically, that would also depend on the longterm climatic condition during that period. Over that span of time I've seen articles on areas just drying up because of changing long term whether patterns. I used to frequent a real nice camp spot at about the 8000 foot level on the ridges south of Lucerne valley. That spot got burned up in the Willow Fire. At least alot of the vegetation around DCHS is smaller and grows rather quickly. A place like where you go in the Sequoias will unfortunatly take a long time to regenerate. Its been the worst fire season on record so far :-(
