 |
| Park Ridge Lookout |
Description:
A peaceful night was interrupted with my glucose monitor saying that I had low blood sugar. It lied. When I read it with my regular monitor it said I was well within range. And here I thought I would be woken up with the sounds of thunder and lightning streaking across the sky.
I did go back to sleep and woke up at 0530 and did my lightning report. There were over 500 strikes in my area. Unlike June 24th, most of these were higher up and away from the grassy area of the foothills. Still they are very capable of starting their own destruction. It took me about an hour and a half to do the report, then had breakfast and went into service.
Today is extended hours because of the concern the lightning has. We went into service at 0800 and will be going out at 2000. In the meantime, we start down our scans and normal lookout stuff. The above is with Sequoia National Forest. Sherri takes the weather at 0915 and I go in-service with the Park at 0930.
 |
| Flag Raising-New Day |
We heard a truck come up the road. This is not Delilah which is on a public road, so that means it is either a Park vehicle or service vehicle for the Verizon tower. It is E42. The two guys come up and we talk for a time. They warn us about a tree about to come down just this side of the saddle. Then they are off.
We resume our routine. I will not bore you, gentle reader, with all of the minutiae of lookout life. At least anymore than what I have so far. As 1230 I have lunch, followed by my afternoon nap. I woke up to Delilah being called on R5. For a moment, I forgot where I was and then realized, this is not for me, I am not Delilah today.
Cells in the Sierra
Then we continued on with the
normal stuff. The skies overhead look good. The visibility was not
too good at the start of the day, about 10 miles. But now we are
about 7 miles, maybe. I am suspecting that much of this is smoke from
the fires. To the east it looks like there are clouds building up,
but not much activity around us.
 |
| Prescribed burn - duff removed along with some singed trees. Result will be a better forest |
 |
| Coming up the steep hill |
The Park is not on extended hours, we do our normal stuff until 1755 when we go out of service with Ash Mountain Fire. But we are still in-service with Porterville for another two hours until 1800.
Shortly afterwards, I see just a smidget of white through some trees. That white was not normally there. As I watch it, I call Sherri over and the white grows. It is a smoke. But it is just barely in the Park Ridge Prescription Burn. We watch it puff up and then decrease for about five minutes. Our instructions have been if it is in the burn area of the Rx, then do not call it in, except if it seems like it is growing to a place where it was a concern. We confirm with Wendy and watch it some more. It seemed to grow a little and then die. So I sent a text to Chief 2 with pictures, just to let him know what was going on.
 |
| Smoke above the tree tops |
 |
| What we saw at first |
We have dinner during our extended shift. It is a simple affair, microwaved homemade lasagna and bread. Somehow it tastes even better up here. But no glass of wine, after all, we are still on duty, not to mention, we forgot to bring it up.
Then it is back to scanning as the shadows lengthen. At 2000 we went out of service as does Buck Rock.Sherri and I went for another short walk down the road and up to the top of the first knoll on the Park Ridge Trail. A nice sunset. With the setting of the sun, we head back to the lookout for a good night’s sleep.
Extra Photo's
 |
| Setting Sun |
 |
| Clouds reflecting the setting sun |
No comments:
Post a Comment