Title: September 14, 2020 - Park Ridge Lookout
Hike Info : Description :Background
Trail head: Park Ridge Lookout
Type: Lookout
It is Friday afternoon and I am unsure if I am going up to Park Ridge Lookout. Smoke continues to be a factor in the skies. And then there is the air quality. Goes from bad to downright ugly. I will make a call tomorrow AM about if I am going up or not. Nice to have some visual with the webcams up there.
Both Saturday and Sunday were ugly. No visibility and the air quality monitors I could see were down right hazardous. So I did not go up. Wendy concurred and will notify the powers to be. Sunday night looked around and it looked a bit promising. The air quality is troublesome. What I have pretty much determined for myself is that I will go up Monday morning. If the air is breathable, I will stay even if it is limited visibility. If the air is pretty bad, bad down I will go. So I get my Monday work done today and will see about tomorrow.
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| Big Baldy behind dead tree |
It is now Monday morning and I get up at 0620. After getting the lightning report started-none in our area, I check out Park Ridge. Visibility looking better, not great. But air quality still looks bad. But I will go up like I said before and see how much I can tolerate. Fresno is not good either.
I leave at 0720. Smokey down in the Valley. Driving into the foothills, it looks like a Winter fog or clouds. There is text chatter about the Bullfrog Fire. This is Northwest of Courtwright Reservoir. It has not received too much attention, its much bigger cousin, the Creek Fire is getting all of it.
I get to Grant Grove a little before 0900 and take a few minute break. You can tell there is smoke in the area, but not nearly as bad as I feared. I then headed up towards Panorama Point and cut off on the Park Ridge Road. The smoke seems about the same, but not as bad as breathing.
It is good to be up at Park Ridge Lookout at least once this year. Each lookout is a little bit different. Unlike Delilah, this one is only 20’ off the ground. So if I forget something, it is only a minute out of the tower. Also even though we look at some of the same territory as Delilah, it is a different view.
I go up and clean/sanitize the areas I will be touching. This takes me to about 0930. Time to go into service with both Porterville and Ash Mountain Fire. Not a problem, except I want to say “Delilah” instead of “Park Ridge Lookout”. I manage to avoid that mistake, but not by much.
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| McKenzie and Pine Ridge area |
The view from the lookout is not much. I can barely see Big Baldy, a generous five miles away. Looking northward, I can see Delilah without my binoculars. So go figure! But that is about as far as I can see. And that is pretty much the story of today.
Most of the day is pretty mundane. Generally I will be looking around, refreshing what landmarks there are around me. Today? After doing the first look around, there was very little more to identify. Either there was haze or visibility was limited. Scans were taking just a couple of minutes instead of seven to ten.
This left me plenty of time to look around. One thing was Wendy has done a set of visual posts. A vast improvement over the visual books. Also got familiar with a new hand-held radio. So I tried to be productive. But mostly paid attention to some texts from other lookouts.
There was a thread of texts from Rachel, my daughter. She was engaged in a debate about the current set of wildfires-due to climate change? due to improper forest management? My little piece was to share some of the recent prescribed burns (Hint: just search on my block for “prescribed”).
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| Gary in a lookout invasion |
Back to the sky. I see ash falling. Not like a rain, but more as a few flakes of snow fluttering down. Delilah and Big Baldy are starting to fade, not completely going away, but definitely will be a lot harder to see anything abnormal over there.
Around 1500, I saw a text saying an evacuation around Three Rivers. The part up the South Fork of the Kaweah is mandatory, but the rest is under “get ready to go”. We have a couple lookouts in that area.
I need to leave at 1630. There is a Bible Study tonight which I need to leave. Right now I am wondering if I will be back up here tomorrow. It has been good to be here.
Background
Two things:
Tuesday I looked at the webcams. There was very little to no visibility at Park Ridge Lookout. So I will not be going up. No reason to.
Also we found out today that Jordan Lookout down south has been burnt in the SQF Complex Fire. That is a voice to be missed. I wonder if it will be like the Needles Lookout and take forever to rebuild, if ever.
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