A short ride report, it looked like the moon

Porkchop

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Apr 27, 2001
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Yesterday after helping a friend move some heavy machinery from his shop to storage, I went for a little ride in the foothills south of acton, ca., on the north side of where the last huge wild fire had burned thru.
Some of the terrain looked like a combination of the trinity test site at Alamagordo, N.M.( the manhattan project) & the moon. A month ago I tried to ride this area but Snow & ice kept me below 4500 ft elevation, yesterday I was able to ride up to 5500 ft. The rains we have received recently have been rather short duration events, which has been a blessing for this devastated area, by minimizing mud flows & erosion while allowing water to slowly saturate the burned & crusted gray soil.
It's very clear where the aquifer exists & where is doesn't. Some areas are already sprouting up new vegetation on one side of a giant drainage, while on the other side for a few miles, it's still devoid of all plant life. All the 2 track dirt roads are in good shape, the forest trails will be closed for a while to allow the usfs to assess the condition of every thing, & nature to do it's work on new vegetation, this area had not burned in some places in 60 years. My little adventure only lasted for 2 hours of putting around, seeing many creeks running & some birds& a coyote & a whole bunch of barren land, caused by an arsonist, the point of origin some 40 miles south of my location.
An old friend ,neighbor & co-worker, who had retired a couple of years ago, had lived in the area for 30 years, lost his ranch & the home he & his Mrs. had built, so did another friend 50 miles to the south east, from the same wild fire. :(
 
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whenfoxforks-ruled

Old MX Racer
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Oct 19, 2006
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Merrillville,Indiana
Thats a real bummer ride report Porkchop, dang near made 1 eyeball sweat. But it does sound like a little hope, as long as no more arsonists/fools with tools pop up? Vintage Bob
 

Porkchop

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Apr 27, 2001
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It was good to just get out & have a good bit of fire road flat track type of zooming about. Another positive was some promising prospecting sites I found, gold moves quite a bit more after a big fire. Knowing the area & how it was prior to the station fire, well the out-doorsman part of my tale overruled on the riding part a bit, I didn't bring a camera so I came up with the best verbal description of what I saw. It effected me more than I thought it would, sorry. :whoa:
 

helio lucas

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Jun 20, 2007
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yeah, a pic worth more than a thousand words... :cool:

some 5 years ago a very hot and dry summer combined with abandoned, not taken care, forests developed a very hard year for us. most of the forests have burned, at the same time... the fire departement just can´t handled everything.
some houses, stables, store houses etc gone. infortunatly a fireman have been hurted severely on duty. no one besides him have been injured if i correctly remember.

after the end all it stayed was a impressive scenario to say the least.

hope everything goes better from now on for your friends and they´re familys. :ugg:
 

Porkchop

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Apr 27, 2001
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Yea I know, the brain bucket cam. I bought the honda because it only has one cam, now you want me to ad another? Later this week I'll be back in that area & will get some pics, warning: the pic may be more depressing than my commentary.
Watch out V-Bob, the G-bug never goes away, once you find some. 43 years of seeing more geology-topography than I can remember has taught me where, what & when to look for it. I have been blessed with the friendship of a geologist-coworker, with a recommended read list to give myself a better than the lay persons knowledge on the yellow metal. While out riding I have an eye on more than just the hot line,if you catch my drift. :nod:
 

Ol'89r

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Jan 27, 2000
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Good report Porkchop.

I know what you mean by looking like the moon. We had a controlled burn go out of control and attack our neighborhood in June of 1990. Pretty scary stuff. :whoa:

The next morning it was like waking up on another planet. The hills were barren of trees and brush and there was a ugly grey cast to everything. When the wind would come up, the air would turn grey. I had some 30-40 foot Eucalyptus trees around my property that burned down to about 4" below the ground surface.Fortunately, it doesn't take too long for everything to come back. Those trees are back up to 30-40 feet now and looking around, you would never know we had a fire.

One good thing about the fire was how it exposed all of the small animal tracks on the hills that you could never see with all of the brush in the area. We wound up with a lot more usable single-track trails to ride on.
 

Porkchop

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Apr 27, 2001
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I hope the eucalyptus trees are not near any of your buildings, they're full of oil & go up in an inferno.
Something that I've noticed about our fire seasons since 911, prior to 911 we would have a varying amounts of wild fires, year to year but they seldom happened or started at the same time. Over the past few years, multiple fires seem to start at the same time, not near each other but at opposite ends of a county, or randomly across so cal?
It makes me question how many sleepers (osama wanabes) go driving around throwing road flares, deliberately so as to cause general wide spread mayhem, costing all of us tax slaves :bang:
millions. :yell: It seems to always happen when we have a red flag warning regarding the weather, Hot & extremely dry. :think:
 
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