Here’s a chilling photo album from just one section of the Ventana Wilderness:
It’s in the Tassajara area. Fedak tells me the whole area remains closed because of this year’s fires. This page notes that the Basin Fire burned over 160,000 acres by the time it was declared contained in late July.
what about the Angel Island fire?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/12/BAVT13G0AJ.DTL
Ann: thanks for the heads-up!
Four of us from the Ventana Wilderness Alliance flew over the Ventana a few weeks ago and video taped and photographed pretty much the whole wilderness. David Knapp and I are trail crew leaders in the Ventana and have a decent feel for the place.
Lots of brush burned but not many stands of trees. Even some brush didn’t burn which was a bit odd. Overall this fire was no big deal for the wilderness unless you have a love thingy for brush.
Remember that most of what you see burned was brush and it will be green in a few months. Birds, deer, etc. will be very happy with the new food source.
The brush pile we’ve been beating on for years on the Little Sur Trail was toasted 🙂 We only had about 100′ left for a trip this fall. The forest in the area looks just fine and we’ll probably have a VWA crew go in next May to fix up the trail.
– jim