Discussion: Big fire near Fallen Leaf Lake?

Looks like there is a big wildfire burning near the Fallen Leaf Lake map (US Champs, 2003) at Lake Tahoe, CA. Based on this map, the house where a bunch of us stayed for the US champs back in 1999 (Spooner Lake) is now gone. Something like 200 structures have burned already. I think the map is on the W side of the lake, but I can't remember exactly. Anyone from BAOC have more details? I won't cry too many tears if this map burns :) - parts of it were already burned - but it sounds like quite a mess for South Lake Tahoe.

Looks to me as though the Day 2 area west of the lake hasn't been touched but the fire had at least reached the southern edge of the terrain east of the lake the Day 1 Blue course used when that picture was taken.

I'm competing in the Reno-Tahoe relay next weekend - not affected by the fire yet, but it looks like we'll be running through plenty of smoke.

Looks like quite a lot of the day 1 area from 2003 has been affected. The cabins where most of us stayed (near the day 2 finish, NW of the lake) seem to be currently unaffected, but I seem to remember there being quite a few houses around Angola Lakes.

Wow, how odd to read this and a request for a Silvermine map on the same day. How many people remember the fire at Silvermine the day the US team trials were being run there? When was that, late 80's?

I wasn't there that time, but I heard the stories. I remember running there a few years later and discovering that the areas mapped green were the most runnable, and the areas mapped yellow were the slowest running. That put an interesting twist on route planning.

The fire (1989) was at Sebago, not Silvermine.

Extent of the fire. I'm still too traumatized from 2003 to look much at my FLL maps, but my recollection is that the maps are west and north of FL Lake itself. (Curiously, not overlapping with the "thinned area" shown in the fire map.)

According to Bob Cooley, the nicer area in the SW corner of the map has been burned as well as some of the other southern portions with lots of slash. The good news is that the slash is now gone. The bad news is that the Forest Service told us last year that we could not longer use the area for orienteering. That also includes the area across the highway from Spooner Lake State Park. BAOC is losing maps faster than we can produce them. We have been forbidden to go off trail at Huddart, Annadale, Big Basin and Fallen Leaf Lake. Annadale is the big loss from an orienteering point of view, but Big Basin is a huge financial loss, having spent about $30,000 trying to map that steep redwood park without great results.
At least the ranger at Boggs Mountain, our new map which will premier this fall for the Western States Champs A meet October 13-14 north of Napa County, is very enthusiastic about orienteering and encouraged us to make a map there. Hopefully he doesn't retire or get transferred.

And on the plus side, even if you can't go off trails, I imagine you have still have some awesome MTB-O areas there now.... Tap into some of the west coast MTB guys and they might rack up some impressive MTB-O results faster than we can make them happen in regular orienteering (still can't bring myself to call it foot-O...).

Wow. What reason did the FS give for revoking use of FLL and Spooner Lake? Is there a general rule against off-trail travel in Big Basin and the other parks?

The Forest Service said they never should have given us permission in the first place for the Lake Tahoe area, since the area was inappropriate for off trail use.

There apparently has been a change in policy regarding some of the state parks in California regarding off trail use. Both Annadale and Big Basin are state parks. However, we can still use China Camp state park. I personally think it is more the attitude of the chief ranger. Some rangers just think going off trail is an anathma.

I forgot to mention that we also cannot use Nisene Marks. The reason for this according to the rangers is that there are a lot of meth labs in the forest and the DEA and park officials are concerned about our safety.

As far as mountain bike O goes, we are a little reluctant to even associate ourselves with mountain bikers, because they seem to have even a worse reputation with rangers than orienteers because they (the MBer's) frequently create illegal trails.

Since a stupid policy deserves a stupid question...

Why don't they close down the meth labs and return the park to the law-abiding taxpayers who are paying their salaries??

The fire (1989) was at Sebago, not Silvermine.

Huh. Guess I better do some map memory drills or something.

The DEA has supposedly been running an operation to close down the meth labs for almost 2 years now, but I guess it is either not very successful or not of high priority. In the meantime, the park officials do not want us in the boonies.

Isn't Nisene Marks the place where the contours got readjusted after an earthquake back in, hmm, the 1980's I think?

Dont know about contours, but the map is one of the steepest in Bay area (actually, was), with navigation aka Jurassic park style, and, frankly speaking, requiring complete remapping.

Nisene Marks also has some legendary poison oak to go with the preposterous steepness. If we were going to lose a map, this would be a good one to lose. Annandale, on the other hand, is a really fine place, and it's a shame not to be able to orienteer there.

There is little PO at Nisene Marks where the meth labs and the growers are. The woods there are quite runnable, save for a 50% or so average slope incline. Also, the rangers know very well who the are who are conducting this chemistry research. The problem is that the latter know the former, too.

Being (so far) immune to poison oak/ivy, I actually rather liked Nisene Marks (at least for the (old format) Long that was held there, not as ideal for the relay I thought).

Oh well, getting back to the thread topic, any other useful natural disasters people know about? A devastating fall in deer tick population? Invasive species wipes out barberry? Clerical error leads to excessive pruning of bushes?