Arizona on Fire
Wednesday, June 29th, 2005 at 10:10 pm by angrybob
As I am still finishing up my pre-trip service on the RSVR, I was planning to take it for a local shakedown ride to check everything out. The normal route is to go to Bartlett Lake. That’s a park area with some nice twisties throughout. The problem is that all the roads dead end and it surrounds a lake…every aftermarket exhaust can be heard for miles as you are way above the lake level.
NOT GOING TO HAPPEN! The whole area is on fire and the entire park system is shut down and all the campers and park users evacuated. I can see the fire head from my house if I’m upstairs and its spectacular (read: not in a good way). The whole mountain top is a big orange mess. I tried last night to snap a picture with my out-dated crappy digitial cam, but to no avail.
On the way home from work today alone, there was a massive fire to the south of me by about 30 miles, a fire on the immediate road I commute, which earlier in the day was closed, and this above described fire called the “Cave Creek Complex Fire“. It claims that 152,000 acres have been consumed by this fire alone and is 20% contained. After reading further, what I may be witnessing is the controlled burn to remove the fuel from the spreading fire head, but I don’t know for sure.
I mentioned in this article back in March that the fire season would be a brutal one, and it surely is. Our Proving Ground alone has 15% of our property already hit with a fire.
I mention this because I am interested in taking a ride to Bartlett Lake after the dust settles. I have been through a post-fire zone once before a few years back and it too was spectacular. I thought I was on the moon. The air was so quiet that it was wierd. All the trees’ leaves were gone and even though the wind was blowing, it was dead silent. It will be very interesting to compare that pic in the article from March with what it looks like today.
I can only imagine that there will be a not tolerance rule in effect for spark arrestors on dirt bikes. Heck, most of the recreation area and parks are closed. If there are too many more closings, its going to get mighty crowded in the lower risk areas that will still allow ORV’s. That’s all we need…mix the sand rails with the dirt bikes!
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AngryBob,
I don’t know if you remember, but I was with you when we rode through that burn zone a few years ago. As I remember, it was your first time on the road up to Prescott and when we got to the “zone”, there was still a sign indicating the road was closed but we pressed on. It turns out, it had just reopened and I’ll never forget the SMELL, all the ash and even several smoldering stumps as we wound our way through the devastation. You could even still feel the heat that was in the ground. That was one of my most memorable rides in Arizona. Of course that guy on the Thunderace, who ran wide on the way up Mingus Mtn. didn’t make the day any less exciting!
Wildfire has been part of the western experience since time eternal and NOTHING man does will stop it. It’s the natural renewal of land that’s part of master cycle. While it’s possible a motorized vehicle, without a spark arrestor, could have caused the blaze, it’s a lot more likely it was lightning or an errant cigarette butt or campfire. Why do bikes always take the heat (no pun intended) for circumstances that would take place with or without their presence?
Rhino