SOS Forests

Revisiting the Payette After the Fires

Note: Last year nearly half a million acres of the Payette National Forest went up in flames. We discussed that tragedy as it happened on SOS Forests (the old version) and have posted about it since [here, here, here, here, and here]. The following letter from Ned Pence, retired District Ranger on the Krassel District of the Payette NF was sent to us this week by Jim Rathbun, retired Forest Supervisor of the Kootenai NF. In it Mr. Pence recounts his impressions of the devastation left by the Payette fires of 2007. Needless to say, it’s personal. That’s how foresters look at the forests they are privileged to manage — personally.

Dear Jim,

We got back an hour ago. We had a good trip. I was surprised to see how much of the old Krassel District and the old Bear Valley District burned in 2007 and 2006. I knew a lot burned from the convection columns but it was a lot more than I could have thought.

The SFSR [South Fork Salmon River] visually has more sediment than it did in 1971 when everyone was all upset over sediment from logging. Of course I have to go from memory of what it was almost 40 years ago. We talked to a couple of ologists who were measuring sediment in a drainage that blew out on the East Fork of the SFSR. They said they were working for the USGS [US Geological Survey] doing the sediment measurements for the FS. They had never heard of Bill Platz and the permanent transects he had established in the SFSR to monitor the changes in sediment, and knew very little of the history of the SFSR. I gave them my card in hopes they will pass what I told them on to their boss.

We could not get through to Warm Lake because they had the road closed, so had to go up the East Fork through Yellow Pine and Johnson Creek to Bear Valley. The damage from the fire on the East Fork was amazing. There were nine major slides, four of which formed temporary dams across the river. That area was never logged due to very steep topography and sensitive soils. It was never considered sedimented before and Johnson Creek was a major salmon spawning area. The fire went through kind of hit and miss but was obviously very intense in places.

We did get to Buckhorn Bar above Krassel where the road was closed. The bitter brush on Buckhorn Bar was all burned but most of it is sprouting again. It looked like the fire was very intense in Fitsum Creek and also on Tea Pot Mountain. We talked to a man who was busy parking a big dump truck so no one could get by the road closure. He said that the East Fork was bad but it was worse from Four Mile Creek to Warm Lake especially around Goat Creek. I will have to make another trip to see that, because if it is worse it will be worth seeing.

The old ranger station, now a “work center,” has not been maintained since the last time we saw it. The fence around the old ranger’s house is all rotted out and laying where it fell, and there was a big tree that had fallen across the old equipment shed, breaking the roof. Someone had thrown a canvas over it, but it obviously was not keeping the rain out. There were a couple of people who said they were recreation persons. I asked why they did not fix the fence and roof, and they said no one had told them to do it and the buildings were historical sites so the forest archaeologist had to approve anything they did.

I am afraid I probably lost it when talking to them. There is a whole heli-attack crew who apparently don’t realize they could do some work while waiting for a fire. I asked if they had seen the DFR [District Forest Ranger] and they said they thought he had been out a couple of times from McCall. They said that there are no longer horses and mules at Krassel so the barn that Hickenen built the year before I was DFR has been turned into a storage shed, and the plank fence I built around the pasture has been torn down. They said they thought that there were horses and mules at the Big Creek work center. They said the forest thought the barn was also historical, and I told them it had been built in 1970 but had a lot of history since it resulted in Ed Hickenen being moved to BIFC [Boise Interagency Fire Center] and me becoming DFR.

We then spent a couple of days in Bear Valley. That fire burned all the way from Red Mountain down Wyoming Creek to Bruce Meadows then jumped Bear Valley Creek and burned the whole face south of the old Ranger Station clear to where I sold a timber sale in Cub Creek. The fire actually stopped at the Casner Creek Sale on the south side and the Cub Creek Sale on the west side where it seemed to run out of ground fuel. It was pretty impressive. I will probably get over being upset in a few weeks. We did get a lot of good pictures.

We could hear wolves howling at night. Arleen woke up the first night in Bear Valley and loaded the 20 gauge shotgun while I slept through it, but I could hear them howling farther away when I woke up later. There was a real big wolf track in the road by our camp in Cache Creek.

We saw several people I knew at the old timers reunion. I didn’t recognize some who seemed to think I was Dan. They had a memorial to old timers who passed away the last two years and I knew several. I suppose that in ten years most of us will be gone.

Ned and Arleen Pence