THE OFFICIAL 20/21 TAHOE SKI & SNOWBOARD THREAD. PANDEMIC SCHMANDEMIC!

[powdork]

I disagree. No matter what, that could be a difficult evacuation. It could maybe be a reason why forests should always be closed because we can never mitigate all the risks.


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[old goat]

I disagree. No matter what, that could be a difficult evacuation. It could maybe be a reason why forests should always be closed because we can never mitigate all the risks.


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Unfortunately that may well be the case in an increasing number of years--until after we get this climate thing under control (ie after you and I are dead). It will be interesting to find out how that fire started.

[bodywhomper]

On the PNW closures:

I’m pretty sure the closures are due to messed up roads and bridges that they aren’t confident in and the even larger risk of falling trees.

Not only the hazard of trees falling on people but the need to rescue people who drive up a road and then have a fire weakened tree fall on the road behind them.

This was/is definitely a concern in Paradise and the surrounding area after the Camp Fire. No roads that I’m aware of were closed, but USFS, FEMA, CalFire, CalRecycle, and Butte County were definitely aware they were working at-risk in keeping the roads open before they removed hazard trees. The hazard tree removal program, which was one of several tree removal programs in the Camp Fire burn area, at first estimated over 300k trees would need to be removed, which would have been a HUGE endeavor. Luckily, once foresters started to cruise and assess on the ground, it was/is closer to 100k trees.

[powdork]

Unfortunately that may well be the case in an increasing number of years--until after we get this climate thing under control (ie after you and I are dead). It will be interesting to find out how that fire started.

My point is whether or not forests are open should not be incumbent on whether everyone can be evacuated because there is always a scenario when it’s not possible. Safety is the responsibility of the visitor. Period.


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[old_newguy]

It’s clear if you read the closure order that they are closing it based on 16 USC 551, not some other motivation:

“The Secretary of Agriculture shall make provisions for the protection against destruction by fire and depredations upon the public forests and national forests which may have been set aside or which may be hereafter set aside under the provisions of section 471 [1] of this title, and which may be continued; and he may make such rules and regulations and establish such service as will insure the objects of such reservations, namely, to regulate their occupancy and use and to preserve the forests thereon from destruction..”

[mcski]

My point is whether or not forests are open should not be incumbent on whether everyone can be evacuated because there is always a scenario when it’s not possible. Safety is the responsibility of the visitor. Period.


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Visitors can’t even navigate the roundabouts without clogging them up. Your point is dumb. Period.

[climberevan]

Safety is the responsibility of the visitor. Period.

Are you willing to sign a binding affidavit or something arresting that you won't call SAR after injuring yourself in the backcountry? What about when you get in a wreck on the road--should ambulances come and try to save you, or are you such a rugged individual who doesn't need anything from society that you'll jaws-of-life yourself out of your smashed rig and then do surgery on your broken femur on the side of the road?

Speaking of road--how do you think that thing got built?

Face it: we all need society and we all have responsibilities to it. One of those is occasionally making sacrifices in the interest of the group. Whether it's not going into fire prone forests for a couple of months or putting on a mask or getting a shot in the arm, we have to do stuff to protect others and society as a whole. That Americans have lost sight of this is one of our biggest failings as a country.

[raisingarizona13]

My point is whether or not forests are open should not be incumbent on whether everyone can be evacuated because there is always a scenario when it’s not possible. Safety is the responsibility of the visitor. Period.


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Well I'm not sure how things are going for you all in California but our visitors here keep proving that they can't handle the responsibilities of being in a dry forest. From the looks of things from over here it's not going so good for your state. These fires are about to get VERY expensive for that state. Like financially crippling expensive. We've got around 8 million urban desert dwellers to our south and they can be extremely outdoor recreationally challenged. Haha, ORC, can that be a new acronym? Anyways, closures are quickly becoming the norm most seasons, only for a month or so so it's not that bad honestly and on a year like this last one I was more than happy to comply to keep the community safe.

[old goat]

Powdork, I have no doubt that you will not start any fires. The problem is that the FS can't decide who is safe to let into the forest and who needs to be kept out. Keeping everyone out greatly simplifies the problem at a time when FS resources are at the breaking point. I also have no doubt that if a fire started in the backcountry you would be able to get yourself out by yourself without anyone's help, but the Forest Service doesn't know that and if they see a bunch of cars at a trailhead they're going to try to account for the people in every one of those cars and get them out, and then worry about where the fire's going.

As far as what if you get hurt and need S and R--I'm not sure what that argument has to do with the current closure. That argument is left over from last year and Covid.

BTW I'm not hearing a lot of bitching about people in the woods having to pay a yearly assessment for Cal Fire.

As far as how many people are mentally competent to be in the woods in high fire conditions we should have a pretty good idea about it on Sept 15 or so when we see how many folks in Truckee vote for Measure T.

[PB]

If the majority are idiots, the minority's hosed. Least common denominator or some such.

Unless the minority decides to impose its will on the majority, which never ends well.

[powdork]

Powdork, I have no doubt that you will not start any fires. The problem is that the FS can't decide who is safe to let into the forest and who needs to be kept out

. It's not their job to figure that out. Not even a little bit. Nor is it their job to put every fire out. We need fire. bad.
They have also had a year to figure out a better way to to deal with crisis levels other than closing everything. This was not only foreseeable, but almost guaranteed. Yet they planned nothing.
If you guys haven't figured it out, fire is here to stay, and these bullshit closures are here to stay too. Fire is something to prepare for, and be knowledgeable about. Not something to be scared of. Homes should not be built without a self sufficient fire suppression apparatus in wildland zones. There should be zones where nothing is done to protect structures. Sorry, but this is where you live so it's on you. Fires need to happen, and the more regularly the better. Look at Inyo National forest. If you protect Mammoth and June, most everything else is either in the middle of the desert or over 8k. No reason for full closure. No logical reason for any closure east of 395. Bridgeport Ranger of Humboldt Toiyabe had no reason for it's full closure of dispersed camping.

This new epicski bullshit you all have going on is kind of disappointing.

[Truckee Joe]

Climate closures are next. Just you wait, soon public land will be closed half the year.
Coming soon "We closed forest because it snowed to much. "


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[powdork]

Climate closures are next. Just you wait, soon public land will be closed half the year.
Coming soon "We closed forest because it snowed to much. "

You're not wrong. Avalanche Danger closures are only a hair trigger away. Won't affect anyone on this site though as the groomers will be fine for discussing turn radius.

[old goat]

Regular fires are a natural part of the Sierra--when they clear out the brush and small trees and leave the big trees alone. A century of fire suppression has made that kind of fire impossible, except as controlled burns in lower risk situations. Major fires that wipe out everything will not bring back healthy forests, they will destroy them. Look at the south side of donner ridge 60 years after the fire took out most of the trees. It's nearly a wasteland. The climax forest was established during colder wetter times--repeated big fires will turn the Sierra into Socal.

We've dug ourselves a hole we're going to have a very hard time digging out of. Same with the water situation--we've built giant cities that very soon are going to have no water at all.

If you look at what has happened with the Dixie and Caldor fires, they were mainly left to burn where they could do so without threatening too many structures--fighting those fires was more about protecting homes and other buildings--like ski areas.

The latest update from the Bridge Fire sounds reasonably optimistic. Winds look to stay light through the week, heat is brutal.
https://www.theunion.com/news/bridge...ine-lake-area/

[mcski]

I’d add those “natural fires” worked when the sierra did its job back prior to all the clear cutting of the 19th century. All our forests currently getting incinerated are 2nd and 3rd growth which is the foundational problem of cleansing fires not really working like nature intended because of the proximity of all the replacement trees. The tamarack fire was being left alone but then blew up. And every time there are control burns there are calls complaining about smoke etc that make it a political nightmare to conduct in the short window available.

[bodywhomper]

I’ve been told that in the Sierra, native groups burned about every two years around their occupation areas to maintain fuel loads for home safety.

This info is statewide and not specific to the Sierra, but
“Academics believe that between 4.4 million and 11.8 million acres burned each year in prehistoric California. Between 1982 and 1998, California’s agency land managers burned, on average, about 30,000 acres a year. Between 1999 and 2017, that number dropped to an annual 13,000 acres. The state passed a few new laws in 2018 designed to facilitate more intentional burning. But few are optimistic this, alone, will lead to significant change. We live with a deathly backlog. In February 2020, Nature Sustainability published this terrifying conclusion: California would need to burn 20 million acres — an area about the size of Maine — to restabilize in terms of fire”

https://www.propublica.org/article/t...anybody-listen

I haven’t seen how and where this 20M acre-area is distributed. And there’s always the necessity maintenance.

[emcee]

Communities need to preemptively get this sorted like right now. Fire has North Shore's number, and if they make it thru this season then it's probably the next or the one after.

We need to do way bigger controlled burns. Forget the forest health, I'm talking like a defensive perimeter all along the 89 & 80 corridor.

With megafires we're now just as defenseless as the first peoples. There's only one tool in the toolbox.

We will need the political willpower real fast real soon because the spring burning season will be really short.

[bodywhomper]

It is being planned for on the west shore, Lake Tahoe West Restoration. I believe each agency has its own website for the project: https://tahoe.ca.gov/lake-tahoe-west/

For boots to get on the ground the fastest, the lead agencies for this project (and others) need to be made exempt/excluded from compliance with NEPA, CEQA, TRPA's environment regs, state and federal clean air act permitting requirements, federal endangered species act, fish and game code, porter-cologne act, clean water act, and the national historic preservation act. From a regulatory perspective, it needs to be treated as an emergency.

During wildland firefighting, compliance with these laws are exempt or augmented. For instance, an archaeologist is flagging sites dozers to avoid cultural resources, but there is no lengthy process of consultation with tribes and the state historic preservation officer. After the Camp Fire, Newsom suspended all state environmental regs to allow a bunch of fuel reduction projects to occur. When those projects actually were being implemented, environmental resources like rare plants, wetlands, and archaeological sites were still being avoided or impacts minimized, but that planning was occurring without the drawn out agency reviews or public input process that is baked into the regulations. There was no opportunity for Chad Hanson to sue the projects and stop them in their tracks.

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[lepistoir]

I’ve been told that in the Sierra, native groups burned about every two years around their occupation areas to maintain fuel loads for home safety.

Not trying to well actually, but I've seen info boards in Puget Sound and Rocky Mtn NP about the fires being more than just safety. The dense forest was intentionally beaten back and the open areas cultivated for the hunting and forage that prefers the meadow landscape. Evidence of this successful ecological management goes back 10,000 years.
http://summit.sfu.ca/item/6807?mode=full

[bodywhomper]

Not trying to well actually, but I've seen info boards in Puget Sound and Rocky Mtn NP about the fires being more than just safety. The dense forest was intentionally beaten back and the open areas cultivated for the hunting and forage that prefers the meadow landscape. Evidence of this successful ecological management goes back 10,000 years.
http://summit.sfu.ca/item/6807?mode=full

I don’t disagree. My comment was specific to protection of village areas. There are many articles circulating about tribal frequent cultural burns for various reasons besides protection of their living area.

[bodywhomper]

It’s worth noting that some cultural burns occur during the fire season. There’s a guy (literally) up the road from me that sometimes does them in September, which is scary feeling to me. He does them with full knowledge by Calfire about what he’s up to.

[TahoeJ]

I’m confused… so we all ski groomers now?

[LongShortLong]

I’m confused… so we all ski groomers now?

Rake the forest, rake the snow!

[old goat]

I’ve been told that in the Sierra, native groups burned about every two years around their occupation areas to maintain fuel loads for home safety.

My understanding is that the every 2 years figure applied to grasslands and chaparral. The interval in the Sierra was quite a bit longer--the figure I recall was 10-15 years.

Not everyone is happy with letting fires burn. https://www.sacbee.com/news/californ...253688628.html
Calfire's budget is 3 times the FS budget for firefighting in CA, despite having jurisdiction over less land. The FS spent about 60% of the cost of 1 B2 bomber on firefighting in CA last year. And a lot of good the B2's did in Afghanistan. Wonder if they can do fire retardant drops. I guess ATC wouldn't like having stealth planes flying around the fires.
Clearly the budget for controlled burns and thinning is grossly inadequate. Those are the best hope we have for being able to play in the forest all year, and maybe keep our houses from burning down

[lepistoir]

And until we get rich people to pay a substantially higher portion of their wealth to prevent/fight fires statewide (not just on their own private services), we will probably continue having forest closures that inconvenience mountain bikers and "responsible" people. The statistical probability of a bunch of people going into a forest and starting a fire may be small, but goes up there more users there are. And when available resources are already committed to dire battles to save entire cities like south lake, a new fire anywhere is a huge problem. It's a blunt instrument, yes, but come up with something better? We've already seen the "personal responsibility" concept completely fail when it comes to toilet paper and masking.