Mike?Hikin_Jim wrote:TacoDelRio wrote:If anyone doubts my safety, ethics, whatever, I welcome you to go for a drive with me.
Seriously though, I've got a friend who drives track and actually does know what he's doing. What would definitely be an unsafe speed for me really isn't for him, although it does make it harder to read a topo map looking for a trailhead when he's driving.
You forgot to tell me.... byodTacoDelRio wrote:If anyone needs a taxi...
hunh?TacoDelRio wrote:Mike?Hikin_Jim wrote:TacoDelRio wrote:If anyone doubts my safety, ethics, whatever, I welcome you to go for a drive with me.
Seriously though, I've got a friend who drives track and actually does know what he's doing. What would definitely be an unsafe speed for me really isn't for him, although it does make it harder to read a topo map looking for a trailhead when he's driving.
Is this really public land? What uses will be allowed?AW wrote:Mouth of Rubio Canyon becomes public land
http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/news/ci_13263392
"ALTADENA - In its first major land acquisition the Arroyos & Foothills Conservancy has closed escrow on a pristine 20-acre parcel at the mouth of Rubio Canyon, ensuring permanent public access to a prime trail into the Angeles National Forest.....In addition to its historical importance - part of the Mt. Lowe Railway is on the property"
Well the news title is off, because it will be owned by the conservancy. Typically a hiker on a standard short trek up Rubio canyon might think they are on Angeles Forest land once they start past the houses, but actually they hike through LA county land, then private property(now bought), and then eventually Angeles Forest.
...." 
Frick. Looks like the old oaks in Deukmejian are (if you'll excuse the expression) toast.AW wrote:
Above: Deukmejian Wilderness Park (Glendale)...remains closed for now
http://www.ci.glendale.ca.us/Parks/deuk ... s_park.asp
Kinda sad when even the USFS doesn't know something as basic as how often a forest would normally burn.AW wrote:How will the L.A. Wildfires affect the San Gabriel Mountain Wilderness?
http://blogs.discovery.com/animal_news/ ... rness.html
"Despite being so close to LA, the San Gabriel mountains support some of the greatest biodiversity in the USA,” says Raphael Mazor, a biologist in Southern California currently studying fire impacts on water quality. Four wilderness areas exist in the region, with the San Gabriel Wilderness in the Angeles National Forest most directly affected by this blaze. “[There are] tons of micro-endemic plants up there. As for animals: California red-legged frog, Santa Ana sucker, arroyo chub, bighorn sheep, two-lined garter snake, San Gabriel Mountains slender salamander, and I'm sure several rodents and bat species.”.....In fact it's a common misconception that the frequent fires occurring in the region help clear out the brush. Even the Angeles National Forest forest supervisor Jody Noiron said on a Los Angeles NBC affiliate last Sunday that the chaparral needed to burn every 10 to 15 years, which is simply wrong. Intense fires like this would historically burn once every 50 to 100 years. "
I hope they had that quote wrong...its unbelievable almost...well put another way, if its a correct quote, then why hasnt the Angeles been burning up the chapparal?Hikin_Jim wrote:Kinda sad when even the USFS doesn't know something as basic as how often a forest would normally burn.AW wrote:How will the L.A. Wildfires affect the San Gabriel Mountain Wilderness?
http://blogs.discovery.com/animal_news/ ... rness.html
"Despite being so close to LA, the San Gabriel mountains support some of the greatest biodiversity in the USA,” says Raphael Mazor, a biologist in Southern California currently studying fire impacts on water quality. Four wilderness areas exist in the region, with the San Gabriel Wilderness in the Angeles National Forest most directly affected by this blaze. “[There are] tons of micro-endemic plants up there. As for animals: California red-legged frog, Santa Ana sucker, arroyo chub, bighorn sheep, two-lined garter snake, San Gabriel Mountains slender salamander, and I'm sure several rodents and bat species.”.....In fact it's a common misconception that the frequent fires occurring in the region help clear out the brush. Even the Angeles National Forest forest supervisor Jody Noiron said on a Los Angeles NBC affiliate last Sunday that the chaparral needed to burn every 10 to 15 years, which is simply wrong. Intense fires like this would historically burn once every 50 to 100 years. "
Oak trees, Big Cone Douglas Firs, etc. aren't going to grow in an area that burns every 10 - 15 years. Fire is a natural part of the life cycle of this area, but over centuries not decades. It takes hundreds of years for an area of chaparral to go through a full cycle. More frequent fires are very destructive and will result in the loss of animal and plant species.
Eww. That is so not good. Still, the amount of Phos-Chek per given area has got to be small, much of that will be filtered out by the soil, and rain would continue to disperse it even more thereafter. I think. If you come up with some good, relavant info, I'd be most interested.AW wrote:One subject that I have been digging for info is phos-chex...specifically, will it be safe to filter water in the burn area? The manufacturer's website said it was environmentally friendly but also that it affects life in the ecosystem.....the LA county website says "the chemical retardant (Phos-Chek) is up to ten times more toxic,depending upon the grade, than the herbicides used in the flood control infastrctue vegetation management program."
source: http://file.lacounty.gov/bos/supdocs/37170.pdf
Call me paranoid, but if it ever opens again, I think I'll just drink bottled water.
And probably closing the first rain (think mudslide) thereafter. Let's hope I'm wrong on that last part.AW wrote:As far as reopening, speculators can follow along at
http://forums.mammothmountain.com/viewt ... 810#p61718
with a possible reopening of the Angeles Crest to the AFH(all the way to Palmdale) 4-6 weeks away....
Bear raids house in Mt. BaldyBrent Roath quickly recast the question. Yes, he agreed, the U.S. Forest Service scientists who have spent the last two weeks in the San Gabriel Mountains examining the effects of the Station fire are like forensic pathologists combing a crime scene.
Except in this case, the patient is still alive.
"We're more like doctors, and our patient is ill. We're trying to figure out how to make it better," said Roath, regional director of post-burn analysis and a 33-year Forest Service veteran.
Although the 45-member team's report will remain under wraps for some time, the preliminary findings are in: Don't pray for rain.
Using sophisticated burn maps generated by satellite imagery and factoring in the breathtaking steepness of the now-denuded hillsides, the scientists warn that even moderate winter rain could trigger landslides and catastrophic debris flows capable of inundating many of the San Gabriels' 37 foothill communities.
Beyond that, the scientists concluded that although 250 square miles of the Angeles National Forest burned, the trees and chaparral in the fire-adapted ecosystem will bounce back.
However, much of the wildlife that makes its home in the 655,000-acre forest was killed or dislocated. Biologists say they found an unusually high number of large animals caught by the fast-moving fire. Teams have come across carcasses of bears, mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes and gray foxes, apparently unable to find escape routes.
"Deer took a big hit," said Kevin Cooper, a wildlife biologist.
The BAER team (for Burned Area Emergency Response) worked 14-hour days to complete its work, retreating each night to laptops at the "BAER Den," a Residence Inn conference room in Burbank.
Specialists were on the ground in every part of the 160,000-acre burn area, measuring, photographing and testing. The team included soil scientists, hydrologists, archaeologists, botanists, wildlife experts and a hazardous materials crew. The fire peeled back a layer of cover to reveal unknown Native American oven sites, scores of illegal dumps and a stash of 50-gallon drums filled with an as-yet unidentified liquid.
One day last week, Roath steered a white Forest Service SUV up the Angeles Crest Highway, which was closed to the public but nonetheless busy. Crews used graders to clear boulders, semi-tractor-trailers hauled debris and workers with chain saws cut trees that threatened to fall across traffic lanes.
Overhead, helicopters carried water-dropping buckets or ferried dangling loads of replacement utility poles.
For the most part, the landscape was devoid of color. Gray-white ash has banked in places, like dandruff on the shoulders of the mountains. Roath, a soil scientist who began his Forest Service career on the Angeles, is still awed by the immense natural forces once marshaled to lift this mountain range that is still rising and settling.
He noted that debris cones -- accumulated rock and sand at the bottom of sharply defined ridges -- are sprouting up everywhere, as though the mountains are shedding dead skin.
The San Gabriel Mountains have the potential to unleash calamity under normal circumstances, without the overlay of fire to complicate things. They are mountains on the move; the rock is fractured and disintegrating.
Roath said that as BAER team members collected their data, they could hear the rattling sound of mountains falling.
"In some cases boulders are coming down from gravity alone. They don't need rain," Roath said.
Vegetation plays a critical role in shoring up hillsides. When rains come, the drops hit the plant canopy first, which slows the water and distributes it more evenly into the soil. Absent vegetation, rain pounds down and washes away topsoil, sand, small rocks and burned plant material.
Thus begins a process that scientists call "entraining" -- the terrible freight of broken mountainside that gathers energy as it roars inexorably downhill.
Storms cause sediment to back up in ravines already loaded with fire debris. The flow bulges and spreads, picking up larger stones, then boulders. It gains speed as it descends, blowing obstacles out of its way. That debris, too, joins the train. As highway culverts become full, the entire river of rock flows over the roadway, collapsing it.
The broken asphalt then becomes a passenger on the cascading wreckage.
Trees, automobiles and houses scarcely slow the torrent.
"Debris flows are a little hard to control," said Sue Cannon, a debris flow expert with the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver, adding that the San Gabriels present a "classic setting for major debris flow."
Along the upper Big Tujunga Road, fire appeared to have followed the drainage, burning trees that straddled the creek, leaving "a pretty well-toasted riparian area," said Jan Beyers, a Forest Service plant ecologist.
Cooper, the wildlife biologist, noted that the Station fire took out trees along the streams, such as white alder. Large trees are like straws, sucking water from rivers and streams, and in their absence, he said, there has been a measurable increase in stream levels in the Angeles National Forest.
Elsewhere along the road, a row of roasted pine trees offered clues to the fire's behavior. Their brown needles point sideways, petrified at an acute angle, like a heavily gelled hairdo. This, the scientists explained, is an example of "fire freeze," the result of a hot wind blasting through, wringing the last drop of moisture out of the tree.
Where some see withered plants and scoured hillsides, Beyers sees decades of patient aspiration come to fruition -- the "shooters and seeders."
Trees that have lost limbs to fire will grow new, sturdier arms. Plants that have been annually depositing seeds in subterranean "seed banks" will be rewarded with young growth rising out of soil rejuvenated with nitrogen-bearing nutrients.
"There are seeds in the soil here that have been waiting decades for this chance," she said wistfully.
Indeed, for some growing things, fire is a bonanza. Certain species of conifers require heat to release seeds from their tightly closed cones. Some plants need the fire's heat to crack hard seed coatings in order to sprout. Some plants thrive on the chemicals produced from ash leaching into soil. Smaller bushes, crowded out by larger neighbors before the fire, flourish afterward in their newfound elbow room.
The seed caches of ground-dwelling rodents will be disinterred, and the still-viable seeds dispersed by ants and birds, everyone pitching in to repair their habitat.
In the San Gabriels' chaparral system, more plants survive fire than most people think, Beyers said. That's explained, in part, because of "fire residence," or the length of time that flames and heat linger in a particular spot. Chaparral plant communities don't produce a lot of leaf litter or vegetation that accumulates on the ground, which would become fuel for fires.
Then there is the profusion of wildflowers that will debut in the spring. The fire followers: purple lupines, morning glories, California poppies, larkspurs, wild sweet peas and snapdragons.
"Ten years from now," Beyers said, taking in the charred hillside and smiling, "you can come back here and never know there was a fire at all."
julie.cart@latimes.com
"MT. BALDY - Several "no trespassing" signs are posted on the trees crowning over a road leading up to Brant's residence.
But they have done little to deter a small black bear from wandering onto the 23-acre ranch almost nightly this summer.
"I heard him (Sept. 17) in the laundry room," Ed Brant said. "He smelled the cat food we keep in the cabinet. They are usually not that aggressive."
As Brant and his wife Patti settled in for the night, the bear came down the hill, looking for a snack.
He pushed his way into a small room near Brant's kitchen, but once the outside door closed behind him, he didn't know how to get out.
And that's when the demolition party began.
"He lifted the floor panels, tore off window frames, scratched out the kitchen door, pottied all over," Brant said. "He did $20,000 worth of damage."
The bear finally managed to break a small side window and crawl out back into the woods.
The family's dog slept through it all.
Bear visits aren't a surprise to the Brants, Patti said.
"Several years ago, bears got into the fridge and took the ice cream," Ed Brant said. "They ate it right outside and left the container."
On other occasions, he would spot bears near his workshop or trying to pull trash out of the "dipsy Dumpster."
Bears usually stay away from humans and are easily shooed away.
"I don't worry about them except for the damage," he said.
Brant has a small pond on the north side of his property, which he thinks bears stop by when they get thirsty. He also attributes their more frequent visits to a lack of natural food resources.
"It's been very dry," he said. "Berry trees have all dried up."
Brant has consulted state's Department of Fish and Game about the ways to get rid of the bear, but it looks like the unwelcomed visitor is there to stay.
"They said `We have so many bears and we take them out (relocate) periodically, but there is always another one right back in line,"' Brant said.
Cutting switchbacks = DEATHAW wrote: "I noticed we were going straight down instead of zigzagging like we were supposed to," Hernandez said.
The dirt wasn't stable. Rocks were rolling down. Beristain, about seven feet ahead of Hernandez, slipped and started sliding down ... and sliding fast. Hernandez grabbed onto a twig and called to his friend.
"Artu ... " But Beristain was gone. He'd fallen about 200 feet to his death.
He road the Idlehour trail from Inspiration Point to Mt. Wilson Toll Road. That trail is the boundary of the closure area. He's my heroAW wrote:San Gabes front country stoke
http://www.socaltrailriders.org/forum/t ... stoke.html
A ride from Sam Merrill to Eaton incl some pictures
Note: Not sure, but perhaps this ride went through a closed area(Inspiration Point to MtWilson toll road)
Still?AW wrote: The woman, who was not identified, was still wearing her seatbelt in the driver's seat of a vehicle that appeared to be a Ford when she was pulled from the wreck, officials said."
She was identified as Katrina Elias, dying of blunt force trauma. So looks like she died before hitting the water...time of day not factually stated, but CBS had said it was at night..so Hwy39 at night, fast speeds..hmm....
..not to thru traffic yet though of course.