[pct-l] Shasta Co. Redding Fire Trail Closure

[Georgi Heitman]

I don't know if this went thru the first time...if so, mea culpa!

On Tue, Apr 16, 2013 at 10:01 AM, Georgi Heitman <bobbnweav at gmail.com>wrote:

> Greetings from FireFly:
> I live in Old Station, Shasta Co.immediately north of Lassen Nat'l Pk.
> Just a heads-up for speedy hikers that are way ahead of where the
> usual first-in-line folks would be about now.  2012 hikers are well aware
> of the wild fires that plagued NorCal last summer.  The Redding fire burned
> for over a month, and closed the Trail thru Lassen Pk and Shasta Nat'l
> Forest until further notice.  The huge Chips fire also effected the Trail
> as did the Bagley fire north of us near Burney Falls St. Pk and the Fort
> Complex which terrorized Seaid Valley.  This has been a  v e r y  dry
> winter in this area and the danger of more wild fires, either thru
> lightning strikes or mad-made is huge. Altho drought conditions continue to
> haunt most of NorCal, there has been SOME snow tho.  There was a small
> amount that fell before Halloween and brought a halt to Trail work being
> done to clear fire debris along the PCT, a few more small flurries, one
> huge storm just before Xmas that dropped over four feet on Old Station
> (4500' elev), then until the last few days, virtually nothing but unusually
> cold weather (my pipes froze) for many weeks then yesterday about four
> inches.  Four inches equates at least a foot if not more up on the Trail
> that goes thru Lassen Pk. Now I'm delighted to see fresh snow up on my
> mountain, and it stays cold here at night (27* last night)so melt off is
> slow up there. That helps the ground water table level recover a bit up
> there and to a lesser extent down here.  But it doesn't help the Trail thru
> the burn areas created by the Redding fire and probably the Chips as well.
> Until there's enough melt off to let crews back in to clean the Trail it
> remains closed until further notice.  We've had high winds thru much of the
> winter, healthy trees have been uprooted or snapped off.  Trees weaked by
> fire and heavy snow are very apt to have created even more damage that
> crews must remove before they will let hikers in.  You early leaders of the
> pack may want to monitor trail conditions up in this neck of the woods.
> Oh, and please, be sooo careful up here.  I've had to pack for evacuation
> twice in three years, I pray that hiker carelessness won't make me do it
> again any time soon.  Thank you, Happy Trails from FireFly....
>