Wildfire in the Left Fork in Zion

[trackrunner]

FYI. got a phone call this morning. A family member could not receive a permit for a canyon in the Left Fork drainage because of a wildfire.

[jiveassmother]

The Ranger said that they reopened it at 8:15am but Das Boot and a section of the Wildcat trail are still closed. It was burning on the mesa between russell gulch and the upper left fork.

[dbaxter]

Driving up I-15 last night, I thought I saw smoke coming from there...it's so hard to tell though. Too bad it's in the park.

[Deathcricket]

Might be a controlled burn no? I know they are always doing those in that area. Had the same problem last year gettign permits around this time.

[DSTRBD]

I was up there yesterday right after the fire started, we hiked out across the wildcat trail head to shoot some pics of it. When we got back there was a ranger there closing the trail. The fire is about a half mile east of the Russell gulch drainage just above wildcat canyon junction. We stopped and talked to the fire crew on lava point (they were all loading into a chopper) they said it was a lightning strike that had caused it about a week ago, it set and smoldered until the winds kicked up and then it went nuts. The good news is it looked to me from above that it was on a finger plateau so it will just burn itself out, the fire crew said they were not going to do anything about it, they were just going to be on stand by in case. Good news is, this morning it looked to be done for the most part. Here is a few pics I took.

[p40whk]

Great pics Tracy,

We were there the day after the big rain/lightning storm a week ago and saw numerous trees that were smoldering due to lightning strike. I took a few pictures and was going to report it but when we drove up to lava point there was a sign that said "Do not report these fires"

Obviously they knew about them then but when we had seen them they probably could have been put out easily. I wont even pretend to know or understand how fires are managed and I'm sure there is reasoning behind a lot of what happens regarding these events. Lightning strikes are a natural occurrence and the fires clean out the underbrush and spark regrowth.

2 days after the storm we hiked the Subway and the same tree we saw smoldering previously on that route wasn't. It may have still been burning as it only takes an ember and a little wind so who knows what was burning that we couldn't see!