Up in Smoke

By Jim Benning
Westways , Spring 2022

As the pandemic raged in the summer of 2020, I racked my brain for ways to escape the city, if only briefly, with my teenage daughter. Then inspiration struck: I would introduce her to the magic of backpacking in the High Sierra. Social distancing in the mountain range’s Golden Trout Wilderness would be a cinch, and rambling among the granite peaks, alpine meadows, and glassy lakes would be a balm.

So I traded pandemic doom-scrolling for online gear shopping and managed to snag a wilderness permit. Our 3-day outing would hardly be epic, but the bar was low, and in my mind, the trip took on all the grandeur of a Himalayan odyssey. Sure, wildfires were rampaging across the West, but nowhere near our intended trailhead. And when I read about new lightning-sparked blazes in the southern Sierra as our trip drew near, I remained optimistic. The fires would be contained, I told myself. Everything would be fine.

Spoiler alert: Everything would not be fine. I was soon doom-scrolling again, only this time for wildfire updates. In days, the Castle Fire merged with the Shotgun Fire to create the behemoth Sequoia Complex Fire. I studied fire maps and air-quality reports and held out hope. But eventually I concluded that even if the fire itself didn’t threaten us, the smoke would. I called off the trip. I was crushed.

Our canceled outing was far from a tragedy, I know, but it was a sign of something bigger and more ominous happening across California that summer. The hills, to paraphrase the late writer Joan Didion, seemed to be blazing up spontaneously. Wildfires historic in size and scope were popping up all over. The trend continued last year and shows no signs of letting up. In fact, many experts predict that wildfires will only worsen in the coming years.

Spreading like wildfire

Most media coverage has rightly focused on the role of climate change, and on the loss of life, property, and habitat. But sometimes overlooked is the toll the fires are taking on recreation, health, and our well-being—intangibles that make life worth living. Spending time in nature lowers our stress and anxiety, researchers tell us, while boosting our feeling of happiness. Venturing into the outdoors feels good.

Or as Robert Louis Stevenson once observed: “It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of the air, that emanation from the old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.”

And, of course, the Golden State has long been an ideal place to renew one’s weary spirit. It’s why California’s majestic mountains, sandy beaches, and temperate climate have been the envy of the world.

Yet the number and scale of wildfires lately are having a noticeable impact on our ability to enjoy our great backyard. Take the summer of 2020. In August, a wildfire tore through California’s oldest state park, Big Basin Redwoods, destroying almost every structure in its path. In September, the fast-moving Creek Fire trapped more than 200 people at Mammoth Pool Reservoir in the Sierra National Forest, prompting a harrowing rescue operation.

The Bobcat Fire in Angeles National Forest was one of the largest wildfires in L.A. County history. And in Northern California, the August Complex Fire exploded into the state’s first “gigafire,” an apocalyptic term indicating that the blaze tore through more than 1 million acres.

In all, nearly 10,000 wildfires scorched more than 4.2 million acres, making 2020 the state’s largest wildfire season on record—and shattering the previous record, from 2018, of about 2 million acres burned.

Anyone who had hoped 2021 would offer a reprieve was sorely disappointed. In fact, last year proved to be the state’s second worst in acres burned. And already this year, a wildfire in Big Sur forced the temporary closure of a portion of the state’s most treasured road, Highway 1. Not surprisingly, experts are talking about the demise of the May–October wildfire season and the emergence of conflagrations year-round.

Lightning ignites roughly half the wildfires in the West and humans cause the rest, but scientists say climate change is the primary driver of the worsening fires. Extreme drought and hot, dry conditions have left the landscape tinder-dry, and the buildup of brush and dead trees from a century of well-meaning but ill-conceived fire suppression has fueled many of the worst forest blazes.

The impact of the wildfires on recreation in California has been severe. In September 2020, for the first time in history, the U.S. Forest Service temporarily shut down the state’s 18 national forests—roughly a fifth of California’s land—due to the surge in wildfires. The agency repeated the drastic measure last summer, closing all national forests in the state for weeks.

The move gave strained agencies time to respond to the blazes, but U.S. Forest Service officials lamented the closure’s impact on the public. “We want people to visit their national lands, especially in this environment of the global pandemic,” said Samantha Reho, a spokesperson for the agency. “Going out for fresh air does so much for mental health and physical health.”

Burning questions

Quantifying wildfires’ impact on recreation isn’t easy, but some organizations are trying to assess their effect on tourism. In 2019, visitors to the 22 counties in California’s Sierra region generated $3.6 billion in travel spending and supported some 36,400 tourism jobs, according to research firm Dean Runyan Associates. But wildfires are causing some travelers to rethink visiting the region, according to a 2020 report from the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, a state agency.

“I don’t want to be too gloomy and say it’s the end of tourism,” said consultant Carl Ribaudo, one of the report’s authors, “but it’s a new factor that we have to be aware of.”

Meanwhile, outdoor enthusiasts are struggling to adjust to the new reality. “I don’t remember having to cancel hikes years ago the way I’ve had to in the last 5 to 7 years,” said Placentia resident Bill Furey, founder of the 9,200-member Heritage Hiking Club. And on the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail that traverses California, Oregon, and Washington—a route spotlighted in the book and film Wild—fire-related closures have become so common that some wonder whether thru-hikers will ever again be able to walk the entire length uninterrupted.

“It’s sad,” said Scott Wilkinson of the Pacific Crest Trail Association. “A lot of people are thinking about that.”

Recent wildfires have also forced the closure of some of California’s beloved national parks. Early last September, Sequoia and Kings Canyon public affairs officer Sintia Kawasaki-Yee had just gotten off work when she spotted lightning over the mountains. She was on the phone with a friend but hung up to hurry home.

“I had a sense that something was going to happen,” she said. Sure enough, lightning strikes led to the KNP Complex Fire, a devastating blaze that forced the closure of most of Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks and the evacuation of nearby residents.

In early November, I visited Sequoia to meet with Kawasaki-Yee and see the fire’s aftermath. Snow had fallen a week before, but the park was still closed, and hundreds of firefighters were working to extinguish hot spots and clean up. Normally, nearby Three Rivers would have been buzzing with visitors, but the town was eerily quiet. At the park’s Ash Mountain entrance station, a giant electric sign alerted would-be visitors to the closure.

I met Kawasaki-Yee outside the shuttered Foothills Visitors Center and we drove along the Generals Highway past areas untouched by fire, as well as charred hillsides redolent of ash. We made it as far as Hospital Rock about 6 miles from the entrance before we could go no farther. Normally, picnickers would have been relaxing under shady trees. “A lot of people from Visalia and Three Rivers come here,” she said. But not this day.

I asked Kawasaki-Yee about the beloved giant sequoias farther up the road. In a typical year, more than a million people visit Sequoia, and nearly all of them want to see the Giant Forest, and especially General Sherman, the world’s largest tree by volume.

Scientists once thought the trees were impervious to wildfire thanks to protective bark and other characteristics. In fact, modest wildfires are essential to their reproduction. But the ferocious Castle Fire in 2020 killed between 7,500 and 10,600 sequoias, shocking many naturalists. And in 2021, the KNP Complex Fire, along with the Windy Fire in Sequoia National Forest, killed an additional 2,000-plus sequoias or burned them so severely they’ll likely die within a few years.

As the KNP Complex Fire raged last summer, crews rallied to protect the trees in the Giant Forest by dropping protective gel from planes and wrapping the base of General Sherman and other ancients in fire-retardant covers. Photos of General Sherman wrapped in a silver blanket went viral. Something about the giant tree and its modest protection conveyed the David-versus-Goliath struggle firefighters faced, as well as the vulnerability of trees that likely predated Jesus.

I asked Kawasaki-Yee what she thought of the photo’s global reach. She said she hoped the image would inspire people to take action: “Foil is not enough. We need to fight climate change and do more.”

Scientists say we can do more, both to cut greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change, and to reduce other factors contributing to the wildfires. U.S. Geological Survey scientist Jon Keeley, who’s based in Sequoia National Park, said most wildfires in chaparral-covered Southern California are the result of arson or downed power lines.

“Both are sources that we can potentially control,” he said. And in the Sierra and other forest areas prone to lighting strikes, crews are finally working to reduce the buildup of fuels through controlled burns. “If that’s successful,” he said, “we may not see a continuing increase in large fire events.”

It’s hard to feel too optimistic these days, but I hope he’s right. I still haven’t introduced my daughter to backpacking in the High Sierra, but we did camp in the Santa Cruz Mountains last summer.

About 20 miles from the charred remains of Big Basin Redwoods, we visited Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, which is also graced with old-growth trees. Scientists say the trees are remarkably resilient, but as we walked among them, I couldn’t help but sense that they’re increasingly threatened. Not unlike so many aspects of life in the Golden State these days.

Westways travel editor Jim Benning has been hiking and camping in the Sierra since he was a kid.