The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Luckily it wasn’t windy
by Mark Reaman
You never know what might happen when walking to a party in Crested Butte. For three Aspen area residents, Sky Minert, Tracy Jennings and Tina Smith heading to a Saturday gathering over on Second Street in CB via East Maroon Pass, it turned into quite the adventure. First just running into a bear can be exciting enough, which it was for them, but before cresting East Maroon Pass they noticed something weirder than a bear that was running away: a rogue fire smoking away above them next to an avalanche chute.
“We were on the trail and looking around and noticed smoke at the top of an avalanche path. We thought that was weird,” said Minert. “It didn’t look like a place anyone would camp. We didn’t see flames, just lots of smoke. So, we went up the hill to see what was going on.”
They climbed approximately 800 feet, a little worried someone who didn’t want to be seen could be camping there.
“But we got there and a tree on the edge of the avalanche path was shattered and its trunk was charred on the bottom,” said Minert. “A 25-foot circle of ash was surrounding the base. It looked like it had burned and gone out. Up the hill, we could see where a fire with flames was slowly moving up the hill on the ground. Luckily, it wasn’t very windy.”
Minert said it was such an unusual situation that none in the party were sure about what to do. He said they had passed a group of five people that were camping and knew they would be coming up the trail.
“We were on a day trip so didn’t have a lot of water, but we used most of the little water we had,” he said. We even peed on a smoldering log. I used my jacket to pick up some fine dirt and put it on top of the fire. That got rid of the flames, but you could still see and feel the heat. I went down to the trail and met the group of campers, and they had a bigger water bag with a filter, so they came up and we all used that. We also put more dirt on it all.
“One interesting thing was that one of the tree roots was really warm,” Minert continued. “We watered that and put dirt on it. We waited around a bit until there were no more flames and no more heat and then continued to Crested Butte.”
About two miles up the trail the group ran into a couple of Forest Service workers with saws clearing trail. They told them about the incident and shared the GPS coordinates of where the fire had happened. “They called in the fire, and we saw it go up on the Watch Duty app. It’s still there as the Maroon Creek Fire but listed as 100% contained,” Minert said.
Minert said the adventure certainly added time and miles to the trip to get to the party. Upon reflection they guessed the tree had been struck by lightning during one of the brief thunderstorms that rolled through the area a couple days before the hike. He said he’s since learned that lightning can cause such a fire to smolder for days and then flare up when it gets windy.
“My guess is that it happens a lot in the wilderness where a small fire might start but fizzles out unless it’s dry and windy. As much hiking as we’ve all done that’s the first time we’ve ever seen something like that,” he explained.
He advised that in a dry season like this summer people pay more attention to their surroundings when in the backcountry. “Look around and not just at the trail,” he said. “We happened to be in a place where we could see it. The Forest Service folks said proper protocol would be to use the emergency satellite ability that is on most new cell phones. You can text information via satellite, and it gets to the proper authorities. This happened to us so it can happen to anyone.”
Emergency SOS capability is on an iPhone 14 or newer.
Sky, Tracy and Tina made it to the party in time and shared their adventure with people in CB. They then spent the night in Crested Butte before taking in the Sunday Farmer’s Market and catching Dolly’s Shuttle for a pretty, but less eventful trip back home.
