Cerro Grande Walk and Talk

Tom Ribe, author of Inferno by Committee: A History of the Cerro Grande (Los Alamos) Fire (read it!) gave a walk and talk on Cerro Grande yesterday.  It was sponsored by PEEC (Pajarito Environmental Education Center).  Twenty seven people showed up and all but 3 made it to the top - two turned around because they had other commitments and one's trick knee wouldn't permit him to go to the top but he made it to the high pass.  I'm sure that a lot of people had never been up Cerro Grande before and this event gave them motivation.  The pace was slow and some made it up before others.

In the parking lot, Tom first pointed out on a map various features about the fire so it was a while before we started walking.      Some WI hikers attended.  Two of them got tired of all the stopping and standing around and headed for the top from the high pass, including the marvelously fit 85 year old.  At a certain point, I too headed for the top. We all had lunch on top. I stayed with the group during the rest of the hike and we didn't get back to the parking lot until around 2:30 pm.

The most interesting part for me was seeing where the prescribed burn escaped from the west fireline as a crown fire and jumped NM4, going uphill on an eastern arm of Cerro Grande. We didn't walk over there but it was somewhere in the meadow with the small exclosure and then headed across the flat area near the big elk exclosure and downhill into Frijoles Canyon, jumped NM4 and tore uphill in a narrow path on an eastern arm of Cerro Grande. 

Near the top of Cerro Grande, Tom showed us where the test burn was started in May 2000.  I had seen this area before courtesy of a hiker who pointed it out to me so it was good to see it confirmed.

I'd highly recommend reading this book.  Tom started researching it back in 2000 when the ground was still smoking from the fire.  The author has had some fire fighting experience and this shows in how he's able to explain fire behavior.  For those who want to delve deeper, the book is well footnoted.  There is some repetition in the book but that served to help me  better understand the Cerro Grande fire.