Finally had time to drive to the Pajarito Mountain Ski Area and walk up Pajarito Mountain. It was cloudy and thunder sounded a warning now and then but I made it to the back of the mountain. I walked up the Zero Road East jeep road to the logging road on the south side of Pajarito Mountain, below the lone antenna perched on the easternmost of Pajarito's double peaks.
After enduring the Las Conchas fire, the ski hill looks surprisingly normal from the area of the ski lodge - still pretty in green and moist from the generous rains we've gotten this week! On the jeep road, I walked past numerous patchy burns.
From the south back-side of Pajarito I could see a portion of the northern ridge of Cerro Grande has been severely blackened. It looks like the part of Cerro Grande owned by Valles Caldera National Preserve. I couldn't see into Valle Canyon but could clearly see that the fire had danced across Valle Canyon because the Knife-edge ridge between Valle and Pajarito canyons has definite blackening.
How many more times can firefighters save the the ski hill, the lab and the town before forest managers take serious steps to thin the forests and to step up their prescribed burns? Our forests are beautiful but they are too thick with trees. Drought makes them prone to insect infestation and wildfire. The forests of the Jemez Mountains will continue to be victims of global climate change and severe drought conditions like that which existed when the Las Conchas wildfire started the end of June. It's very good that the ski hill, lab and town were saved but what can be done to protect our forests from stand-destroying wildfires and make them more resilient to the vagaries of climate change and wildfires?
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