Blue skies and green trees are hard to find in the Sierra

My last Sierra trip was timed well, skies were blue and the scenery gorgeous.

www.tarol.com/hilton.html

I haven't been smoked out yet in all my backpacking trips, although I had one dayhike that was "rudely" interrupted every few minutes from a Type 1 helicopter flying back and forth dropping water on a high elevation fire on the San Bernardino NF.

www.tarol.com/south_fork_meadows.html

Sometimes the planning just doesn't make a difference. A couple of years ago we were planning a trip to SEKI, but the skies there were so smoky that we aimed farther north. This time heading up the Walker Lake trailhead to Mono Pass on the eastern edge of Yosemite. Sparkling blue skies, stunning scenery....and then the wind changed. By dinner time we could have cured meat...sigh.

The default firefighting strategy now is not aggressively fight all fires unless high value resources or property are threatened. Fighting backcountry fires is now backing off to strategic ridges or other natural barriers (sometimes miles away) and burning out. A good example of this is the current Soberanes Fire in the Big Sur area. The portion of the fire that threatened homes was promptly pounced on and suppressed by CalFire. The FS part of the fire that went in the to Ventana Wilderness is being allowed to burn, with final containment lines more or less following the Wilderness boundary and doubling or tripling the acreage burned. This also takes a lot of time and puts smoke into the air for weeks on end. The Ventana Wilderness burns every 10-15 years or so anyway, as soon as the vegetation grows back thick enough to burn again. So mark your calendars -- in 2025-2030 there will be a large fire in the Ventana Wilderness, and firefighters will back off the main ridges and burn out. May even be some of the same ridges used in the Soberanes fire, or Marble Cone, or Basin, or any of the other large fires that occurred in the past.

Everyone maligns the 1915 fire policy. Everyone also wants the National Forests to be managed according to the best available science. Well, in 1915, full suppression of every fire WAS the best available science, and the policy was supported by scientists, the public, politicians, and a small relatively new organization called the Sierra Club. In the 1930s some researchers began to question the wisdom of the policy, and in the 1950s policy began to slowly shift (in an ironic twist, the Sierra Club initially opposed the idea). 1972 saw the first 'let burn' policy (in the Bob Marshall Wilderness. Note that since then, about of all fires starting in the Bob Marshall have been suppressed and half allowed to burn. Even the most remote backcountry Wilderness has resource values that are harmed by fire). About that time the '10:00 AM' policy was abandoned, and became suppression effort will reflect resources at risk. Policy has continued to evolve and will continue to evolve in the future.

So smokey skies in the summer is the new normal.