[pct-l] Fire danger may close forests.

[Georgi Heitman]

Jim, et al, 
 With two former CDF firefighters retired and living near us,  Dennis and our neighbor, Cam, retired from the OFD and SFFD (Oakland/San Francisco) and Dennie's cousin, Jim, a retired firefighter for the Natl. Forest Service who live close by,  all of whom have fought either wildland or forest fires except Cam, (he fought SF's wooden pier fires, confined to a Fire Boat), please believe me when I say I've heard enough stories to last a lifetime and when I continue to preach safely in NoCal as well as SoCal.  We've had drizzles off and on over the last two days, enough to turn my lawn and the wild grass in the sage and manzanita that surround our place a lovely shade of green.    The wild stuff will likely be taller and very dry in about six weeks.  With sage and manzanita, fire doesn't even have to be running uphill, drying out the vegetation ahead of it.  These two shrubs are considered 'grease-wood', burning hot and explosively on their own as fire approaches even on level ground.  And the juniper trees that we see only occasionally here, but are way more plentiful from just past the Hat Creek Rim to Cassel on the PCT, are so pitchy that CDF and NFS consider them to be 'nuisance trees, that can be cut for firewood without a permit and in any quantity wanted.  The wood cutter and whomever else handles the wood can expect to find pitch oozing from it's loose, scaly bark.  Very unpleasant, but if you want a fire in your wood stove that will burn like mad and will keep burning for a long, long time, juniper's the way to go.  That's fine, if you don't want to get up in the night to 'throw another log on the fire', as the old song went, but not too fine when you're trying to keep ahead of the flames or are trying to make sure every 'hot spot' is dead out before the afternoon winds begin.  The Oakland Hill Fire was started by just such a hot spot when the hot easterly Diablo winds touched off an early A.M. spark.
I say again...please extend your extreme caution to the NoCal forests and wildlands as well as the southern ones.  The trees up here may look a bit greener, but they're also taller, ever see a fire 'crown'?  Those who have lived through such an experience say they don't want to again, and those of us who have watched such a fire have been glad they did so from a distance.  The brush beneath our pines and firs gets just as dry, especially east of the summit, and the 'duff' (pine needles, cones, etc.) burns just as easily and hot as southern undergrowth does.  Please don't breathe a sigh of relief when you get above treeline and then forget to reopen the caution signal in your brain when you re-enter our northern woods.
Thanks for listening.
Georgi