The fact that Caldor ran up the western slope, crested the summit, and spread down the Sierra’s eastern slope into the Lake Tahoe Basin caught residents and fire experts both by surprise.Īt times, the fire grew anywhere from 16 to 63 square miles (40 to 162 square kilometers) per day. “As you drive around,” she said, “and look at all the trees and how beautiful everything is, even though they stopped it, everything that didn’t burn could burn next year.” What We Learned Having lived all over the country, she recognizes that living on the West Coast means living with fire. Koran lost sleep monitoring which trails survived and which ones did not. The Ralston Trailhead near Camp Sacramento on the west side of the summit, a project she worked on with the El Dorado National Forest, is also gone. Last year, she celebrated the opening of a four-year project rerouting the 165-mile (266-kilometer) Tahoe Rim Trail at Echo Summit. She watched the fire threaten both her old home and her new home, destroying miles and years of trail work between them. Koran, the trail operations manager for the Tahoe Rim Trail Association, lived in Pollock Pines before moving to Tahoe and worked as a wilderness ranger on the El Dorado National Forest. South Lake resident Kristine Koran felt losses on both sides of the Sierra Crest as she watched the Caldor burn. “It was a big wake-up call, not just for people in South Lake, but people all over.” “It’s like tracking a hurricane as it comes closer and closer,” he said. It left him feeling a new kind of vulnerability, a worry he hadn’t experienced living in Tahoe before this fire. The fire was making its way toward his home, and there was nothing Parsel could do. When Caldor jumped the crest and rolled toward Tahoe, anxiety built in the pit of his stomach. Dozens of miles, rocky outcrops and mountain lakes stood between Tahoe and the fire. So, when the Caldor Fire first started more than 40 miles (64 kilometers) away, on the other side of the Sierra, he wasn’t nervous. As trails director for the Tahoe Area Mountain Biking Association, he knows well what sections of the forest are filled with dense underbrush that could burn quickly.īut his fear revolved around a fire starting in the Tahoe Basin. Over the years, Parsel worried the forest could ignite. Caldor changed the way he views his home. Parsel finds that beauty in the hundreds of miles of running and mountain biking trails right outside his door.īut the fire that burned into the Tahoe Basin left some of his favorite recreation areas forever altered. North America’s largest alpine lake was described by author Mark Twain as “the fairest picture the whole earth affords.” Patrick Parsel lives in South Lake Tahoe for the same reason so many others do – the area’s beauty and its ease of access to recreation. Noticeable damage to Lake Tahoe’s famed clear waters has already been observed due to falling ash the Caldor Fire spewed into the air.īeyond the tangible loss of structures, natural resources and beauty at Tahoe, Caldor led to the loss of something intangible: A sense of security for many of the thousands of residents who call the Tahoe Basin home. But hundreds of acres of ski runs are now freckled with charred trees. The main buildings at Sierra-at-Tahoe Resort, one of the closest ski resorts to the Bay Area and Sacramento, were saved. Other stretches were harmed in the fighting of the fire, as dozers cleared contingency lines. Near Echo Summit, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) of the Pacific Crest Trail, Tahoe Rim Trail and other singletrack trails were directly damaged by the fire. While the devastation is clear, the damage is still being measured. It crested the Sierra Nevada, burning from the western slope onto the eastern slope, forever changing what officials and residents know about predicted wildfire patterns. And the Caldor did something only one fire - the 1,500-square-mile (3,900-square-kilometer) Dixie Fire - had ever done. Nearly 32,000 structures were threatened, 81 were damaged and almost 800 were destroyed. The fire forced roughly 50,000 people on the Highway 50 corridor and in the Lake Tahoe Basin to evacuate. In just a few weeks, Caldor scorched more than 345 square miles (894 square kilometers), an area larger than New York City, as it traveled more than 40 miles (64 kilometers) toward Tahoe, the largest alpine lake in North America. 14, the Caldor Fire started near Pollock Pines, midway between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe. Side by side they form part of the Sierra Crest, a natural wildfire barrier that separates the western slope from the eastern slope.Įcho Summit and the Desolation Wilderness should have helped block the fire from encroaching on and threatening the lives and homes of the thousands of people living and recreating in the Tahoe Basin, which straddles the Sierra.īut on Aug.
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