Fires!

We planned to leave early yesterday morning to "look" at a hike Jan found in a hiking book.  It is 17.5 miles up a forest road, deep in the wilderness, but the 1420' elevation gain made me pause.  The weather was great, but we noticed looking out it was very smoky even in the campground, and when we went out to the Jeep it was covered in ash!  The only fire we were aware of in the area is the fire that is to the northwest of Pagosa Springs and that is about 50 miles away and to our east.  We were puzzled but headed down into town to find our road to the hike.  As the road climbed up and up we saw off to our west an enormous plume of smoke!

Fire

Durango's elevation is about 6500' and the beginning of the hike was supposed to be at over 10,000 so we had a ways to go.  The road got interesting in places, but the views, ignoring the smoke were great.

About 7.5 miles from town there is a fantastic overlook at 8700'.  The views down into the Animas Valley were superb!  There is a 2/3 mile path around the viewpoint offering panoramas in several directions.  It was a quiet pine forest, very peaceful, and there was only one other car there!

Pines

As we were walking along we heard an aircraft engine that seemed pretty close.  There is a very active glider port just south of our campground, so we expected to see the towplane.  And we were rewarded by an incredible sight, sometimes below us as they climbed and sometimes above us.  Very cool!

Glider and towplane below us

Gaining altitude

Framed beautifully

Release!

Circling around free as a bird

NICE!

As we were walking along we noticed a guy sitting on a picnic table just enjoying the view.  We asked him whether he knew anything about the fire to the west of us.  He said the fire had started the evening before at about 4:30pm beside a road and during the night had grown to over 600 acres and was causing evacuations!  (This morning the fire has grown to over 6000 acres!)  He was a very pleasant guy who has lived here in Durango for 16 years and just loves it.  He was originally from Michigan.  We discussed fires out west and how they are to the Westerners as hurricanes and tornadoes are to the Easterners, and Midwesterners.  He said he had been evacuated 10 years ago when there was a fire very close to Durango on Missionary Ridge, which burned over 72,000 acres and destroyed 46 homes.  He said smelling or seeing smoke really gets their heart rates up!  It is terribly dry this year and there are many fires around, it is like a tinderbox!

We continued up the road and as the smoke got thicker we knew there would be no hike, but we felt compelled to get to the end of the road, which we did.  And encountered a spot of wildflowers covered in butterflies.

We turned around after looking at the site of the hike.  Looked like going straight up the side of a cliff starting over 10,000' and going up well over 11,000'!  For me, thank goodness it was too smoky!

We turned around and decided to have lunch at the overlook.

Lunch overlooking the Animas Valley

We got a couple good looks at the town of Durango coming back down, still smoky, but not quite as bad as when we left.

We then took a ride up to Haviland Lake a favorite spot of Brett and Sandra's.  It was beautiful, took a 1 1/2 mile hike and called it a day!