Remember the thunderstorms I mentioned on Thursday with lightening, etc. Well, by Friday sunrise there were fire planes buzzing the mountains that flank the Middle Fork John Day valley.
By mid-day the valley where we are was pretty smoky and we saw Forest Service fire rigs and crews of firefighter's going up the road behind the property we are staying at. The ridge on the other side of the valley, Ragged Ridge, had a small visible fire in a steep high canyon section -- helicopters with huge buckets of water were trying to douse it. Then, a big cargo copter with "hot-shots" came in (buzz'en super close to us for some reason while we were working on the river) and they repelled out of the copter directly into the blazing canyon to do ground based fighting.
The fire on our side of the valley was super smoky. We didn't have any internet service yesterday (and no phone as usual). So, after a dinner that was dusted with ash back at base camp, we drove up the road the firefighter rigs were headed up to check on the situation. Would hate to find ourselves sipping tea and unwittingly have a raging forest fire come upon us.We drove up to the road closure (about 2 miles from camp) where we talked to a few fire fighters that gave us the scoop == the fires had been contained (they had a bulldozer fire line dug around the thing) and would be burning itself out. We could see the fire and the dusk-time darkness gave us a good view.
Pollyanna check'en out the fireToday more firefighter crews came up the road -- to do "mop up" and make sure the main blaze didn't get past the perimeter.
WAY less smoke today...........but my tent was dusted in ash this morning.
As far as work goes: we set our methods for doing fish cover surveys yesterday and went about doing them today as well. A fish cover survey is where percent area covering the surface of a stream or stream bed is estimated (what percent of the stream is available fish cover?). We look at all sorts of variables like aquatic or emergent vegetation, woody debris, boulders, built structures, algae, etc. For this project we are doing these surveys in representative pools and glides across 4 reaches of the river. We also measure maximum and minimum depth of the geomorphic channl unit that we are doing the survey in.
Here's Steph giv'en it her all! for max depth.
We have been out here working since July 27th.........heading back to Eugene tomorrow after a 1/2 day's worth of work. Not looking forward to the 6+ hour drive but looking forward to seeing Steve and my brother Gabby. Gab is coming to visit from Virginia for 9 days with his family..........and I Can't wait to see him! We are going camping for a few days in the mix too. YEH!
I'll be coming back out to the MFJD on August 23rd.
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