Burn, Baby, Burn

As you all already know LA is surrounded by fires to the north. Fires sporadically starting in the more natural landscapes surrounding Los Angeles due to the long hot dry humping summer. The station fire, not to be confused with the deadly Station nightclub fire, just north of Los Angeles has escalated and engulfed a large part of the Angeles National Forest.

It's been a strange experience for me because, I routinely rode my bicycle up the narrow twisting roads in the Angeles Forest on my weekend bicycle rides. A few weeks ago I took two friends up there and they said it was an amazing and beautiful ride to do just outside of the city. Going into the mountains was one of my favorite things about living in Los Angeles and having the ability to be submerged in wilderness just an hour bike ride from my front door.

Now everywhere I rode has been burned. I can see the areas in my mind, smell the trees and sage, see the little lizards running around, check out the funky hippie cabins and church retreats, and now it's just all charred and destroyed. It's a part of nature and I know it needs to happen. It'll probably take until my kids are my age for the mountains to look the way I remember them again.

The fires have spread very close to civilization and many neighborhoods and communities are right on the edges of it. The fire fighters have been doing an amazing job and according to Mount Wilson's tower cam(or go here if the link doesn't work), they've even saved the observatory that is located at 5,700 feet and my favorite stop on my bike rides.

As the pictures below attest you can see that huge clouds of smoke have been hovering above LA for days. It has created an eerie color and hue to everything that is at one moment surreal and the next literally intoxicating as you realize it's all from fires, huge fires, fires big enough to create a pyrocumulus cloud that I previously had no knowledge of and are made when volcanoes, bombs, and huge fires occur.

In central Los Angeles we've smelled a little smoke and I found some ash on my motorcycle this morning since vigorous activity is strongly discouraged I haven't been riding my bike. It was also really humid this morning and the temperature has dropped to the low 90's and the fire fighters said it maybe coming under control. It'll be strange seeing the smoke disappear and reveal the charred mountains in a week or so. . .

From Space. . .


View from makout point. . .


Pyro. . .


Firefighters fight fire with fire. . .


This reminds me of the Neverending Story. . .


I rode down this rode this Spring. It's on the northside of the mountains. . .


View from LA. . .


View from Pasadena. . .


Survivor. . .