Mt Whitney Zone Forums General Discussion Forest Closure

I completely expected the closures to remain in place until possibly the first snowfall. I was thinking earlier today, how do you justify closing millions of acres of national forest to recreation in California for most of summer and fall (as happened last year) and will this become an annual practice absent an above-average winter snow pack. Unfortunately for those of us living in the Tahoe area, the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit (i.e., Lake Tahoe National Forest by another label) is extending the closure for all the national forest land surrounding the lake. Seriously? And there's a chance of snow at higher elevations for Sunday and Monday. I can see extending the closure for the area affected by the Caldor fire, but come on...

For those who care about access to Tahoe area backcountry: I read more about the forest closures and reopenings today. The four SoCal NFs remain closed as well as El Dorado NF, where the Tamarack fire burned and the Caldor fire is still being fought (with 71% containment today). The Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit has reopened except for the Desolation Wilderness, certain forest roads near Desolation, and the Meiss backcountry area south of the lake. I called the South Lake Tahoe office to clarify these closures and that Freel Peak, the highest in the Tahoe basin, is in the closure area. Tahoe NF is open, and Humboldt-Toiyabe NF (most of the eastern side of the lake outside of the LTBMU) never closed, for some reason.

Regional Order No. 21-04 closed “Region 5”, which includes almost all of California. Humboldt-Toiyabe is mostly in Nevada. It isn’t in Region 5, so the closure didn’t apply.

Yeah, my question about the non-closure of Humboldt-Toiyabe is more of what's practical or makes sense. If it somehow made sense to close every NF in California for a couple of weeks, why didn't it make sense to close the one just over the Nevada state line? It's not like there's a monster firewall there... Comes down to bureaucracy, as I see it. Oh well...

Because most of Humboldt-Toiyabe isn’t “just over the Nevada state line”. It reaches almost all the way to Utah. That’s over 300 miles from the state line. Should they have closed the entire state of Nevada because of fires in California? Would that be practical or make sense?

No, Bob, I was just talking about the Carson district of the H-T, adjoining the CA-NV border, not the entire state of Nevada. Anyways...

In late August, the smoke from the Oregon/California fires wasn't that noticeable in Colorado (maybe a little haze could be seen in the distance from the top of the nine 14ers I climbed).

When I drove back from Colorado at the beginning of September, the smoke got progressively worse through Utah along I-80. In Nevada it was very bad all the way through the state. Very limited views of the surrounding mountains and you could smell it.

But it started clearing up as I got into California and was pretty much gone by the time I hit the Bay Area.

Compared to last year, the fires this year have spared the Bay Area's skies for the most part.