We watched it for a while...trying to tell if it was just dust from a quad or smoke...it was pretty faint. It was definitely smoke and an odd place for a campfire....especially considering it was still 78 degrees at 8000 feet.
So we headed back down...trying to keep our eyes on it to determine the location. We finally stopped at the split to Rattlesnake...and sent the boy hiking higher, while I drove up the hill.
Yes...he's there in the photo....it's like where's waldo. The odd part, from this distance, we could talk in a normal speaking voice and easily hear each other. Good acoustics there.
Close up
At around the same time...be both saw a faint puff of smoke and we were on the right track....so I picked him up, we parked. I grabbed the GPS and we started hiking.
About 1/4 mile later and a million sticker burrs on my socks and shoe laces...we ran into this. Clearly a lightning strike....One small flame, and about a 10 foot diameter of smoldering embers....it was quite warm standing there and plenty of fuel to get going if a breeze came up.
While we were there...another flame area popped up.
Since we were only there for a couple hours...we had nothing...and we didn't want move anything, out of fear we'd just spread something hot to another area. So I took my GPS and got an exact fix on the location with a waypoint.
Since the only thing we had liquid at our disposal.....you guessed it.
We hiked back to the RZR, and bolted down the hill. I called my friend who works at CalFire, and he gave me the number for that area. I called Lynn at CalFire Grass Valley. She took the GPS coordinates and was going to send a team to take care of it.
All my years in the forest...and that was a first.
