Forest Service burns CC Divide

MINERAL COUNTY – The Forest Service has been waiting years to burn a site measuring approximately 800 acres near St. Regis and last week the conditions were finally right to treat the area with a controlled, prescribed burn.

The site, near the CC Divide, was too rugged to be treated by traditional methods such as staff on the ground with drip torches so the Forest Service had to use what they refer to as a heli-torch. The heli-torch is essentially a 50 gallon drum filled with accelerant which hangs underneath a helicopter and drips flame on the intended site.

Forest Service Fuel Management Officer Lorie Cotter said the organization had been waiting for nearly five years to burn the site.

She said because of the nature of the site and the size of the prescribed burn, conditions had to be just right to ensure the fire accomplished what they wanted.

“I’m very pleased with how things are going,” Cotter said. “It’s doing exactly what we want it to. The conditions were just right to get a good burn but not burn too much. Mostly what we are doing is getting rid of the lodge pole blow down. There’s a lot of dead and dying lodge pole up there.”

Cotter said the reason the Forest Service makes the decision to burn instead of harvest the timber is largely because it is not logistically feasible to remove the material. She said because the CC Divide burn site is without roads, the timber would have to be removed by helicopter which is too expensive to be financially viable.

“We get a lot of concerns from people who wonder why we don’t harvest the timber,” Cotter said. “Where we are burning is a road-less area so we can’t log and it’s not economically feasible to log it with a helicopter. That’s why we chose to treat it with fire.”

Cotter said the Forest Service wanted the public to be cautious when entering the area in the near future due to conditions that may linger in the coming weeks. She said people wanting to use the site recreationally need to be aware of the surroundings of a recently burned site.

“There will be a lot of ash on the ground and lingering smoke,” Cotter said. “There could be lots of falling snags (dead trees) along the trails in that area for weeks. We will clear the trails but snags keep falling all the time especially along the CC Divide Trail. People should really be aware of snags coming down on the Burnt Flat Trail. Sometimes there’s no warning so we want people to be cautious.”

The conditions that allowed for a prescribed burn at the CC Divide location had to be just right, according to Cotter, which is why it took so long to treat the area.

She said a complex combination of factors had to come together before it was safe to burn.

“The soil moistures had to be where we wanted them,” Cotter said. “We don’t like the soil to be too dry. The fuels were dry enough that they would consume. The north and east faces around the burn area received some rain. Since we don’t have fireline around the entire site, we use the natural ridges to hold the fire in place and because the fuels were wet in those areas, the fire will stay where we want it to stay.”

The site is open to the public and Cotter said before the hunting season kicks off, the Forest Service would clear the trails within the burn site of debris.