By JENNIFER BOWLES
The Press-Enterprise
Thursday, November 08, 2007
More than four years after the Old Fire swept through California's San Bernardino Mountains, a major campground and trail at a state park remain closed; 16 months after the Sawtooth Complex Fire raged across the desert near Yucca Valley, a popular hiking and equestrian preserve has yet to reopen.
And another state park, nestled against the foothills of the San Jacinto Mountains, was badly damaged by last year's Esperanza Fire before the public even got a chance to see the scenic landscape that was awaiting groundwater contamination cleanup.
More recently, the Slide and two Butler fires near Fawnskin and Running Springs damaged campgrounds and hiking trails, including a five-mile segment of the Pacific Crest Trail that will remain closed until spring when debris and burned trees have been removed, said Paul Bennett, a recreational officer with the San Bernardino National Forest's mountaintop district.
At Silverwood Lake State Recreation Area alone, the damage toll was $3 million from the 2003 Old Fire and the floods that followed. Bridges, restrooms, sewer lines, roads, guardrails, a fishing dock, the Pacific Crest Trial and other paths were damaged, and major construction projects continue.
Officials at Mojave National Preserve in northeastern San Bernardino County spent $1.1 million fixing gravel roads that were damaged by floods that followed the Hackberry Complex Fire, which burned for six days in June 2005 and scorched more than 70,000 acres in the preserve, said Larry Whalon, the park's deputy superintendent.
At Pipes Canyon Preserve east of Pioneertown, the damage was more physical than financial. The Sawtooth Fire so badly charred pinyon pines, some dating back more than 1,000 years, that they may not sprout new life. And the junipers and Joshua trees may not fare much better.
A graveyard of hundreds if not thousands of blackened Joshua trees, some with their weakened limbs bending downward in a bleak landscape, make April Sall miss what was once a thriving preserve for hikers and equestrians at the crossroads of two ecosystems: the Mojave Desert and the eastern San Bernardino Mountains.
"It was a really neat canyon," said Sall, who manages the preserve -- recently renamed the Pioneertown Mountains Preserve -- owned by the Wildlands Conservancy, a nonprofit agency in Oak Glen.
Sall said she expected a wildfire to someday hit the preserve, but not one that would destroy 90 percent of it.
"We expected the fire to be more patchy and more mosaic, but it was total devastation," she said of the July 2006 fire.
At Silverwood Lake, crews are working to replace four large bridges that link a three-mile dirt trail skirting the reservoir for bikers and hikers. The trail has been closed since the Old Fire burned through four years ago. At $697,000, the bridge project is the costliest repair.
"Without this bridge, it doesn't allow for access to some very beautiful parts of the park," park Superintendent Kevin Forrester said as he stood by one of the wooden bridges under repair.
The area known as Miller Canyon surrounds an offshoot of the lake. The trail is at the base of steep hills marked by manzanitas, some whose limbs are still blackened. It will probably be another year before the area reopens.
"The area is very unstable," Forrester said. "We still have a lot of work to do."
He is hoping for good rain this winter to shore up the hillsides with some vegetation to keep debris from sliding down.
Forrester said it's frustrating to keep closed portions of one of the region's few state parks, given the burgeoning population in the area. But, he said, they've done their best while much of the funding trickles in from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Across the lake in Cleghorn Canyon, an equestrian campground has remained closed since 2003, when fast-moving flames severely damaged the camp's bathroom and showers. One benefit of designing a new structure, Forrester said, is that it will be accessible to people with handicaps.
Another state park, in Potrero Canyon south of Beaumont, will open in the near future once groundwater contamination, a remnant of a now-closed rocket-testing facility, is cleaned up. The cleanup was under way before last October's Esperanza Fire burned nearly 90 percent of the Potrero unit of the San Jacinto Wildlife Area, said Scott Sewell, wildlife-habitat supervisor for the California Department of Fish and Game.
A slice of Old California with its large oaks, creeks and boulder-studded hills, the park's trees and shrubs are recovering with the help of cool, moist weather that drifts in from the coast, Sewell said.
(Reach Jennifer Bowles at jbowles(at)PE.com.)
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