McKenzie Pass

 

 Today was the day to drive up the McKenzie Pass.. It reopened a couple weeks ago, we had a BIG rain and there were mud slides (mud slides as there is nothing holding the dirt, no trees, no undergrowth or grass)  and it closed, then reopened here again last week.  It is closed during the Winter months, they do NOT keep it plowed.. It is a twisty, windy road, loved by bicyclists and goes over and meets the South Santiam Hwy to Eugene. It is a favorite drive in the Fall as the leaves on the 'other' side are beautiful...
Our family used to take Sunday drives up there all the time...
Last summer there was a BAD fire, the Milli Fire and it got really close to Sisters, they had to cancel some events, the jazz Festival for one as the smoke was just terrible in Sisters... Also the hwy was being used to fight the fire.... and needed to be open for fire vehicles.
And much of the beautiful, old growth forest is now gone....

You can see behind this sign  all the brown and hardly any green at all.. This was  all forest last year.

This is the start of the fire, or rather where it ended on the way down the mountains...
McKenzie Pass is only 11 miles from Sisters..

 This is the Dee Wright Observatory at the summit of the McKenzie Hwy..

It sits in the middle of a huge lava flow, there are many trails out into the flow.

And a walkway up to the top of this structure, where you can see the mountains all about.  It was COLD up there, Luci was shivering and not too very happy with me.  I did carry her up but made her walk back down.

This is looking South at the side of the Three Sisters ..

Mt Scott

 My car.... :) always have to take a picture of the car in the surroundings.... with the blow down and dead/burned trees in the background.

Little Luci waiting for me... Note my Starbucks cup by the front tire, if i do NOT do that, she gets into it and spills it all over the seats... she loves her Starbucks!!

Lupine... even tho there were dead trees all about, devastation, there are harbingers of new growth and hope for a future for the forest.

Altho i know that forest fires are a 'natural' order of things and that they regenerate the forest and it is good for them, gets rid of disease and nasty things...
I would still much prefer if this not happen in my lifetime, that i did not have to see the lovely, beautiful forest no longer there..

Here you have a couple trees that survived  and in a hundred years or so, they will be soaring and will be the beginnings of a new forest..

This is what the forest looks like just out of Sisters, they do controlled burns of the undergrowth, and ponderosa pines have room to grow.

In the meantime, this is what we get to see from now on...

You know when this happened in Tillamook, that horrible fire in the 30's, they had school children on field trips that went out and planted trees, i know as my class was one of them that did that in the 50's.. all along the Wilson River on the way over to Tillamook there are signs telling what year a section was planted.. they are now starting again to log out of the Tillamook Burn from some of those trees, of course trees grow much, much faster on the Coastal Range, what with all the rain they get over there, than they would in this area. East of the Cascades...

They even replanted a portion of area burned by Tumalo Falls West of Bend, there was a fire there.  Brian's class in early 80's replanted some of that.
Maybe they will here. who knows?  But right now it is pretty devastating.... But by next year maybe there will be grasses and manzanita that will be coming back. as the Lupine is this year.

Take Care All and God Bless