Reynolds fire alters views along Sun Road

ST. MARY — Officials are keeping mum on when the stretch of Glacier National Park’s Going-to-the-Sun Road east of Logan Pass will be open, but when it is, the views will be considerably altered.

During a media tour on Thursday, officials with the incident management team fighting the Reynolds Creek Fire said the road won’t fully open until both firefighter and public safety can be assured.

By Thursday night, the fire was listed as 63 percent contained, but 16 separate ground crews were still working hard to bring it under control, creating 100-foot buffer zones inward from the fire lines to the west and hiking miles from the road to contain still-burning pockets of dry fuel at the fire’s eastern front.

Incident team spokesman Reggie Day said there will be smoke — and occasionally flames — throughout the summer, until either the weather brings significant rain to the drought-stricken area or temperatures drop with the changing seasons.

“There’s going to be fire and smoke in this burn area all summer long, until Mother Nature puts it out in the fall or winter,” he said.

Along the smoking, steep slopes and cliffs of Goat Mountain, conifer trees continue to torch, but there’s nowhere for the flames to spread other than the bare rocks above. No crews have been placed on that part of the fire due to the inaccessible terrain.

Similarly, the remote, smoldering edge of the fire near Rose Creek remains unstaffed, although fire officials said Thursday they are working to determine the likelihood of it spreading up that drainage.

The incident team has remained free of injuries thus far, which Tim Benedict said is unusual for such a large operation (the Reynolds Creek firefighting effort has 604 people). Benedict is a safety officer who oversees multiple divisions working on the ground.

He said some of his main concerns include eye protection – a critical piece of personal protection equipment with the wind capable of driving burning ash and embers more than a half mile from the fire.

Ash pits are also a common hazard for firefighters – a stump that has burned completely, leaving a hot mound of ash that sinks thigh-deep as soon as it’s stepped on.

“It’s when the roots have caught on fire underneath the ground, and if you’re not looking for it smoldering from the ground, you can fall in,” Benedict said. “It’s kind of a helpless situation — you step into one and you can’t get out.

But according to information officer Tom Kempton, the number one risk to firefighters is vehicle accidents, meaning the road won’t open to the public until fire operations have wound down to the point that fire crews no longer need to work close to the road.

Fire and park officials said Sun Road’s full reopening is assessed day to day and is dependent on changing conditions.

Hotshot crews ignited a controlled burn Thursday afternoon north of the Rising Sun Campground, an attempt to eliminate nearby fuels and the possibility of flames spreading to the buildings and campground at the site.

The campground sits about a quarter-mile from a sheer cliff to the north, and the unburned trees rising along the foothills below the cliff were still periodically erupting in flames Thursday morning, the result of burning debris tumbling down from above.

“That isolated, single-tree crowning is a result of the heat, the sun and the wind,” Benedict said. “This is the usual for what we call a ‘dirty burn.’ It’s not completely black — there’s still spots of fuel on the ground.”

Thursday was an active day for burning on the fire, with afternoon wind producing spot fires up to six-tenths of a mile outside fire lines. All the spot fires were contained using helicopter support.

Many areas of green vegetation inside the fire perimeter also were burning by late afternoon Thursday.

Part of the reason the fire is expected to linger so long are the islands of unburned fuel that remain within the 3,170-acre area over which the blaze has spread.

Approaching the Rising Sun Campground along Sun Road about four miles west of St. Mary, the blackened tips of trees become visible over the green canopy from the road. Soon, irregular outlines appear along the densely forested hills above the road.

“Not everything within that perimeter has burned up — it’s a real mosaic pattern,” Kempton said. “Those pockets of fuel will continue to burn until the snow flies.”

The mosaic is the result of the unique topography and wind channels that fueled the fire and caused later spotting ahead of its northeast edge. In some instances, Kempton said, the flame front jumped over stands of trees as it roared over bluffs and ridges.

Mark Struble, another information officer with the fire team, said that pattern could allow a quicker rejuvenation of the burned area, compared with the hotter, stand-replacing blazes such as the Robert and Red Bench fires on the west side of Glacier Park.

“Some fires, it takes a very long time for things to re-colonize,” Struble said. “I think by next spring, you should start to see wildflowers and forbs growing back in between the remaining trees.”

Day added that crews had already noticed bits of green beginning to poke up in some of the burned areas where the heat wasn’t too intense, and a range of fauna was already exploring the altered terrain.

Near Rising Sun Campground, a juvenile black bear has been spotted daily wandering through the mostly burned forest around the site and at one point taking a bite out of one of the lines of fire hose stretching up from the lake.

Farther up the road, additional ground crews are still removing hazard trees, including both blackened snags and green trees whose roots have burned out in the hot soil. Trees are falling onto the road every day, and fire crews are working with the park to determine which trees to leave along the scenic route.

Along St. Mary Lake, the trees along Going-to-the-Sun Road alternate between the familiar, dense clusters of conifer trees and the bare, blackened soil surrounding scorched tree trunks from the road down to the lakeshore. Sun Point remains an island of green surrounded by a broad swath of burnt landscape.

Still, Day noted that the changes could provide some positives for tourists cruising along the iconic route, opening up the view of the blue-green lake and surrounding glacial peaks.

“All of a sudden, you can see waterfalls and things you would could never have seen before from the road,” Day said, adding that visitors also will be able to see the progression of new growth returning to the forest.

Reporter Samuel Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.