Editor’s Note: Fire managers with the Bridger-Teton National Forest are holding a community meeting on Aug. 26 at 6 p.m. at the Lovatt Room at the Sublette County Library in Pinedale. The meeting will also be streamed on the forest’s Facebook page and broadcast on KPIN 101.1 radio.
The Wind River Mountains Facebook page has about 50,000 members from all across the world. Mostly, people post photos of the alpine meadows and sheer granite faces. But lately?
“Lots of should I come – should I not? Will the air quality be okay or not?” said longtime local photographer Dave Bell, who runs the Facebook page.
The Dollar Lake Fire in the northern Wind River Range started late last week. It’s exploded to 14,000 acres in the Upper Green River lakes area on the Bridger-Teton National Forest (BTNF) and is at 0% containment.
“Unfortunately, I would cancel,” Bell said, noting he has asthma.
Smoke has saturated the air. In Pinedale, the normally towering Wind River Range is hidden, and the air quality has frequently registered “unhealthy” levels in the last few days.
“With smoke like we have in Pinedale today, the air quality is horrible, and hiking in the mountains, carrying a backpack would probably not be healthy,” Bell said.
That’s the conclusion many hikers have seemed to come to, at least according to accounts on Bell’s Facebook page. To see for himself, Bell recently drove up to Elkhart Park, a popular Wind River access trailhead.
“The parking lot is, for this time of the year, essentially deserted,” Bell said, recounting past weeks where a line of parked cars spilled out of the lot. “So it's very obvious that people have spoken by not coming.”
While this trailhead remains open, the Green River Lakes trailhead is closed.
“Unfortunately where this fire is burning is one of the most iconic landscapes on the Continental Divide Trail (CDT),” said Audra Labert, communications manager for the CDT Coalition, about Squaretop Mountain at the head of Green River Lakes.
Labert’s group, a Colorado-based nonprofit, is an online resource for thousands hiking parts of the Canada-to-Mexico route. Finding an alternative trail or route is common along the CDT, whether that be for fun or safety precaution. But a re-route in the northern end of the Wind River Range’s remote, rocky landscape is trickier.
“The proximity [of the fire] to the trail has created a little bit of unrest amongst hikers,” she said. “Just due to the terrain in the area, it's really difficult to make your way through on other trails, and so hikers are opting for hiking parts of the highway.”
Like Highway 287 near Dubois. Up-to-date CDT trail alerts can be found on the Coalition’s website.
Labert added it’s been a relatively slow fire season along the CDT until now.
“It seems to all be coming at once,” she said.
For example, several fires are threatening a popular short-cut on the route near Big Sky, Montana.
Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon declared the Dollar Lake Fire an emergency on Aug. 24. That opens up more federal and National Guard resources.
The Bridger-Teton National Forest reports no structures have been lost and no injuries reported.
Evacuations for the area have so far included a five-mile radius around Dollar Lake, as well as the Red Cliff Bible Camp. The Bridger-Teton National Forest says firefighters are defending the bible camp by constructing a fire break with bulldozers, conducting burn-out operations and preparing structure protection around the lodge. They’re also protecting several outfitter camps, an elk feedground and the historic Billy Wells Camp. Additionally, the Green River Lakes road is closed.
Several areas with homes just south of the fire are in the ‘set’ stage. That means people should be ready to evacuate at a moment’s notice. For the latest information, check the Sublette County Emergency Management Facebook page and sign up for the local alert system online.
The BTNF is holding a community meeting about the fire at the Sublette County Public Library at 6 p.m. It will be streamed live on the BTNF Facebook page.
Stage 1 fire restrictions remain in effect for the BTNF. That means fires are restricted unless in a designated fire pit at a maintained campsite.
BTNF weather updates aren’t overly optimistic for the fire. Although up to an inch of rain is expected this week, so is more wind and lightning.
That’s something local photographer Dave Bell is concerned about.
“It's terribly, terribly dry,” he said. “I've been hiking in the Wind Rivers for probably 40 years, maybe longer – I've never seen conditions this dry, ever.”
The latest information on size and containment of the Dollar Lake Fire can be found on the fire’s Inciweb page.
