Big Pine View, Dick Smith Wilderness, photo Lee Neuenschwander
Hi Everyone,
We hope you’ve got a great Labor Weekend planned ahead of you. A couple quick fire updates today and some other odds and ends, then off to your weekend….The Soberanes Fire continues to eat up acreage on her southern journey across the Ventana Wilderness. Today marks the start of the 7th week Soberanes has been burning (not a typo). The fire has now burned almost 95,000 acres and remains 60% contained. There have been some evacuation orders as fire crews continue to fight on the south western front. Fire personnel assigned to the fire has dropped to just over 1,000. This is down from over 5,000 a few weeks back. You can follow more on Twitter, Big Sur Kate or Inciweb.
Just south of Soberanes is the Chimney Fire, which is now 95% contained and has burned 46,344 acres. Chimney never burned into the Los Padres but it came real close. You might even say that it licked the Los Padres. More information available on the Cal Fire website.
And further south, in the Santa Barbara Backcountry is the Rey Fire. Rey is holding tight at 32,606 acres and is 96% contained. More information on Rey including forest road closures can be found on Twitter, Inciweb or the Forest Service website.
REY FIRE CLOSURES
Late last week the Forest Service closed a large portion of the Santa Barbara Backcountry. This was in response to the rapid spread of the Rey Fire, the threat of additional fire and a lack of available fire resources. See the map below for details but basically all wilderness areas within Santa Barbara County are closed. As is much of the neighboring backcountry forest land. This will mostly affect A-Zone South hunters who are already being impacted by the closures up in Monterey County. There is no word as to when the SB closures will be lifted but it’s probably a good idea to stick to the beaches this weekend, road trip to the Sierras or head to SLO or Ventura Backcountry if you really need your LP fix.
Yellow hashed areas are the closures
