Fire On The Mountain (2003-07-22)

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Tom and I decided to do a short mountain bike ride out of Galena Park. We left Tom's place at 5:30 pm and headed out over to Galena. Driving over we noticed several lightning strikes and what looks to be rain in the area. We figured what the hell, anything to get out of this oppressive heat, a little rain never hurt anybody. After an emergency stop at the Galena Market (I won't go into details) and a brief tour of the parking lots (it's a good idea to follow the signs) we arrived at Galena Park at about 6:00 pm. We headed up the trail and crossed Jones Creek (

Jones Creek Dry). The trail was in perfect shape (Galena 1, Galena 2, Galena 3), it was wet enough to keep the dust down and dry enough to keep from sticking to the tires. The temperature was perfect.

We made it over to the Whites Creek

fire road and headed up. After riding up the trail for about a 1/2 mile, Tom mentioned that he smelled smoke. I didn't want to say anything, I had smelled the smoke earlier but thought Tom had smoked a few old stogies at work. A little further up we found the source of the smoke, it was a tree on fire from a lightning strike. Naturally when seeing a bush on fire we ran around looking for some commandments. After being disappointed not finding anything biblical we decided to try and put out the fire. Lucky for us, Tom had two water bottles. We immediately knew that no fire had a chance against those two huge hydrants.

After emptying both bottles, Tom went beyond the call of duty, pulling down his bib and urinated on the fire (Sorry ladies, I was too far away and didn't have a macro lens handy to get a picture). We finally had the fire under control. I sent Tom down to the Timberline Road NDF Fire Station figuring that as soon as he went around the corner, I could get some shut eye. I was tired, I had gotten up early that morning so I could take some ATV training in Fallon (by the way it's no fun wearing one of those helmets in 100+ temperature). I knew the noise from the fire truck would wake me in enough time to where I looked like I was still fighting the fire. The truck arrived and damn, out pops Tom with his MTB strapped to the top of the truck. Hell, if I'd known he'd get to ride in a fire truck I would of gone instead! I thought he'd have to ride all the way back up.

The professionals arrive (

Tom supervises).

We'll, we wouldn't be mountain bikers if we didn't finish our ride. We rode to the end of the trail at the wilderness boundary. Anybody notice the sign with the red circle and slash through it?

On his way down to the fire station, Tom noticed the construction of a

new trail head on Whites Creek.

We also noticed a new trail heading over to Thomas Creek, well looks like we'll have to head on back and do some exploring.

 
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This site was last updated 01/03/04