School Fire Field Trip Report by Laura Maier

Nancy Berlier reported on "Forest Restoration" at the time of our Feb. meeting. Logging in the burn area is supposed to commence August 1st. If you want to see the School Fire burn area as it is first recovering, go to Pomeroy and at 15th street turn right on the Scroggins Ridge Rd. which becomes FS Road 40. You can make a rest stop at Rose Springs, just inside the forest boundary, or use the facilities at Pomeroy's town park.

We walked on Abel's Ridge, 4018, and also on the west end Willow Springs Rd., 4022, per the advice of the Pomeroy ranger district. If the district office is open, you may be able to get a map of the fire area.

A Report of our Wed. July 12th trip.

The School Fire near Pomeroy was a large one & our group was impressed by the stark line of charred trees coming up a gully on an otherwise bare hillside, the places left growing and intact where the fire jumped, and, deeper in the forest, the pattern of the endless black trunks on the slopes where everything was completely burned.

We first hiked on Abel's Ridge and had lunch on the ridge. The ridge's bloom period was mostly over, but we could see various balsam root, phlox & other ridge plants. Penstmons & clarkia were in bloom.

On the Willow Springs Rd, where a few trees were burned through the trunk and stumps burned into the ground leaving smashed earthen craters, we saw some survivors or pioneers.

We were amazed at the carpet of Arnica! We never saw such an extensive Arnica landscape. [Possibly Arnica mollis, found in the Pomeroy district & hairy.] Also birch-leaf spirea - everwhere. The birch-leaf spirea was miniature, maybe 1/3 as tall as we usually see it. The Arnica also was shorter. Another survivor was Lomatium, two types, as far as I could tell, cous and triternatum. It was so surprising to me to see so much Lomatium along this ridge. We guessed that these particular plant populations, whose roots or seeds were suited to withstand fire, without the usual competition of their shady forest site, just exploded. There were quite a few Clarkia pulchella, also were some, but not many, lupine, and a few Phacelia hastata or silverleaf phacelia. The Spiraea betufolia and Arnica are rhizomatous and the Lomations have a tap root. The Clarkia increases in a disturbed area. Both the silverleaf, common, and varied leaf, uncommon, phacelia grow in disturbed areas.

An interesting sight was the ceonothus, new shoots with lovely shiny leaves growing inside a a larege tangled black wiry ball of the burned stems, showing the outline of the original shrub.

Two of us felt uneasy at the silence. We saw no deer. Of course there was no brush to rustle; we heard no animals. We did see two ground squirrels on our 3 hour trip and saw some hawks and a few other birds. I think we did get a photo of a mntn bluebird on a charred limb, on the fringe of the burned area. We were relieved to see four elk outside the forest & beyond the fire, in a lush grassy area.