Fires/Smoke Effects on Backpacking Trips

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drembo
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Re: Fires/Smoke Effects on Backpacking Trips

Post by drembo »

Big Pine Creek over the weekend. No smoke or haze.
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cgundersen
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Re: Fires/Smoke Effects on Backpacking Trips

Post by cgundersen »

Hi Maverick,
As the preceding posts suggest, it's kind of luck of the draw for the smoke. My wife & I hit smoke of varying degrees of bad from the time we started in over Piute Pass (July 6th) till it started to rain late in the afternoon on the 12th (I plan to post photos at some point, I'm just slow!). Bad was when visibility dropped to a couple miles: sinuses clogged up, dull headache came on and exertion was very difficult. What amazed me was how rapidly conditions changed. It was hard to believe how the awful conditions on the 6th mitigated on the 7th and remained tolerable for a couple days before reverting to awful again, literally overnight (how huge air/particulate masses move that rapidly is impressive!). Anyway, once it started to rain (which it did a lot of, at least where we werre in McGee basin and Ionian basin), it cleared the air spectacularly. To our chagrin, one of the clearest days I've seen in years (in the Sierra) came on the day we hiked out (the 17th). It was so nice, we decided to stick around and do a day hike up Big Pine creek on the 18th. Since then, from what the webcams show, it has gradually gotten hazier, but nothing like the crap we hit on a couple days. With the weather forecast showing more thundershowers, it's likely to clear things up again (if there are no lightning-induced fires). And, at some lower elevations, the skeeters hit 3 on your scale, but the higher we went, the fewer bugs we hit..... I think you should have a fabulous time heading for Blue canyon!
CG
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maverick
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Re: Fires/Smoke Effects on Backpacking Trips

Post by maverick »

Hi CG

Thanks for the update. Looking forward to your pic's.
If everything stays clear and no fires start up in the Blue Canyon area I'll head up
next week.
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croupier
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Re: Fires/Smoke Effects on Backpacking Trips

Post by croupier »

On my trip last weekend to silver lake/gem lake/clark lakes there wasn't any noticeable smoke.
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maverick
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Re: Fires/Smoke Effects on Backpacking Trips

Post by maverick »

Looking at the Sequoia-Kings Canyon and Hume Lake web cam I think I'll wait
till Sept before I go out again, maybe.
It looked promising for a moment from peoples TR's but it seems like things are changing
for the worse.
With the new fire starting near Yosemite the smokey conditions and unhealthy air quality
is only going to get worse in the sierra, the Valley is already at unhealthy conditions
according to the fed's air quality standards and moderate in SEKI.
I really do not want to get the persistent coughs people are coming down with.
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Re: Fires/Smoke Effects on Backpacking Trips

Post by SSSdave »

Conditions are not as hopeless as one might think. All depends on wind directions. If we get a southwest flow, the southern Sierra will not be too bad because the southernmost fires at Big Sur and Mariposa will push clean air over the Sierra and the smoky air up towards Tahoe. But if winds blow south into the San Joaquin Valley, it will build a reservoir of hazy stagnant inversion air that even when upper level winds are coming from the south and southwest will tend to be daily drawn up western canyons into the high country. I'm set to go on a Silver Divide trip this week and look at the following information.

For maps showing fire names and where they have burned over the last year (yellow), the last 24 hours (orange), and last 12 hours (red),on the below Active Fire Map page daily select the JPEG Image:

http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/activef ... &rCode=cgb

On this MODIS Image page for a satelite image select the Bands 1, 4, 3 . The default date is the current day.
http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/imagery ... -north-000

http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/imagery ... -south-000

For Jetstream forecasts go to the below page and check individual charts for Eastern Pacific & Western North America:

http://virga.sfsu.edu/crws/jetstream_fcsts.html
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maverick
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Re: Fires/Smoke Effects on Backpacking Trips

Post by maverick »

Yes not hopeless Dave, but I haven't gotten out since May and really want to
use my new camera I bought back in June.
Illness in the family and moving have set back my expectations of getting to several
places in the sierra.
What lakes/area in the Silver Divide are you planning to visit?
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MountainMinstrel
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Re: Fires/Smoke Effects on Backpacking Trips

Post by MountainMinstrel »

Despite the Telegraph fire burning, I am still doing the trip from White Wolf to Pate Valley, up the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne to Glenn Aulin, then back to White Wolf via Ten Lakes Basin. We will be leaving Saturday the 2nd and returning Saturdaythe 9th. It looks like the wind will be blowing the smoke back into the Central Valley, at least for the first few days.

Here is a link to NOAA’a forecast site. Just click on a location for a seven-day forecast.


http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/forecast/MapCli ... 9&map.y=62
Just an old musician who loves the Mountains.
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SSSdave
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Re: Fires/Smoke Effects on Backpacking Trips

Post by SSSdave »

MountainMinstrel wrote:Despite the Telegraph fire burning, I am still doing the trip from White Wolf to Pate Valley, up the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne to Glenn Aulin, then back to White Wolf via Ten Lakes Basin. We will be leaving Saturday the 2nd and returning Saturdaythe 9th. It looks like the wind will be blowing the smoke back into the Central Valley, at least for the first few days.

Here is a link to NOAA’a forecast site. Just click on a location for a seven-day forecast.


http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/forecast/MapCli ... 9&map.y=62
-----------------------------------------

You must be interpretting something incorrectly. The upper windflow will be from the southwest towards the northwest thru at least Sunday. Especially since a closed low is forecast to wobble off the coast. If that were to drift over California in the middle of next week it would have to stall over the Mojave for an east or northeast flow. More likely scenario blowing smoke into the valley is after the low ejects east or dissapates would be for a usual eastern Pacific high to set up close to our coast causing a northern flow. Don't see that in the long range.

Maverick check your pm. I'm out of here and may get more smoke than I'd like. But I'm game.
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MountainMinstrel
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Re: Fires/Smoke Effects on Backpacking Trips

Post by MountainMinstrel »

SSSdave wrote:
You must be interpretting something incorrectly. The upper windflow will be from the southwest towards the northwest thru at least Sunday. Especially since a closed low is forecast to wobble off the coast. If that were to drift over California in the middle of next week it would have to stall over the Mojave for an east or northeast flow. More likely scenario blowing smoke into the valley is after the low ejects east or dissapates would be for a usual eastern Pacific high to set up close to our coast causing a northern flow. Don't see that in the long range.

Maverick check your pm. I'm out of here and may get more smoke than I'd like. But I'm game.
I was going by NOAA's info. Last night they were saying that Friday and Saturday the wind would shift to east northeast and staying that way, but this morning it appears that it will be returning to a west wind. :mad:

Regardless, I will be going \:D/
Just an old musician who loves the Mountains.
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