Hayman Fire Pictures

[Brody]

Since we were in the Hayman Fire burn area, I thought that I would post some pictures that we took when we were climbing up on Sheeprock above Molly Gulch Campground when the Hayman Fire split down Goose Creek. We had a bit of a bird's eye view, so to speak, and it was one of the more unique climbing experiences that I have had in 38 years of technical climbing.

Though there is text, the pictures pretty much speak for themselves. Keep in mind that none of the smoke had even gotten down into Denver yet. This happened after the fire busted out of the Longwater Gulch drainage (2 valleys south of where we were wheeling yesterday)and ran down the Goose Creek drainage. This valley/drainage follows a natural trough into Waterton Canyon, which is why the smoke and ashes ended up in Denver.

Anyway, I hope that you find these interesting. It gives an idea of how many trees there were in the area and just how much power a fire of this size generates. CT wasn't kidding when he wrote that you could feel the fire in your chest. We were close enough that the air was actually shaking with the force of the fire.

The pictures were taken from the saddle of the rock. Five people still had 700' of technical rock to rappel down, gather gear, hike down to base camp (roughly 1/2 way between the rock and car), gather stuff there, then hike about 3/4 mile over rough terrain to the car. We were hiking out in smoke and figured that we had about 30 minutes before we had to hit 'sprint' mode. It was sporting...
http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/jj205/brody_2008/Hayman%20Fire/HaymanFire1.jpg
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[Brody]

http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/jj205/brody_2008/Hayman%20Fire/HaymanFire7.jpg
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http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/jj205/brody_2008/Hayman%20Fire/HaymanFire12.jpg

[Brody]

http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/jj205/brody_2008/Hayman%20Fire/HaymanFire13.jpg

[Chris]

Very interesting photos Pete, thanks. Quite a different perspective for those of us that experienced the fire from the comfort of our homes watching the fire unfold on TV. Glad you all made it out safely and were able to document it at the same time.

[Funrover]

WOW!!!! Really shows how bad it was.

[Brody]

If you were watching the news, we were the 'lost climbers' that the news so erroneously reported. We knew EXACTLY where we were all the time and took a calculated risk as to whether we were going to get caught in the fire or not. It was a little close, but we still walked out. No running involved.... I had some other friends crystal hunting in the Lost Creek Wilderness area up the Goose Creek Trail and they got out about 10 minutes in front of us. They had the fire raging off their south side and it was moving their way really fast. They were the ones that were sprinting....

The pictures that we took at the top took all of about 2 minutes to shoot, which gives you an idea of how fast the fire was moving. Only one person in our group was really freaking out after everyone was on the ground and it was a bit of a PITA to keep him with the rest of us on our way back to the cars. He was also the only one who didn't know the shortest way back to the parking lot...

[gragravar]

wow

[4Runninfun]

great pics! thanks for sharing. That was one hell of a fire. I remember that here in monument we were on evacuation standby, at night the sky over mt. herman was orange. that was definitely a bit nerve racking.

[Brody]

BTW, the larger slashes of fire in the main fire line are trees essentially exploding as the sap boiled and then burst. The rangers estimated that the heat needed to do this was in excess of 1400 F. When you figure that most big trees in the area are close to 70' high, these flames are over 120' high. It was an interesting experience.

Another one I had was in California on El Capitan. We were in a hanging bivi (picture a cot suspended by nylon webbing) on a multi day rock climb and experienced a mild earthquake that shook us and everything else. It was a bit unnerving as you really don't expect a 3300' granite rock to move very much...I don't think that we got much sleep at all the rest of the night...

[Jimmy]

Jeeeez... Really puts it into perspective. Eerie pics. Thanks for sharing!

[Pathrat]

pretty wild to see! I'm surpised that the press didn't pick up your pictures, or did they?

[Brody]

We talked to some lady from 9 news, but nothing ever came of it. Lost Valley Ranch used some of these pictures on a video they made for their clients and I have a copy somewhere. They actually survived pretty well, considering, and sustained more damage from the flooding than from the fire.

LVR is located to the right of the rock in the distance photo where it looks like nothing could survive.

[SCRubicon]

Wow, thanks for posting that up Pete! I was back in Pennsylvania for a few months when the fire happened...

[Chris]

That was pretty soon after moving here from Minnesota. Barb was washing her car with ash falling all over and wondered if we should leave. ;)

My daughter's boyfriend was in South Carolina and the news report said Denver was burning. :rant:

[sonofbr]

Thanks for posting Brody.
I was in the Army in the Middle East at the time.
My brother lives South of Lake George and was helping people trailer their horses out.

[Brody]

You are welcome everybody! Since we were in the area, it seemed appropiate and it was a very wild experience. I'll post the after pictures soon. We got permission to go into the burn area from the FS to see if we could salvage any of the gear we left. This was just 30 days after the fire and the area was officially closed. What a moonscape. Everything was gray or black and very stark looking. Everything that we had left was completely destroyed, including everything in the base camp we had set up. Kinda rough experience as we had put thousands of manhours into trail building and the camp over the preceeding 5 years. We had trails that rivaled anything the FS put in in Estes Park or anywhere else that wandered through the trees and were just wide enough to get through with a pack on. It was a pretty climb/hike just getting up to the actual rock climbing. Gone now, though...

Luckily the actual climbs survived as we were worried about the fixed gear actually melting. The fire burned off a lot of lichen on some other rocks, exposing some really good climbing. we put up a number of new routes on these and promptly named the area "The Smoking Section".

[RockyMtnHigh]

WOW! I know this is an old thread..but I just learned of this yesterday! Amazing pictures!

I hadn't seen them either, thanks for bumping it!

[Jackie]

I've never seen this either. WOW! :eek: Great shots from a perspective most of us will never see first hand

We moved here from Florida the summer of the Hayman Fire. Left one burning state for another. I remember being pretty choked by the smoke and thinking - "will this ever end?"

If you remember, Florida had it pretty bad as well. The fire was right up on the highway (closed several highways) and ash was thick on our cars and homes every morning. You couldn't breath half the time. I remember driving home from work one evening and while going around a curve on I-4 near Disney, the flames were shooting out over the cars. Very scary. I don't usually drive much over the speed limit - but I think I was flying that day! Then a few days later, I had a niece come to visit from MN. I was going to take her to Clearwater Beach for the weekend which means taking I-4 to Tampa and they were threatening to close the highway do to the danger. We went anyways, and I must have been doing 90-95 MPH at one point because we could see the flames sort of overtaking the road behind us as we fled by. (Turns out we were already on the highway with no exit opportunities when they officially closed it).

As Dora in "Finding Nemo" would say... "Just keep swimming..."!!!

[4Runninfun]

I've never seen this either. WOW! :eek: Great shots from a perspective most of us will never see first hand

We moved here from Florida the summer of the Hayman Fire. Left one burning state for another. I remember being pretty choked by the smoke and thinking - "will this ever end?"

If you remember, Florida had it pretty bad as well. The fire was right up on the highway (closed several highways) and ash was thick on our cars and homes every morning. You couldn't breath half the time. I remember driving home from work one evening and while going around a curve on I-4 near Disney, the flames were shooting out over the cars. Very scary. I don't usually drive much over the speed limit - but I think I was flying that day! Then a few days later, I had a niece come to visit from MN. I was going to take her to Clearwater Beach for the weekend which means taking I-4 to Tampa and they were threatening to close the highway do to the danger. We went anyways, and I must have been doing 90-95 MPH at one point because we could see the flames sort of overtaking the road behind us as we fled by. (Turns out we were already on the highway with no exit opportunities when they officially closed it).

As Dora in "Finding Nemo" would say... "Just keep swimming..."!!!

Wow that's pretty intense, I can think of a similar story except instead of flames it was a tornado. Was a pretty quick trip from Johnstown to Denver though! :lol:

That fire threatened to come over the front range near monument. We were all very close to packing and leaving. I can remember looking west at night and the mountain almost seamed to be glowing, or looked like it had a halo. One of those mental images you don't forget.

[Brody]

It was a bit entertaining. Kinda added a little spice to just a simple day of climbing...I have always like the "Lost climbers" typical media hysteria BS.

[Michael4rnr]

My dad worked on that fire for the entire time. I can't believe the damage and how well it's growing back after the fire.

[dannanw]

Thanks for bumping this up for the newer guy's.

[Bunyon & Babe]

Wow is right > Pete ,Robyn and I were just talking about the Hayman fire on Saturday and Pete mentioned he had taken some pictures . These are impressive !

[glacierpaul]

Wow Pete!!! Lucky just begins there! Great pic's!! We were home that day and were the first to report a fire that we thought was on the backside of Mt. Evans, the sheriff's office had no idea what was going on until later, and they called us back to tell us it was Haymen. I will try to find the plume pic's I took.

[Brody]

Wow Pete!!! Lucky just begins there! Great pic's!!

I wouldn't call it luck or an especially rational bit of decision making. We knew there was a fire and knew about where it was in relation to where we were camped/climbing. We had just pieced together a 700' new rock climb the day before, finishing the very last couple of rope lengths. We hadn't done the entire climb from the bottom up and wanted to do it.

We were camped with a group of folks and a couple of parties bailed due to the fire danger. Five of us hung out that night to see what was the next morning was going to bring. We woke up and saw the big smoke plume behind the rock, decided to hike to the base of the rock (45 minutes) and make a decision when we got to the base. We decided that we 'probably' had enough time to do two adjacent rock climbs, one party of two and one of three, before we were in actual danger. Both routes were 700-800 feet long, both hard, and both involved 4 rappels to get back down to the ground.

As we were climbing, the sky kept getting darker and darker, even though we had blue sky and sunshine behind us. When CT and I got to the top of the rock, we were sitting there watching the fire moving west to east down the valley a mile of so south of us. As we were watching the fire, the wind changed direction and started blowing due north, right in our faces. The fire changed direction accordingly and moved very fast right at us, lighting up the ridge tops as it did. It simply got worse.

We hollered down to the other group of three that they had better put a move on and that we would rappel down to the ground and get everyone's gear organized, also leaving the last two rappels fixed. When we rapped to the ground, smoke was already starting to drift around the base of the rock and you could both hear and feel the fire. We waited until all three people from the other group were at the base, then CT and I went down to where we camped and did the same thing with the gear there. When everyone got down to our base camp, we then hiked back out to the car/parking/trailhead.

Close, but we never hit 'sprint mode'. One of the guys that was with us has never climbed with any of us again. I thought it was one of the more entertaining climbing days I had ever had, ditto with CT. The one that rivaled that was being about 2200' up El Cap in Yosemite and having the whole rock move due to an earthquake..