Mt Adams area fire

[fettster]

I thought I saw some odd clouds over towards the Mt Adams area today...turns out there's a fire over that way:
http://www.katu.com/news/25042474.html

Of particular interest to hikers is the news that road 8040 for the Cold Springs trailhead is closed. I'm not sure what is happening to hikers already parked up there.

[fishy]

I believe they were evacuated, I watched a story on the news about the fire today and they interviewed a hiker.

[Jane]

I'll try to get a trip report later, but I was with a group hiking the Birkenfeld Mountain area and the fire was crazy to watch all day:

[fishy]

Wow Jane! That's amazing to see how quickly that fire erupted!

[Jane]

I think I have more photos, but we were up there and noticed it from around 11:00am and left the PCT around 5:00pm, noting how it was continually growing through the course of the day...does anyone know what it is? We saw the tanker planes flying over us too. I havn't even turned the tv on, just got home and wanted to post these.

edit:okay I just read the above newslink..wild!

[Splintercat]

That's about when I noticed the smoke plume, Jane - I was in the Gorge, and saw it rising above the cliffs on the Washington side. It was quite white for a forest fire. I assumed it as a thunderhead, until I headed over to the Hood River Valley in early afternoon. Here's the view from that direction:



Didn't have my big camera with me, or I'd still be there taking some sunset shots of this..! Awesome to watch.

Tom

[Sore Feet]

I was up around Walupt Lake today, so I got a closer look at it than most of you. Big damn plume of smoke. As I was driving in, I was hoping I didn't drive 120 miles down there only to have to turn around because my waterfalls caught on fire. Fortunately it was on the opposite side of Adams from me, but it was billowing well above the summit.

[jeffstatt]

Great photos Jane and Tom - we saw the plume at it's peak out our son's bedroom window yesterday afternoon and it was hard not to imagine it was an Adam's erruption!

We were out at Swift Forest Campground about 30 miles NW of that area all weekend, so we're lucky we got out of that area when we did

Here's the story from the Columbian this morning
http://www.columbian.com/news/localNews ... -plume.cfm


Brian, how was the access to Walupt Lake? Snow cleared out of there yet?

[Splintercat]

Here's a stitched photos (2 images) that gives a bit better perspective on the expanse of the plume. Looks a lot like a lahar!



-Tom

[fettster]

Not a particularly great view, but here's a Trout Lake web cam:

http://www.petries.net/troutlake/camera0.jpg