- North side of Bays Lake, looking West
With the Endless Summer we're having, a buddy and I did a quick overnight to Jefferson Park last Friday/Saturday. We mostly wanted to see for ourselves what the Lionshead fire did to the area, and post some pictures here for anyone else interested. Since the four nearest trailheads were closed, this was an out and back from the Pamelia Lake TH.
No sign of any fire until after the Milk Creek crossing. There was some low intensity fire on the PCT between there and the Woodpecker trail junction, but still mostly green and shaded. The PCT from Woodpecker to the Russell Creek was another story, it was completely toasted. This was already burned in the Whitewater fire, and I had hiked it in 2020 before the Lionshead fire. It looked even more burned than before. Absolutely charred with lots of sun exposure. The PCT gets back into some live forest around Russell Creek, and its a mosaic burn through here all the way to Jefferson Park.
- PCT south of Whitewater trail junction
- PCT north of Whitewater trail junction
Jefferson Park was a light mosaic burn. Especially around Bays Lake, there was a perimeter maybe a couple hundred feet around the lake that remained unburned. We camped at site 15, and just from the site there was barely any sign of fire. Camping there felt just the same as before. There was exactly one snag that had burned and fallen over, then burned a small silhouette of ground cover around it. Nothing else touched within a hundred feet. It's striking how capricious and extremely localized a fire can be.
- Burned snag north of Bays Lake
We had planned to hike up to the top of Park Ridge as well, but didn't make it. There was a surprise (to us) reroute of the PCT heading up that did not match any of the maps we had. Between the uncertainty of the new route and extra mileage, we ran out of daylight to make it all the way up. But we stopped at a clearing partway, high enough to survey a lot of the park.
- Russell Lake and Jeff Park from the PCT
The worst burn in the park was the north side, around Rock and Park lakes. We never saw very much burned meadow, but there were some entire stands of trees that went up. It was pretty neat to see how little it took, sometimes only a few feet of bare ground as narrow as a trail, to stop the fire.
- Connector between PCT and Park lake, looking West
- 18 inches of tread separating burned from unburned
Scout Lake wasn't totally unscathed, but still came out pretty well. All the campsite on the north side are untouched. You can see a stand of burned trees on the south side of the lake, and beyond that how far the fire went up the north flank of Mt. Jefferson proper.
- Scout Lake and Mt. Jefferson
On a clear and warm Friday night in October, we just about had the entire park to ourselves. We only saw two other groups, another party camping and a FS ranger that was checking permits. Hiking out Saturday, we passed two solo PCT hikers and a few more small groups of backpackers. The combination of a recently reopened PCT, combined with all of the closest trailheads still being closed and a limited number of permits for the remaining trailheads, created a perfect storm for actually having solitude in a place as popular as Jeff Park. I have to think in normal circumstances, every site would've been taken. We also heard reports of a black bear in the area, both from the ranger and another guy hiking out as we were hiking in on Friday.
