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The fire has now burned into the San Rafael wilderness, with the north flank of the fire currently burning in heavy, 40 year old fuels with a high dead to live ratio. Fuel moisture levels are extremely low and at a point which is usually not seen until late in the summer.

I know, I know, it's the natural fire cycle and all, but I feel like every wilderness I've ever hiked or camped is going up in fire. In the San Rafael Wilderness I spent a whole spring week hiking high on precipitous trails bordering rushing creeks, terrified (I hate heights), but thrilled at the solitude so close to the big city of Santa Barbara; Tahoe, the Onion Valley in the Eastern Sierra -- where I was once caught in a blizzard on June 28 (must've been 1996, or '95), shivered all night in the tent with my pit/lab mix Buster and my friend Lisa, and awoke the classic crystalline blue skies and virgin snow ... on June 28 ...

Inciweb -- typically the best place to keep track of fire progress -- seems to be down, but if you want to watch what's burning in the Western U.S. I recommend the fire viewer maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminstration. Click here. A bit kludgy, but you can play around with it, zooming in on the smoke plume that stretches from California to the southern tip of the Minnesota border; from the southern edge of Montana to the Mexican border; you can also look survey the whole U.S. map of hotspots, including a number in the Midwest and South.

For California fires only (at the moment the Zaca fire in the Los Padres and the Big Pine Sage Fire in the Eastern Sierras), there's up-to-date information available from the California Department of Forestry here.

The good news is that the Sierra fires were caused by lightning. The bad news is that the Zaca fire was not.

Bruce Willey of the Mountain Project has some amazing photos of the now-quieted Big Pine fire here. (I have asked permission to post one or two here.)

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