The Warm Springs drainage has long been a concern for U.S. Forest Service fire managers. The drainage is filled with 100-year-old Douglas fir and subalpine fir trees. It includes dense, old timber.
In 2005, officials at the Ketchum Ranger District of the Sawtooth National Forest initiated an environmental study called the Warm Springs Fuel Reduction Project. The resulting decision, made by way of a categorical exclusion, called for fuels thinning in seven locations in and around homes in timber stands of the drainage.
It's been a "concern for years," said Ketchum District Ranger Kurt Nelson in a Monday morning interview at his office in Ketchum. "It's not like we've been ignoring it."
Nelson was scrambling Monday to help coordinate a busy office scrambling to fight the Castle Rock Fire, which was triggered by a Thursday, Aug. 16, lightning bolt in a stand of Douglas fir about 10 miles west of Ketchum in the Warm Springs valley.
The fire did not begin in any of the areas slated for treatment by the environmental study, and it is moving north-northeast toward Hulen Meadows and Highway 75. But it is still nipping at its location of origin, Warm Springs.
Since the Warm Springs Fuel Reduction Project was adopted, federal land managers have completed one fuels thinning project in the area, on the lower flank of Bald Mountain above lower Board Ranch. That timber sale included roughly 6,000 cubic feet of timber over a 14-acre area.
What's more, still another project is slated to begin next week, Monday, Aug. 27, above Warm Springs Ranch.
The Ketchum Ranger District recently awarded a timber sale on a portion of Forest Service land immediately adjacent to the Warm Springs Ranch Golf Course in order to reduce the risk of the spread of wildfire. It will cover 16 acres.
Nelson said the project is designed as a community wildfire protection measure for the city of Ketchum and Sun Valley Resort. The timber sale will remove approximately 4,800 cubic feet of timber, roughly eight log trucks of Douglas fir trees. The logging should conclude by Nov. 30.
The Warm Springs timber sale, like all of the seven planned thinning projects adopted as part of the Warm Springs Fuel Reduction Project, will reduce tree densities that have been found to be a significant cause of extreme fire behavior, while also considering avalanche potential in the area.
The additional five project sites include another area on lower Bald Mountain facing West Ketchum and four sites south of lower Board Ranch. The Forest Service intentionally targeted areas in the so-called urban wildland interface, which are places where homes are situated close to or in forests.
"The goal was to thin the forests, do crown separation to reduce the opportunity for large crown fires, take out 8 inches and smaller ladder fuels," Nelson said. "Our fuels reduction planning was built on the urban interface."
Asked why projects weren't slated for areas that have been consumed by the Castle Rock Fire, Nelson said "it doesn't make sense to do fuels reduction where you don't have homes."
In a November 2004 interview, Ketchum District Fire Management Officer Bill Murphy outlined the conundrum in Warm Springs.
"We're in a situation where all that time, with 100 to 200 years of fuel buildup—now we're trying to open up the stand, at least where it's up against the homes," he said.
In a subsequent March 2005 public meeting designed to collect feedback from area residents on the Warm Springs Fuel Reduction Project, Murphy said that, of all areas in the Wood River Valley, Warm Springs canyon could be one of the most at-risk for the damaging effects of a raging wildfire.
The aging forests are increasingly susceptible, he said.
Other populated canyons like Deer Creek, Greenhorn Gulch and East Fork do not have the same combination of home density and an aged, high-density forest.
"Foremost in our mind for any treatments being proposed is our desire to maintain the visual beauty of the area and forested slopes in the Warm Springs drainage during and after the proposed project," Nelson said at the March 2005 meeting.
Nelson's obvious attempt to quell the concerns of the area's residents over retaining the visual beauty of the area's old forests now seems a little trivial. Although the forests on the lower flank of Bald Mountain and in the Board Ranch area on the valley floor are still intact, the still-advancing Castle Rock Fire drives home the importance of the reality of living in the rural West.
The fact is, fire is as much a part of forest ecology as rain and snow. It was here before. It is here now. And it will return again.
Dense, old timber in the Warm Springs canyon, combined with a relatively high density of homes, has long been a concern for U.S. Forest Service managers, who began implementing a fuels reduction project in 2005 to reduce risk to private property should a fire occur. Photo by Willy Cook
