climbing a mountain during a forest fire

Britt and I had long wanted to climb Grizzly Peak (13,738'), which is in the San Juan mountains not far from Engineer Mountain. It's climbed far less frequently than Engineer, though, as it's harder to get to, sitting back at the head of a valley rather than right out near the highway. (We've been up Engineer a number of times, most recently last fall; this is my trip report from that climb, and here is a photo of me on the ascent; Grizzly is the highest peak in the background, on the right side of the picture.) As we debated where to go this weekend, we decided one reason to choose Grizzly was that it was quite far from the Little Sand Fire, currently stinking up the eastern part of our usual stomping grounds, the Weminuche Wilderness. We certainly didn't want to be hiking through smoke and ash! Ha ha ha! Little did we know.... [cue ominous music]



(Yes, the sky in Colorado is normally bluer than that. That is smoke haze. That is also me, on the way down, and the pointy thing behind me is Grizzly.)

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All the photos [16 total], none of the blah blah blah

Weber Fire incident page (This is not, actually, the worst of the fires in the area; that would be the Little Sand Fire, about 40 miles northeast of Durango. Both of them added together are less than half as big as the one burning near Fort Collins, though. Colorado is seriously on fire this summer. Cross your fingers and hope for rain.)