From 262 to Greater than 26.2: The Morgan Fire

Monday, September 9, 2013

The Morgan Fire - Mount Diablo

The fire from Mitchell Canyon

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a run my wife and I did up on the North Peak of Mount Diablo. It was an awesome run and it opened up an entirely new side of the mountain to explore. Yesterday, I went out to start the barbeque on a bright and very warm Sunday to find that the mountain was on fire.

From our house it looked as if the fire was coming from Mitchell Canyon, so I piled the family in the car to see where the fire was coming from. We live 2 miles from the Mitchell Canyon trail head, so it didn’t take too long to see that the fire was actually behind North Peak. In fact we made it just in time to see the brown shed I had come across on the peak explode in flames.

We then drove over to Marsh Creek Road to see that the fire was there off of Morgan Territories. This is serious horse country, so there were so many folks getting their horse out of the different boarders, with our neighbors leaving late last night when they were alerted that their stables were now threatened. There are also 75 homes threatened.

This morning, the fire seems to be more focused on the Diablo Summit side, with North Peak no longer smoking. It just seems surreal that I had run the areas that are in flames.

North Peak Trail will be looking different for awhile.

My wife is just sick about the fire. Most of our runs are on this mountain or in the foothills around it. So it is so sad to see it in flames.

However, to some degree it is reassuring that in an odd sense this will be good for the mountain. Fire has such a cleansing effect and it will be exciting to see how it repairs itself over the years. There has been an increasing amount of poison oak and goat head thistle on the mountain as well as other evasive species.

It just means that running will need to be more concentrated on the west side of the mountain.