Thick snow-covered stripes across Red Mountain near the Sunnyside trail that look like an ill-advised south-facing ski chute and a catwalk traverse are actually the control lines of a prescribed fire planned for early this spring near McLain Flats and Aspen’s Starwood neighborhood.
The 900-acre burn is intended to improve habitat quality for wildlife, including the local elk herd, while also reducing the dry, aging vegetation that could fuel a large wildfire. It’s one piece in a valleywide wildfire mitigation and preparation strategy that Roaring Fork Valley Wildfire Collaborative aims to stitch together with partner agencies, including the U.S. Forest Service and local fire districts, as both the risks and the realities of large-scale wildfires become ever more clear.
The Forest Service began preparations for the prescribed burn last fall, when crews cut about 24 acres of brush and other vegetation to create control lines near the popular Sunnyside hiking trail. Forest Service officials will wait for ideal conditions, stipulated in a burn plan for the area, before any fire is ignited.
The ground and vegetation will need to be dry enough to carry moderate-intensity flames, while there is still snow on ridgelines and surrounding the targeted area to contain the burn. The Forest Service has penciled in a late-March time frame, but precipitation, wind and soil moisture conditions will all need to be monitored closely to find an appropriate window.
“We wait for the best environmental window we can,” said Dan Nielsen, forest fuels program manager for the White River National Forest. “It could be that sometimes these projects don’t happen because of things out of our control. We’re trying to implement this in the spring, late March into April. Or it could be a really snowy March, and then we push. There’s a lot of planning, and we won’t do something if it isn’t the right window.”
The burn plan sets forth a specific set of conditions — a prescription — including factors such as the moisture level of the vegetation that will fuel the fire, temperature, wind direction and speed, relative humidity and the degree of slope on which the fire will burn. An on-site weather station gives real-time data as the snow melts, helping the Forest Service model how a fire might move across the landscape and plan for the ideal circumstances to reduce hazardous fuels and promote new vegetative growth.
“When we go in and burn brush and understory with a prescribed fire, we’re shooting for a moderate intensity fire that will burn in a mosaic pattern, which means it burns in patches that creates a lot of edge that wildlife like,” said David Boyd, public affairs officer for the White River National Forest. “When it’s a moderate burn, the vegetation responds right away with new, young, nutritious vegetation that wildlife really seeks out.”
The snowy cutlines visible on the mountain will serve to contain the fire inside the 900-acre targeted area. A vertical line that runs up the hillside near the popular Sunnyside hiking trail marks the western edge of the prescribed burn; a line closer to Starwood is a secondary, contingency feature to serve as another layer of protection for homes in that neighborhood. The Red Mountain ditch will be the southern boundary, with the snowline and snow-covered ridges containing the fire from the north and east.
“When you have high values at risk, we take more precautions before we implement or put any fire on the ground,” Nielsen said. “That’s how we keep it within its box and don’t get unwanted spread outside of the unit.”
The timing of the prescribed burn needs to align with weather and climate conditions, as well as with the needs of the animals that the fire is meant to help.
“The timing of this project is critical for minimizing impacts to wildlife,” said Phil Nyland, wildlife biologist for the White River National Forest. “The reason we burn in the spring is to minimize potential impacts to animals.”
The period between winter snow and spring green, when animals begin to give birth to and raise their young, is ideal.
“As winter transitions to spring and we get into the birthing period, we absolutely do not want to be disturbing those animals with fire and mechanical treatments,” Nyland said.
In late March and early April, birds and hibernating animals have not yet returned, and patches of snow can provide refuge for animals that are in the area during the fire. Nyland said he has been on prescribed fires before where deer and bighorn sheep have watched the flames from within 200 yards without seeming stressed.
“Fire is a natural part of their landscape,” Nyland said. “They tend not to respond the way humans might.”
The Sunnyside burn is part of the Aspen-Sopris Wildlife Habitat Improvement Project, first approved by the Forest Service in 2011. The project identified areas in the White River National Forest where the quality of winter range for elk and mule deer has declined — places where the vegetation that animals rely on for food in the winter has become “stagnant, dead and decadent,” Nyland said, adding, “It doesn’t produce the shoots that these animals thrive on.”
This can affect the health of individual animals, especially pregnant females who need quality nutrition during the difficult winter months. Much of the food on which elk and deer rely, such as gambol oak and serviceberry, have evolved with fire and benefit from periodic burning to remove old, dead brush and make way for new growth.
If the fire is successful, Nyland said, the area will see “tens of thousands of new sprouts per acre, just millions and millions of new sprouts available that weren’t available before.”
It will also remove dry, dead vegetation in an area with an elevated risk of wildfire, which could help slow the spread of any blaze that ignites in that area. The Forest Service’s environmental assessment notes that reducing fuels and creating breaks in vegetation can lessen the spread, duration and severity of wildfires.
“The treatments would provide potential benefit in the future until vegetation regrowth becomes continuous or decadent again,” the environmental assessment reads.
The Roaring Fork Valley Wildfire Collaborative will host a community meeting at 5:30 p.m. on March 4 at the Aspen Fire Station. Experts from the Forest Service, Aspen Fire, the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies and more local agencies will discuss the importance of wildfire mitigation and what to expect leading up to the Sunnyside prescribed burn.
“Wildfire is an undeniable reality in the West, and we have two choices: Sit back and wait for a disaster, or take decisive action to manage risk,” Aspen Fire Chief Rick Ballentine said in a statement. “This prescribed burn is a strategic, carefully planned effort to reduce fuel loads before a wildfire strikes on its own terms. We encourage residents to attend the meeting, ask questions and be part of the conversation about protecting Aspen’s future.”
The community meeting will also address safety measures and potential smoke impacts.
This story ran on the front page of the Feb. 24 edition of Aspen Daily News