I appreciated this write-up. The line between "mildly interesting story with some great photos" and "we made a wrong turn or wrong decision and died" is a lot thinner than I think this post makes clear.
There are very few roads and people in the High Sierras, and Red Meadows pack station is basically it when it comes to services.
Surrounded by smoke, changing winds, and uncertain information, they had to try and get information through very low bandwidth, high latency satellite text systems (I have an InReach, and it's great, but leaves a lot to be desired).
I'm impressed with their retelling of the story and am glad they made it out safe.
I agree. I was hoping for some lessons or takeaways though, but maybe there is so much luck and randomness involved that it’s hard to generalize. But was it really the best choice to leave an area with other cars and people and rangers around and hike through the woods, camping overnight so close to a fire? Seems crazy, although maybe the chance of getting trapped would have been higher if they didn’t do that. Glad everyone seemed to get out out ok though.
You could argue that the 200 people who got themselves stuck at a lake and survived via helicopter rescue didn't exactly make better choices, they largely got lucky.
I don't necessarily think their decisions were terrible, but as far as reading it for lessons/critique goes:
- I read a lack of knowledge with the roads making decisionmaking harder. More research on their intended route and their possible alternate routes would have made things easier. (And the "downed bridge" is a planned bridge replacement with a published detour. That shouldn't have been a surprise to begin with). Lots of people do tons of research on the trails, alternates, have detailed maps, and so on, but don't do the same amount with their access routes.
- They should have had someone on watch in shifts in the overnight. If it comes that way and you're going to have a chance, it isn't going to be when the first moment you realize something's gotten worse is by waking up choking, in an inferno, or by not waking up at all.
- They should have gotten moving earlier. A few hours rest to recover isn't entirely ridiculous if they were unable to continue/couldn't follow the trail at night, but you don't need 9 hours of sleep and a leisurely 2 hour morning after waking up. Especially not when when you say "The smoke felt closer than the day before" for conditions.
> They should have had someone on watch in shifts in the overnight
I don't think I agree with this.
It improves your very low chance of survival if the fire catches up with you during the night, slightly. But you're mostly screwed anyways. Forest fires tend to move faster than humans, especially in the dark. It means you are less effective in the morning and will likely increase the amount of time it takes to get out of there.
I'd elect for "we all sleep, we wake up slightly before first light to pack up and eat, we leave at first light.".
The RAV4 was parked at a dead end trailhead. The route out was directly through the area the fire was rapidly overtaking. They got conflicting information about the status of the road. They drove as far as seemed reasonable to them based on the information they had, then changed plans when it appeared to them they were cut off. I'd emphasize they were pretty accurate in that call btw. They left the RAV4 about 8 miles north of where people had to shelter in a freaking lake until chinook helicopters could rescue them.
They did not know for certain that the route out with the RAV4 was a dead end. And the folks who were going in the opposite direction, with arguably better local information, ended up not having to shelter in a "freaking lake".
> We then learned many of the people we passed in caravans had made it out thanks to the National Forest Service and Local Officials guiding them through the scene.
Admittedly it's easy to armchair-quarterback this in hindset, but going from the known to the unknown is generally a bad idea. And there were plenty of unknown unknowns back to the other car if you wanna pull Rumsfeld into this.
The takeaway could be listen to the ranger. They were told to go to Red's Meadow early on and ignored the advice for some reason and headed towards the fire.
If you exit through Red’s Meadow, you should be safe
The lesson to learn is often "just don't go". Fire season in california is becoming like avalanche season in places like BC. When the danger level is high, the only real answer is to avoid the area altogether. You check the prevailing conditions (the posted avalanche/fire danger) and if you choose to go you do periodic spot-checks on the terrain you are walking over. If the underbrush is too dry, the temperature rises, you see/hear thunderstorms, or you get reports of fires in similar areas, it is time to evac. Waiting until you see smoke is not good.
> maybe there is so much luck and randomness involved that it’s hard to generalize
They were hiking in the mountains during a heatwave with already a few fires nearby. The takeaway is "don't be stupid" but I doubt they learned their lesson, because their particular situation was pretty low-key.
Maybe I'm just being harsh, but after reading several times and figuring out what was going on, it's an instagrammer's slight inconvenience and detour being dramatized (or implied, given the photos and hour-by-hour narrative) into a life-or-death hike out, yet with "smoked salmon and mussels accompanied by biryani rice".
They had a weeklong backpacking trip planned, hiked to where they thought they would start it, encountered smoke and potential fire, and had to hike back out. Leisurely. Enough to get a solid 9 hours of sleep. Doesn't quite qualify as the life-in-jeopardy kind of event that the polish and presentation of the blog make you think you're in for.
I'm a little more interested to hear about the folks who were actually in danger and barely escaped.
There are some good lessons in what you shouldn't do, perhaps not intended so, but still interesting.
We don't have many forest fires here in Norway, but we do have very harsh winters. Every year a family or group of people are trapped in a blizzard and die. And most of it could have been avoided by following the "Norwegain Mountain Code"[1], which I imagine is similar all over the world. Turning back before it's too late, seeking shelter, and not exhausting yourself when you realize that you're in trouble. I'd be very worried if people in my group started getting nauseous. That's when you start making those deadly mistakes.
There are certain warning signs that should not be ignored. Each group sport has them and over time you learn to follow some protocols or you have to find yourself some new friends.
For cycling in the Midwest, it's lightning strikes. There is no place to shelter and the storm can move faster than you can, so after the first strike, everyone is counting time to see if they're getting closer. If they are, you turn back for shelter, even if home is in front of you. Most of the time that's a foreshortened outing, but on one occasion we had to double back to the half-way point and wait it out. Even though that meant a lot more time out there and a longer route than we planned.
When they mentioned the black smoke and continuing forward, it made me angry. I had a sudden flash of the conversation that had us holing up, dripping wet, in a little town in the middle of nowhere. It was clear who was going to win the argument before we turned around, even though it wasn't what we wanted to hear. We all knew the rules, clearly these people don't.
(Over the years I've come to recognize how above average that group was in organization skills, but one should still aim for a solid grip of basic safety routines from inclement weather to common injuries and avoiding/treating heat stroke and exhaustion)
As a somewhat avid backpacker, I found it interesting. I was in a similar situation hiking near the SQF Complex earlier this summer. You're right that they weren't in immediate danger from the fire, but hindsight is 20-20. In the moment these events can be incredibly stressful, especially when your mouth, eyes, and head hurt from breathing in smoke, you don't know exactly where the fire is, can't see very far, and are limited to walking speed. While they were able to get a good night's sleep (I would have just hiked through the night), I wouldn't characterize this as a "leisurely" hike out.
I saw this story on the Chronicle and had the same takeaway, but that's probably because I knew there were people who barely escaped with their lives via helicopter (like you pointed out).
Yeah, it's a little harsh for a story titled "Escape from x." The story pretty much ended when they decided to turn around from the fire, point 3 in their map: https://www.jmeshe.co/escape-from-creek-fire/photos/6959453. The trip got cut short, but it wasn't much of an escape.
Then again, wildfires can move 100 miles in a day, about 10x faster than a human. Like a viral pandemic, you have to make decisions before it feels dire. It sounded like though that they got enough information early on via satellite communicator to realize it wasn't an immediate threat. I think the author is guilty of mild over-dramatization.
That seems unfair. When I've been backpacking, there is not much info about anything like a sudden fire that could move randomly around you. That could easily kill you. Even with help there were 200+ people who were surrounded by fire. There weren't a lot of extra resources to help a small group.
That is a lot for most people. Obviously the upper bound on what's possible is massively higher, but if you take a mildly fit person off the street and put them through 4k feet & 13 miles w/ a 45 lbs pack, they'll be feeling it. An out-of-shape person would be completely destroyed at that point.
Add elevation to this. Reds Meadow is already at 7,500 ft. I believe the 4k ft mentioned is net climb for the hike, not necessarily a peak elevation of 11,500 ft., though passes in the region certainly rise above 10,000 feet, and peaks top 14,000 (Whitney).
With a full pack, unacclimated, making 10+ miles is a pretty good day. 13 miles outrunning a forest fire is respectable.
Don't forget that they were also almost 9,000' above sea level, carrying heavy backpacks (probably at least 25 pounds), and breathing in wildfire smoke. The AQI in Mammoth was in the low 200s on Sunday.
Also, they had 7 days to complete the rest of their hike. I suspect the stats for the hike out weren't too difficult, but the cumulative effects were.
A lot of the 8 to 10 thousand foot climbs around here are multi-day because lugging 60 pounds of gear up 4000 feet through 10 or 12 miles of approach is hard work.
4k feet of elevation gain is a bunch, and 13 miles is no joke. I mountain bike regularly, and most of my rides average around 1300ft of gain. 4k feet would be a long tiring ride.
> One of the best decisions we made that evening was choosing to only bringing the best snacks and dinner option available. Which happened to be smoked salmon and mussels accompanied by biryani rice. This ended up being just the magic we needed to keep morale up as the evening came to an end.
Exactly this. Never underestimate how important a good snack can be to improving morale in a difficult situation.
In many situations just a bit of chocolate can literally be the way to lift the mental fog of war and make it significantly easier to keep plodding through whatever stressful situation you are dealing with.
I feel pretty dumb for reading this whole thing. I kept waiting for the part of this story where they said "yeah, maybe the first time people told us to turn around, or the second, or the third, we should have actually turned around". At least hindsight is supposed to be 20/20 :D Also, is it an "escape" if you walk toward something dangerous for longer than you should, and then turn around. D- guys. You made it, but BARELY.
They don't seem to have as much respect for the fire as I would have expected from say an Aussie.
Almost seems like they wanted to go South because that's the route they came in on? Even though they were heading straight for the fire, which seems like lunacy to me.
I don’t know what you’re talking about. They literally turned around and tried to leave the very first time someone told them to do so. The rest of the trip was them trying various ways to get out that were blocked by fire.
Look at the map, they were told early on where to go and went in the opposite direction towards the fire, though the text skips over this without explanation as to why.
I was under the impression that they went back to the car, and the road out appeared to go through the fire. The recommendation to go the other way would have meant hiking out, which, even though it was what they ended up doing, was not obviously the best choice early on?
They could have driven the other way, the way they finally chose to drive, parked and started to walk to Red's Meadow and the other car. I agree they probably had reasons for the choice like not wanting to lose car 1 in the fire or get stuck up a mountain on foot without the car if the fire reached them. But they did get clear advice to go the other way early on and chose to ignore it.
We got different advice from different rangers. One ranger on the phone told us to hike out. Another ranger on the ground tried driving out and told others to follow of she didn’t return.
The opportunity cost of trying to drive out was low. The fire’s eastward progress was slow so the hike out would still be there.
0. They park car 1 at Red's Meadow (top right, safe) and walk in to point 1 on the map.
1. They start a walk with friends from car 2 at this trailhead
2. They notice the fire and get advice to exit via Red's Meadow. Instead they take car 2 and drive towards the fire!
3. They realise this wasn't a good idea and turn around and go to Mammoth Trail and park car 2.
4. They stop for the night heading towards Red's Meadow
5. They walk to Red's Meadow to car 1 and exit safely
Not an easy situation and I'm sure they had reasons but they did drive away from safety towards the fire after being told not to.
There was a heat wave, yes, but other than that not a particularly high risk of wildfires early this weekend. The wind wasn't terrible and there wasn't a Red Flag Warning issued (that's a fire weather warning). They started their hike on a long weekend, the last long weekend of the summer over here. And late August / early September is one of the best times of year for hiking in the Sierra. The bugs have died off, temperatures remain pleasant, the thunderstorms have usually passed, and after Labor Day (the first Monday in September) the crowds die down. In the high country, wildfire risk is usually low as well, so smoke is really the only thing to worry about. This fire grew remarkably fast, from 0 to 100,000 acres in about 36 hours, and happened to be rather close to the location they chose for their trip. Sure, they should have known that smoke from wildfires was a risk during this trip, but it's pretty reasonable to not expect this kind of impact going into your trip. In general, this time of year is a very good time to head into the mountains.
When you say "there was a heat wave" you are referring to a weather pattern that has shattered temp records around the state. After the last heat wave and following lightnight storms which triggered fires across the state, I don't know how folks could assess that a backpacking trip to an isolated mountain area is a good idea at this point in time.
Saying "September is usually a great time" is a pretty moot point. It's usually not well above 100 across the entire state in September.
Edited to say - I am very glad they made it out safely. If you are considering backpacking anywhere in California this summer, please remember that we are having fires in historically unprecedented locations.
Temperatures fall with elevation, about 3.5 °F (1.2°C) peer 1,000 ft of gain.
Much of this trip was at 8,000 ft. Temperatures would have been about 28°F (9.6°C) lower than at sea level. From a starting base of 100°F (37.7°C), the hikers would have seen 72°F (22.2°C) temperatures --- quite comfortable. Dry air also means sweat evaporates quickly, cooling effectively.
This effect alone is a large element of the High Sierra's appeal during summertime.
You're right that we just experienced a heat wave that broke several daily and monthly temperature records. But this was a high pressure ridging event without much accompanying wind or thunderstorm activity. So the wildfire risk wasn't forecasted to be notably extreme, until today when the red flag warning sets in. But before you pick on that, the red flag warning is due to offshore winds, which would blow any fire and smoke away from the area these folks were hiking. The early August heatwave, in contrast, was accompanied by a decaying tropical storm had flung upper-level instability over California, causing the lightning storms you mentioned. On paper, the early August heat wave was much more dangerous. This was just a classic late-season heatwave, which usually makes for very enjoyable conditions in the high country.
On top of that, the area where these folks were planning to hike is in alpine terrain that's relatively light in tree and vegetation cover. The likelihood of the fire consuming them was extremely low. The main hazard would be smoke from a fire nearby, which is what happened. Additionally, wilderness permits for this area are very competitive, so they had to plan this trip 6 months ago and had no ability to change the time or location of the trip.
If it's your goal to assume as little risk as possible, you're right that you probably shouldn't go backpacking (or engage in any other outdoor pursuit). You probably also shouldn't be living in California. But for most people, it's a balancing act of risk versus reward, and there's not really any evidence to suggest that these folks made a foolish or dangerous decision.
Remember, hindsight is always 20/20 and it's very easy to criticize the decisions of others from the comfort of your armchair. If you'd like to do some more of that, there are many hundreds of thousands of Californians (myself included) who also headed up into the Sierra this weekend.
> So the wildfire risk wasn't forecasted to be notably extreme, until today when the red flag warning sets in.
This is absolutely untrue. Sure, the red flag warning set in today, but wildfire risk was considered to be at very high levels for (quite literally) weeks. See Tweets from way before the Creek Fire: [1][2][3] Just mild research would indicate that hiking (for days) deep in the wilderness would be a bad idea. It's just profoundly irresponsible. And, as someone that's done NorCal during this time previously, it's not comparable to prior years (except iirc maybe like 3 years ago when it was also a particularly hot summer).
> there are many hundreds of thousands of Californians (myself included) who also headed up into the Sierra this weekend.
There's a difference between doing some light camping or a day trip to the Sierras as opposed to hiking for several days deep in the wilderness during a heatwave.
> ...there's not really any evidence to suggest that these folks made a foolish or dangerous decision
This is the kind of shit that gets people killed. It was most definitely foolish and dangerous. Sometimes bad things happen to extremely experienced adventurers: flash floods, avalanches, etc. This was not that. It was a bunch of Instagrammers that wanted to "get away" without having any kind of respect for mother nature or what she can throw at you.
All of the points in my previous post still stand. This was not a notably risky fire-weather watch (which is part of why this fires behavior is so concerning), and the area where these folks were headed did not put them at particularly elevated risk. It's fine if you would have chosen not to go, but I probably would have made the same decision as these folks.
I'm not aware of any wilderness backpacker fatalities caused by wildfires in California. The hazards here are very different than those of avalanches or flash floods, which are actually usually easier to predict. Any experienced outdoors-person knows that. You can pick a bone with them for taking photographs, but I think their decision to continue with their hike (which started before the fire had even ignited!) was much more nuanced than "there was a heat wave." If you cancelled your trip any time there was an increased risk of something, you wouldn't get outdoors very often.
Also, there's only one 's' in the plural of "Sierra." The word "Sierras" is equivalent to "mountainses." ;-)
"If it's your goal to assume as little risk as possible, you're right that you probably shouldn't go backpacking (or engage in any other outdoor pursuit). You probably also shouldn't be living in California." What a load of bollocks. Lived here all my life and certainly understand the risks associated with outdoor lifestyles - what makes you more "Californian" than me (or anyone else), regardless of your hobbies?
Personally, I do not agree with your assertion that this was "a classic late season heatwave". Weather patterns in my neck of the woods were severely disrupted, and we had temperatures for days that would have been unfathomable just 10 years ago. Places in California that have never burned in recorded history are ablaze. California's firefighting forces are at a record high rate of deployment, and response times have been unfortunately diminished due to the scale of their deployments. This is not normal weather. Looking at the situation and assessing that "normally" the trip would not be excessively risky in an incomplete analysis in my opinion.
I didn't say anyone was more or less "Californian." I was trying to illustrate that every activity in life has some level of risk associated with it and we are all balancing those risks every day.
Temperatures during this heatwave were indeed impressive, but there weren't any other particularly remarkable weather patterns associated (like wind or thunderstorms), that was the point I was trying to make. I never said it was normal, just that it wasn't as extraordinarily risky as many in this thread are claiming.
Forest fire hazard is always present at the end of the summer going into the fall in California until the first big rains. It is a Mediterranean climate and it does not rain at all from May till Oct/Nov (with much variation). They had this trip planned, would spend most of it in the high country where there are few trees and low fire hazard. People who do 8 day backpacking trips are going to have more risk tolerance than most people, and now they have a story they can blog about that makes it to the front of Hacker News. Seems like a win to me.
In California pretty much all summer has been a high risk of fire. Something like 24 major fires occurring currently. So if you want to go hiking at all you are taking on some risk.
If you want to go multi day backpacking you’re taking on some risk. But most hiking is very low risk. I just spent some time in Mammoth and there are dozens of day hikes that are low fire hazard (I’m looking at you, Convict Creek trail).
Definitely a very risky time to be out in the wilderness, anywhere west of the Rocky Mountains. And that’s probably understating it.
It’s really something to see the entire west coast on fire right now. We live up in a forested valley in northwest Oregon, and got blanketed with smoke yesterday. Happened quickly and was the worst smoke I’ve experienced since the Camp Fire blew into Los Altos, CA, a while back. Our area of Oregon hit the top of the wildfire risk chart yesterday for the entire west coast, at “critical” — hot and dry with gusts of winds reaching 65MPH.
Happily woke up to relatively calm, clear-ish skies today.
We’ve spent a decent amount of money getting rid of brush, and trees, to create a “defensible zone” around the home. That’s one of the most impactful things that can be done to mitigate the risk — make sure flammable plants and trees are far from the house, use hardscaping (stone, gravel) around the foundation, and keep anything within 30-100’ well irrigated. Also, don’t allow leaves etc to gather under porches, gutters. Make sure vents are well screened.
The forest becomes more wilderness but we’ve been doing a bunch there as well: limbing trees up to reduce the risk of “ladder fires”, getting rid of brush, cleaning up old access trails in case a fire crew needs to come through.
Fires are pretty awesome events — experiencing them first-hand gives you a sense of scale that’s impossible to convey through pictures alone. The people in this story had quite an experience, and it’s fortunate how many people escaped that fire.
But fires are both natural, and increasing in destructiveness due to a combination of factors (including climate change). Definitely stay aware, and if you live in a wildfire zone, get moving on preparations and preventative measures.
With @kepler1 on this one. This is an overly-dramatized Instagrammer's take on a pretty low-stakes situation with plenty of leeway. I'm not even particularly outdoorsy and I've got crazier stories (involving bears, pulling people out of overturned cars, etc.). I was out kayaking this weekend, and even though we were just barely 2 hours out of LA, we were acutely aware and tracking smoke/fires in the San Bernardino Mountains.
With that said, hiking into a high-risk area with already a few known fires nearby is just stupid and it could've been really bad. I'd like to hope they learned their lesson.
There are several other subthreads about this already, but there's not really any evidence to suggest these folks made a bad or risky decision. The area they were hiking too was above treeline, so not really at any risk of burning in a wildfire. And the "known" wildfires nearby were either nearly completely contained, or hundreds of miles away.
You can complain about their photography all you want, but I suspect most experienced hikers would agree that these people didn't make any bad decisions here.
We live in Mammoth Lakes and are in the wilderness almost every day. Whether it’s avalanches, thunderstorms, or something else, the risk and beauty go hand in hand out there.
If you are interested in stories like this, and how people make life or death decisions in difficult situations, I recommend Laurence Gonzales's book Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why.
There are very few roads and people in the High Sierras, and Red Meadows pack station is basically it when it comes to services.
Surrounded by smoke, changing winds, and uncertain information, they had to try and get information through very low bandwidth, high latency satellite text systems (I have an InReach, and it's great, but leaves a lot to be desired).
I'm impressed with their retelling of the story and am glad they made it out safe.