Small fire temporarily closes Jewel Basin Road
The Jewel Basin Road was temporarily closed Tuesday as Flathead National Forest firefighters work to extinguish a small fire near Noisy Creek.
Swan Lake District Ranger Richard Kehr said the fire is only about a tenth of an acre and at least one helicopter and one engine have been deployed to put it out before it grows any larger.
The Camp Misery parking lot was empty early Tuesday morning when officials closed the road. The parking lot is the main gateway to the popular Jewel Basin Hiking Area east of the Flathead Valley.
The 7-mile-long road stretches from Foothill Road to the parking lot. The fire is burning north of the lower segment of Jewel Basin Road.
The fire was burning through heavy timber on the ground as of Tuesday morning, Kehr said.
“I know it’s right out there in front of everybody and hopefully we’ll have it out in a little while,” he said. “Today’s supposed to be very hot, and tomorrow as well, so we’re doing our best to hit it early and get it out in the cool of the morning.”
In nearby Bigfork, high temperatures were forecast to reach 89 degrees Tuesday and 90 degrees on Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service.
The cause of the fire is currently unknown.
Glacier Park
While one major fire in Glacier National Park continues to simmer, another sprang to life in Glacier’s backcountry over the weekend.
The Thompson Fire, burning near Thompson Creek in the upper Nyack drainage, is now approaching 2,000 acres and will likely grow larger in the coming days as temperatures are expected to be in the 90s with the potential for dry thunderstorms with high winds across the region.
The fire is about 16 miles north of U.S. Highway 2 in the Middle Fork, in Glacier’s remote southern backcountry. It currently does not threaten any roads in the Park, but it’s putting up impressive plumes of smoke visible from West Glacier and the highway.
A Type III Interagency Incident Command Team is working with Glacier National Park to respond to the fire, with personnel from the Flathead National Forest, the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, and National Park Service resources.
No firefighters are working on the ground at this point, but helicopters are dropping water on the blaze. The fire was discovered Sunday afternoon, spotted by the lookout at Loneman Peak.
The Thompson Fire has closed all trails in the area, including the Nyack, Cut Bank Pass and Coal Creek trails and the backcountry campsites at Beaver Woman Lake, upper and lower Nyack and Coal Creek. The fire has the potential to spread to Cut Bank Pass.
The Reynolds Creek Fire meanwhile continues to simmer, but firefighters last week had a good enough handle on it so the Park could reopen the Going-to-the-Sun Road east of Logan Pass. The fire has burned an eight-mile, 4,000-acre swath of land along the east side of the Sun Road from Deadwood Falls to Two Dog Creek. Fire suppression costs on the blaze have topped $10.1 million.
Motorists aren’t allowed to stop between Siyeh Bend and the St. Mary campground except at the boat dock at St. Mary Lake and at Rising Sun, where the camp store and the boat tours have reopened. The Rising Sun campground will likely remain closed for the rest of the season. The Reynolds Creek Fire is still simmering inside the fire perimeter and is more active in the Rose and Baring Creek drainages.
Thunderstorms Monday evening brought more lightning to the region and little rain.
For updates on trail closures visit the Park’s web page at: http://www.nps.gov/glac/planyourvisit/trailstatusreports.htm. For backcountry campsite closures, visit: http://home.nps.gov/applications/glac/bcpermits/bcbull/bcrescgstatus.cfm
Bob Marshall Wilderness
Fire managers with the Flathead National Forest are monitoring a 44-acre wildfire in the Bob Marshall Wilderness that was first spotted last week near Three Sisters Creek, but are currently allowing the small blaze to run its natural course.
“It’s in a high-elevation, remote part of the Bob Marshall Wilderness, and not expected in any way to grow near the Bob Marshall Wilderness boundary,” said Seth Carbonari, the fire management officer for the Spotted Bear Ranger District. “It’s well over 13 miles from the boundary, so it would have to travel quite a ways to offer any threat to anything outside of the wilderness.”
The Three Sisters Fire is burning between two structures: the Pentagon Cabin in the Spotted Bear Ranger District and the Rock Creek Cabin in the Lewis and Clark National Forest’s Rocky Mountain District. It is about 35 miles northeast of Swan Lake.
“Our plan right now is the point protection around the cabins, if it becomes necessary, and to allow the natural fire its ecological role,” Carbonari said.
Most of the blaze’s growth from an initially-reported two acres to its current estimate of 44 acres occurred last Tuesday, as it was fanned by dry, high winds.
The Flathead Forest is conducting a couple reconnaissance flights each day and communicating with the Beartop Lookout in the Lewis and Clark National Forest to monitor the fire’s progress. Carbonari said it is mostly burning in alpine fir and has natural barriers that will likely restrict its growth. Located between areas burned during the 2012 Red Shale and Wall Creek Fires, much of the terrain is rocky and sparsely vegetated.
The blaze was caused by lightning.
Samuel Wilson of the Daily Interlake, Chris Peterson of the Hungry Horse News and Sally Finneran of the Bigfork Eagle contributed to this report.