The Indian Gulch Fire

I'm taking a temporary diversion from run-blogging to post about the fire in nearby in Golden.

Sunday I woke up late (no doubt because of Saturday's long run), did some reading, grabbed a bite to eat and headed right back out for another run (more on both later).

As I was passing through Golden, I parked up near Castle Rock and snapped some photos of the Indian Gulch Fire. I was shocked at how close it is to the city of Golden. There was a helicopter dropping water between the fire and homes that are out of view to the right of the photo.


This is from near the corner of Highways 58/93/6. Highway 6 was closed. You can just barely see a couple tiny spots of orange fire if you enlarge the photo:


After my run it was already dark and orange flames dotted the hills as I drove by on Highway 93 and through the same intersection. It was pretty dramatic, and I ended up spending most of the rest of the day watching it.

I drove way around the southwest side of Lookout Mountain (because cars were mobbing the road on the east side) and stopped at a park high up and looked directly across Clear Creek Canyon at the fire. It was like something out of medieval painting of Hell. I'd never seen a wildfire at night from so close.

I didn't have my tripod so the images were blurry, and I was beat, so I got something to eat at home and then drove back around 10:30 with a full-size Bogen tripod (one of the best-built products I've ever purchased, I might add). This is from Ulysses Park in Golden:


I think the 10-15-second exposures exaggerate the size of the spots of fire slightly, but they're close. I don't photograph a lot of wildfires in action.

Since it was late, traffic on the road up Lookout Mountain had subsided a bit, so I drove up and took photos from closer (using zoom of course -- it was still about a mile away across the canyon). Below is the full view of the fire about 20-30 minutes later (it had already changed shape -- the big flare-up in the above photo was gone). The lights at the bottom are from car headlights; the road is right below me, and people are lined up all along the road watching the fire. To the right is the city of Golden, to the left is state park.


This is a close-up of just the right section:


Below I zoomed in a bit more. If you click on the image you can see burning embers dotting the mountain in between the actual flames:


As of Monday morning the fire is 15% contained, but unfortunately it's supposed to be warm, windy and dry for several days.

Although the fire is 5+ miles away from me as the crow flies, and it seems unlikely it could ever spread over here, I could see the fire from high spots in my neighborhood, glowing orange on the mountainside. Pretty scary. For everyone's sake, I hope firefighters can keep it under control.

Update - There was significantly less smoke on Monday morning as I drove in to work.