Around mid-afternoon I looked up from my laptop and noticed that the quality of the sunlight had changed. Across the street, all the buildings seemed to have shifted their colors towards the orange side of the spectrum. Curious… I left the porch of the Bridgeport Memorial Hall, where I’d been stealing electricity and writing articles, and turned my gaze to the west. Sure enough, a procession of smoke clouds was rolling into town, and I could smell the acrid tang of scorched forests.
I moved to the library steps and used their wireless server to scan the internet for information. The ash that rained down on my keyboard was mildly distracting, but I discovered a news item concerning a small fire southwest of Yosemite National Park that had recently erupted. I’d planned to do some backpacking tomorrow in the northeast corner of the park – my final trip of the season – and I hoped all this smoke wouldn’t ruin my scenic views.
Only days later did I realize my research had been faulty. The smoke originated from within the park itself, where a deadly situation was unfolding. The same winds that blew ash into the streets of Bridgeport had stoked the flames of a small backcountry fire earlier that day, transforming it from a sluggish nineteen-acre blaze into a two thousand-acre conflagration over the course of a few hours. The park service has a policy of allowing some natural fires to burn because of the positive effects they can have on ecosystems, and for two months, the lightning-caused Meadow Fire had remained modest and unthreatening. It slowly consumed the underbrush and returned nutrients to the coarse soil. But thanks to an extreme wind event, the fire had exploded, becoming an unstoppable force, and now human lives were suddenly at stake.
Hurriedly, park rangers marshaled their forces and evacuated about one hundred backpackers from the Little Yosemite Valley. The fire spread so rapidly that eighty-five hikers were trapped on the spur trail that led to 8,800-foot Half Dome. Escaping on foot would be too dangerous. Instead, the rangers ushered them upwards towards the Cable Route – the plank-and-wire ladder that had so unnerved Kitty and myself during our Yosemite expedition at the beginning of summer. This stomach-churning path was bolted onto the side of the sheer granite dome and spanned the last four hundred feet to the summit plateau. Although thousands made the climb every year, one misplaced hand or foot along this route could easily prove fatal.
Unfortunately, the flat summit of Half Dome was the only place in the vicinity where Search and Rescue could land a helicopter. People that had no intention of climbing the Cable Route were suddenly forced to find their courage, grab the braided wire and start pulling themselves up the cliff, all the while attempting to ignore the plumes of black smoke erupting from the nearby valleys. One woman panicked so badly that the rangers had to assemble a makeshift harness and assist her carefully up the mountain. It was a harrowing ordeal, but from the windswept summit, all eight-five hikers were airlifted to safety.
