Indian Gulch Wildfire at Night

Wanting to get a better feel for where the fire actually was, after dark I headed up Lookout Mountain to see what I could see. As of midnight, the fire hasn't crested the ridge to the east flank of Mt. Galbraith, but is burning pretty vigorously to the west of the summit of Galbraith. After shooting some pics on the switchbacks, I headed up to Windy Saddle and hiked to the top of Mt. Zion, where a Highlands Rescue fire crew was stationed to observe the fire overnight. We saw numerous trees go up in spectacular fashion, and in the hour+ that I was up there, they said the RH (relative humidity) had dropped 8% (to 20%). They didn't seem to concerned about the fire heading down toward our subdivision, but tomorrow's winds will prove a challenge to get this fire in any way contained. I left the top of Zion at midnight. If you are interested in seeing more images from today, please see the Indian Gulch Wildfire Day 1 slideshow on my main website.

Never seen so much traffic on Lookout at night! This was at about 9:15 pm.

Closeup of the active zone.

My first camera setup area, I kept stepping on something, and finally turned on my headlamp to look down and see what the heck it was. Hopefully the mountain lion is satiated and long gone!

From the top of Mt. Zion (above the "M") at 9:40 pm, a high overcast still obscuring the moon, which was behind me. Our Mtn. Ridge subdivision is at the right edge of the image (behind the silhouetted tree).

A tree flares spectacularly.

Highland Wildland Fire crew, hunkered down for the night.

One of the crew checks the weather forecast on his smartphone. What did we do without them?

Finally the moon appeared to shed some light on the hills below. 11:40 pm, time for me to go...