FIRE AND ICE.

Byline: Mike Stahlberg The Register-Guard

Last summer's B and B Complex fire scorched 90,000 acres of prime forest playground in the Santiam Pass and Metolius recreation areas, making it the blackest cloud to darken the Central Oregon recreation outlook in many years.

But skiers and snowshoers are already discovering a silver lining to that cloud - better views and easier passage through areas previously covered by dense vegetation.

Additional benefits are likely in the future. Forest Service planners are already sketching out new winter recreation trails - some of them following paths carved through the forest by crews building fire breaks.

Thanks to heavy snowfalls this winter, most of the B and B Burn area is like a painting with thousands of black vertical brush strokes on a vast white backdrop. Clumps of browns and greens are sprinkled where trees were only singed or bypassed completely by the fire.

The snow softens the sense of destruction and adds a cosmetic beauty that covers the ugly char on the ground.

"It's not all bad," Carol Smith of Canby said Monday after skiing through the burned portion of the North Loop trail out of Ray Benson Sno Park on Santiam Pass. "It's kind of nice and open - you can see everywhere."

This was Smith's second ski trip in the burn. She and her companion, Frank Long, had skied north from Santiam Sno Park into the Jefferson Wilderness a couple of weeks earlier and had enjoyed that experience.

"It was nice," she said. "You can see your landmarks that you're going to."

Darrell Olsen of Portland, however, disagrees that the fire made things better.

"The forest was open enough before, in my opinion. I'd much rather have it the way it was," he said. "It's great skiing today, but I don't look forward to it when these trees start falling."

Mike McNerney, a 25-year resident of Sisters who has been skiing the area almost daily for the past month, said he enjoys skiing through the burned areas, which he doesn't find unsightly or depressing.

"No, no, it looks real nice with snow on it," he said. "Cache Mountain, which got burnt, is real eerie looking with the clouds flowing past and the mist and the snow and all the black spars sticking up ..."

McNerney said the fire "is not going to hurt the skiing any - in fact, it's probably going to benefit, especially if you like to get off into the bushes at all because the trees are all thinned out now."

Getting off-trail, however, is not without its risks. Fire-damaged trees and limbs can come crashing down at any time.

Forest Service crews cleared obvious "hazard trees" from alongside designated winter recreation trails before lifting a closure that had been in effect since the fire. All of the area south of Highway 20 is open to winter recreation, although extra caution is advised when off established trails.

"It's important that the public understand that increased hazards created by the fire still exist," Detroit District Ranger Paul Matter said when the lifting of the closures was announced.

Probably the safest place to view fire damage on skis or snowshoes is from the northern half of the North Loop Trail, which was "impacted to various degrees," said Steve Otaupalik of the McKenzie Ranger District's trails staff. "Some parts of the trail got nuked, and others were just scorched."

However, the Blowout shelter, a favorite resting place for North Loop trail users, was destroyed. (The Oregon Nordic Club and the Forest Service already are making plans to replace it, perhaps as soon as next winter.)

The fire came within 100 yards of Island Lake Shelter, burning a portion of the Circle Lake Trail. But Brandenburg Shelter was not threatened.

Intense fire also burned along a section of the Pacific Crest Trail south of Highway 20.

"That one may be more difficult to follow because a lot of the reassurance markers (blue diamonds) have not been replaced yet," Otaupalik said.

Another winter recreation area touched by fire is Potato Hill, which has been dubbed "Baked Potato Hill" by members of the Oregon Nordic Club.

The main fire reached the top of the hill, and "burnouts" set by crews as part of their suppression effort took out some vegetation.

But the fire along Jackpine Road, the main access route from the sno park, wasn't as intense as in other areas, so the damage "wasn't as dramatic there," Otaupalik said. "People will just be skiing on the fringes of the fire."

Located southwest of Lost Lake and west of Hoodoo Butte, Potato Hill is the terminus of a network of new winter trails already being envisioned for the area.

"There's a `Cat line' that has the opportunity for turning itself into a great ski trail," Otaupalik said.

The main fire line Otaupalik referred to starts at Potato Hill and goes east several miles, crossing the Nordic trails at Hoodoo Ski Area and Big Lake Road before skirting a cluster of summer cabins and heading down the east slope of Santiam Pass to Corbett Sno Park.

In addition, he said, "I think we can expand the trail system out of Potato Hill and put in more trails."

Openings created by fire and by some earlier timber thinning projects nearby should result in "better snow coverage" because snow that normally would pile up on tree branches now can hit the ground.

Members of the Oregon Nordic Club already are skiing the area in a variety of snow conditions to help evaluate the possibilities, he said.

"The burn was real dramatic and, certainly, the Mount Jefferson area really got nuked," Otaupalik said. "But a lot of stuff in the Santiam Pass really did open up and provide some nice opportunities for recreation.

"If you want to look on a bright side of a fire, there is a positive."

North of Highway 20 - where the most acreage burned and where the fire burned hottest - non-wilderness portions of the Deschutes National Forest remain closed to public access.

"The reason it's closed is we've not been able to get in and identify and drop enough of the hazard trees," said Kris Martinsen, the Sisters Ranger District's recreation team leader.

Several forest roads and trails are covered by that closure, which includes all Deschutes National Forest timberlands north of Highway 20 and west of Forest Road 12 between Suttle Lake and the Warm Springs Indian Reservation.

The Jefferson Wilderness is open, however, either from the Willamette Forest side or from Santiam Pass.

"Once you get outside of the designated winter trail system or away from the organized snow play area, then there's a lot of trees that could fall and are continuing to fall," Otaupalik said. "This makes it a little more of a challenge for skiers and snowshoers."

VISITORS TO BURN CAUTIONED

Skiers, snowshoers or hikers visiting an area recently burned by forest fire, such as the B and B Complex Fire area in the central Cascades, are advised to be alert to potential hazards, including:

Overhanging limbs: Limbs on even healthy trees can break and come down at any time; that risk is multiplied several times with trees that have been killed or damaged by fire.

Hazard trees: Hazard trees, their roots weakened by fire, remain standing in some areas - especially off designated winter recreation trails. These trees can be very unstable, especially in high winds or with snow loads.

Stump holes: Burned out stump holes can make the ground weak and unstable.

Rolling debris: Rock and logs formerly held in place by downed woody material that's now burned away may start rolling at any time.

General instability: Conditions in a burned forest change constantly and are strongly influenced by wind. Assess current and forecast weather conditions before entering a burn area.

- Deschutes, Willamette national forests 

CAPTION(S):

Alan Olsen of Bend and Dan Olsen of Portland ski through a section of the B and B Complex Fire on the North Loop Trail in the Willamette National Forest near Santiam Pass.