Fall Creek poses dilemma in aftermath of Clark Fire.

Byline: Bill Bishop The Register-Guard

LOWELL - Dead brown fir needles fall like snow on a Fall Creek nature trail destroyed in the Clark Fire as Ranger Rick Scott ponders how long it will take until people can safely come back to the popular recreation area.

All the big firs and cedars along a three-mile stretch of Fall Creek Road are dead and waiting to fall. Bedrock Campground is a charred ruin. The streamside trail is obliterated.

Forest officials have just contained the 4,964-acre fire and haven't yet begun to plan for reopening the road or reconstructing campsites and trails. They can't predict when that might happen, or how they'll decide which burned snags pose the greatest immediate hazard.

"You come out here at night, you can hear the snags fall. There's no doubt it's dangerous," says Scott, who works in the Middle Fork District.

"You can see the dilemma we're going to have," he says. "You have to look at each tree and make an individual judgment. We'll have to figure out a way to sort through all that. This is going to be one of our major challenges. How do we get this road back open for the public?"

When the area does open again, fans of Fall Creek's shady camps, scenic trails and cool swimming holes will see a landscape transformed.

While the Clark Fire burned in a mosaic of varying intensity on more than nine square miles of old growth and second growth forest, the most damaging flames ripped through the most public area.

The fire started on the south side of the creek, just four miles upstream from Fall Creek Reservoir on U.S. Forest Service ground that is closest to Eugene-Springfield.

Now, the recreation area will become a classroom of sorts for local residents to track the cycle of forest fire and recovery. The last major fire in the Fall Creek watershed burned 150 to 200 years ago. The one before that burned 400 years ago, Scott says.

In what will be a long lesson, the first chapter will deal with adjusting to a new landscape, devoid of the amenities enjoyed and improved through generations.

At the Johnny Creek Nature Trail, Scott laments the loss of a paved, wheelchair-accessible path with interpretive signs written in Braille for sight-impaired people.

"It really cooked through here," Scott says, standing next to a 3-foot-thick snag that was felled as a risk. "This just makes you sick, when you think what was here. You realize fire is a part of everything. It's still hard to accept when you had such a beautiful spot as you did in Fall Creek."

At Bedrock Campground, midway in the fire's roadside run, a hammock and shade canopy remain as evidence of the rapid evacuation three weeks ago today, when the fire erupted just east of the Clark Creek Organizational Camp.

Tall trees in the center of the Bedrock Campground's loop access road are burned to their tops, some scorched on one side while green moss survives on the other. Nearby, a few small stands of 10-foot saplings appear untouched, bright green in the sunlight filtering through their ragged ancestors - testimony to the baffling vagaries of fire.

"It's just something about the fuel moisture, oxygen and heat," Scott says.

In bedrock pools under the campground's bridge, dozens of chinook salmon - many over 3 feet long - linger, dark and scarred, in the late stage of their lifelong cycle.

The burned trees that soon will litter Fall Creek's channel as they decay or are cut may help hold gravel to create needed spawning beds for future generations, says David Murdough, a U.S. Forest Service soils specialist.

But in the near term, erosion will be a major consequence. The steep watersheds that burned hot have soil so fine and loose that it moves like smoke. With roots all burned away, there is precious little to hold it back when Oregon's winter rains arrive, Murdough says.

The slopes inside the fire lines are very steep, covering three watersheds - Slide Creek, Bedrock Creek and Jones Creek. In several places, the slope rises 1,240 feet to the north from Fall Creek in less than half a mile.

In the Jones Creek canyon, for example, the terrain falls and rises more than 2,240 feet in three-fourths of a mile - creating a chute that drew heat upward like a chimney toward the ridgetop, preheating forest fuels as the flames advanced.

On the ridgetops, firefighters made their first hopeful stand - the goal was to stop the fire there and keep it to 5,000 acres, Scott says.

Standing at a high turnout with a vista of the entire fire, Scott pointed to the next defensible line on distant ridges maybe three miles farther up the Fall Creek drainage. If firefighters had been forced back to that line, they would have had to surrender 14,000 acres of Fall Creek's 66,000-acre reserve set aside by the Northwest Forest Plan for species dependent on old forests, Scott says.

Had the second line then failed, the Clark Fire could have been out and running through private forest land with plenty of more steep slopes and tinder-dry fuel.

Dale Gardner, the district's fire management officer and commander of fire operations in the opening days, credits an experienced team of operations officers and top priority given to the Clark Fire as reasons firefighters held the first line. The high priority meant he was able to muster enough crews and equipment to fight the fire day and night.

Out of two dozen major fires his team has managed, Gardner calls the Clark Fire "one of our more memorable efforts. It was a tough one."

Even though it's contained, the Clark Fire won't take a place in Northwest fire history until the rains come.

In the meantime, a burned area emergency rehabilitation team will begin working to reduce the erosion, road damage and other impacts created by fire line construction, Murdough says.

A few fire crews will stay to tend to flare-ups and ensure none generates embers that may breach fire lines.

"There's still plenty of fuel in there," Scott says. "I'm sure there'll be smokes cropping up the rest of the summer."

FALL CREEK CLOSURE

Fall Creek Road is closed about three miles east of Fall Creek Reservoir until further notice as fire crews mop up the fire and remove dangerous dead trees.

Campgrounds: All Forest Service campgrounds east of and including Dolly Varden Campground in the Fall Creek drainage are closed.

Information: Lowell Ranger District at 937-2129 or www.fs.fed.us/r6/willamette/partnersites/eicc/clarkfire/index.html

Clark Fire investigation hot line: [phone]

CAPTION(S):

Rick Scott walks near the Johnny Creek Nature Trail near Fall Creek, where the Clark Fire destroyed old growth firs.