Don and I were driving up to sneak in a Friday Muni ride in Santa Barbara when Eyal called and said a fire in the nearby Los Padres Mountains was scattering ash all over the city and the sky was smoky and dark as midnight. Only option was to turn north and hope we could salvage a ride in Ojai. When we started at the top of Pratt trail (with locals Evan and Paavo), a gigantic wall of smoke hung just to our west. By the time we’d made our way to the bottom, the edge of the smoke was virtually upon us the a huge red orange sun hung in the haze. A surreal ride. Don has a few pics.
Could you actually feel the heat of the fire? Could you smell the ash?
Here in Israel we get fires during the dry summer and the ash kind of stings your lungs even a month after the fire has been put out.
There is this one really cool trail that I ride all the time with tons of Cacti and weeds and brush. The trail is almost like a tunnel through the Stuff. Anyways that brushland was burnt about a month ago and I discovered a HUGE cave only about 20 feet away fromthe trail. I would have never discoverd it if allthe brush and weeds were not burnt to the ground exposign it!
