Pine Forests of the Sierra Nevada Foothills

5 minute read

This is a repost from July 2022

This last weekend I went on a 26 mile loop off of a section of the Pacific Crest Trail in Kern County. Having planned the route, the likely water availability, contingency exit routes, and safety concerns, I set off on what I expected to be a rather leisurely loop through the backcountry. The only challenge I had planned was being off-trail and navigating by map and compass. I was expecting ponderosa pine forests and plentiful water along the Kern River, Crag Creek, and multiple springs and seepages that tie into both. The first two miles were exactly as expected, shady and cool. It took me six miles of walking beyond those first two to accept that, not only was I unexpectedly in a burn-scarred skeleton forest, I was also smack in the middle of exceptional drought conditions. Instead of a rushing river, dribbling seepages were the only water I would find. On top of that, I had a mild case of altitude sickness and, in the absence of a pine forest, I had the midday sun beating down on me. I didn’t photograph anything for the first seven miles. There didn’t seem to anything worth capturing, plus the altitude sickness forced two naps-in-the-forest onto me. With eyes set on a ridge in the distance, I crossed into a meadow where I expected to find water. I didn’t. Thankfully, about a mile back, I had marked a seepage on my GPS. So I dropped my pack and headed back to gather five liters.

Going back the way I came, with a bit more clarity after my unplanned naps and seeing the land for a second time, I realized how devastated it was from the Clover Fire of 2008. Planning the trip from over 200 miles away, I figured a fire from 14 years prior would only be marginally visible on the land. While fires can be rejuvenating, this one, set by a lightning strike, was the 19th largest of 2008. Over two months, it burned 15,300 acres, or 61.9 sq.km / 38.5 sq.mi.

The crux of the situation - for me and the trees - was that there was very little water. I was already aware that the second 13 miles of my walk was the “hot and dry” leg, and I expected total seclusion for it. In fact, that was the plan. My only companions were the morning leavings of black bears, a juvenile diamondback, and a squirrel that gave me a bigger scare than the rattlesnake.

While focused on the hike itself and my own safety in solitude, I tried to document some of the destruction and aridity on my route. Recent research has looked at the cycle of fire, drought and something called “climatic dipoles.” A phenomena of climate in which two regions are linked in opposing cycles. Where one “pole” is wet and cold, the other is dry and hot, interchanging like a pendulum or seesaw over multi-year periods. From where I sit in California, our climatic dipole has the American Southwest on one end of the seesaw, and the Northern Rockies on the other. With climate change, as the researchers put it, that climatic seesaw is also on an elevator of rising temperatures. Each cold and wet period is a “hotter cold” than the last, and each hot cycle is hotter still. Ponderosa pines have evolved to live with fire and even require it to burn away invading plants on the forest floor. The National Park Service says that, “While small ponderosas may succumb to a hot fire, only the most horrendous crown-fires or firestorms will kill the bigger trees.” This fire was hot enough to take down mature, 60ft trees and, from what I could see, it had taken down nearly all of them in the burn area. The Manzanitas too. Very clear burn lines striped the hills in the distance where the fire had stopped or, more likely, had been controlled.

Nature is a competition and, for plants, it’s a race. The ponderosa pine needs 30-60 days of cold temperatures, followed by 10-30 days of wet conditions for germination. If the weather doesn’t provide the conditions, other plants move in to take advantage of the available space, nutrients, and arid conditions suited to them. 14 years after the Clover Fire, that appears to be what’s happened in this section of the South Fork Kern River Basin. Sage, milkweed, pineapple weed, rye grass, and a variety of desert meadow flora blanketed the flats and hills, while fallen trees blocked almost all of the ways forward off the established trails, and even parts on it.

Deep, V-shaped drainages were dry and what would have been cascades were silty washes. It is May however, and the seasonal snow melt is all but finished, but riding the 178 through Bakersfield and back to L.A. the Kern River itself, famous for its huge volumes and deadly currents was almost serene. Boulders that had been worn smooth from levels of years past, sat 6 feet out of the water. Kern County has gotten its cold winters, but its snowfall and precipitation has been light or inconsistent for the last 20 years. The pines have not received the wet springs after the cold winters they need to germinate.

Unburned areas of the trail still had healthy stands of mature pine forest, willows in the seasonally wet areas, and thick juniper forest in the drier ones. However, 14 years on, the burn area was showing no obvious signs of seedling establishment or reforestation for the pines. So far, the forest has turned to meadow. Back in the public campground the water of the Kern was still flowing, though most visitors didn’t venture beyond the loop.