Last Day at the Cabin

We left for home on Friday, Aug. 31. At 8:30 AM, we could hardly see across the lake for all the smoke. The sun was a dim orange globe casting weird, pale orange reflections on the lake.

Now that we're home, and can download the current maps of the wildfires closest to the little lake on which the cabin is situated, we can see why there was so much smoke.

The Rice Ridge fire (see map; click to display the full-size image) is now the worst in the nation,  only 2% contained, having charred over 100,000 acres (a megafire by Forest Service measures) and has over 780 firefighters assigned to it. The Rice Ridge and Reef fires have now merged, and the combined infernos will soon overtake the Monahan fire to the east. The residents of the portion of the town of Seeley Lake east of the highway (red line on map) have been evacuated.

Luckily, most of the burned area is within the Bob Marshall Wilderness, thus has almost no buildings or residents endangered. To give a sense of scale, the distance from the bottom end of Seeley Lake to our cabin is just over 18 miles. Which means the fire was altogether too close for comfort!