What to do if you are above timberline and your descent is cut off by a large forest fire?

Question

The situation: you are backpacking and are above timberline. Streams are ubiquitous, you are well equipped so exposure is not a problem, the entire party is uninjured and healthy. But a large, rapidly expanding forest fire sprang up well after you left the trailhead, and your route down is blocked. You have some food, but you will be on short rations if you have to take a long detour to get down. (See option 2, below.)

Do you (1) activate your PLB (see definition of PLB at the end of the Question); (2) climb up to a pass and try to identify a fire-free way down on the other side of the pass, and activate your PLB only if you cannot find what looks like a safe way down from the pass.

Option (2) seems to me to be clearly the best, but are there dangers to doing this? (The climb up is well within your capabilities.) Under what conditions would Option 1 be best?

Addendum: See How long after a forest fire can you safely reenter a forest?.

Edit in Response to Comment: Personal Locator Beacon (PLB) is a [portable] emergency radio locator beacon ..... capable of providing homing signals to assist search and rescue operations. Many hikers and backpackers routinely carry a PLB to ensure rescue if they get in a life threatening situation, e.g., alone with a broken hip days from the trailhead.

Answer 1

RETREAT

Your option 2 is best, but having said that, rescue crews will want to know you're out there sooner than later.

In the option 1 you described, you would be activating your PLB, then waiting for rescue above the treeline. Fire doesn't go very far above treeline, but smoke, ash, embers and heat do. Just because you're above the treeline doesn't mean you're guaranteed to be safe from the fire, you just won't likely get burned to death, but death by flames isn't the only way to die in a forest fire.

When the Kenow wildfire burned 38,000 hectares of forest last summer, the ash from the fire was piling up in my back yard 50km away. Air quality was so bad that we had to stay indoors with all the windows closed, and the sun was blotted out for weeks. If you are on a mountain directly above a blazing forest fire, your odds of dying from smoke inhalation are pretty good, but breathing in a hot breath of superheated air is what usually kills people trapped by fire.

The situation you described is the exact reason why parks require people to buy backcountry permits to go backcountry camping. Park staff need to have a record of how many people are deep in the backcountry, so they know in a situation like a forest fire how many people they need to evacuate. If you're going to a spot where they don't require permits, then make sure someone knows where you are, or at the very least leave a note on your vehicle indicating where you have gone and when you expect to return.

If you are in the backcountry and discover a fire, you must report it immediately, especially if you are above the fire and it has you cut off from your escape route. You're best chance of surviving a fire is to reatreat! If you are on top of a mountain, this means getting off the mountain. Do not hang out on the rock and expect you're going to be safe, you need to get off that mountain as fast as you can, if you know of an alternate route, take it. Rations are the least of your concerns when running from a wildfire. You can survive days without food and water, but you will not survive breathing in unrelenting plumes of smoke or superheated air. (One caution with descending a mountain is to choose your route wisely; if you get ledged-out on the decent you can get yourself in just about as much trouble as being stuck in the path of a fire.)

In any case, your first course of action should be to call for help, if you have no means of contacting Emergency Crews, and no way to evade the fire, then use your PLB. Rescue crews will want to know that you are out there. The problem with using your PLB is that once you deploy it you typically need to hang around in one spot in order for rescue crews to find you. If you're in the smoke however, it's unlikely they will ever find you, so deploying it is not going to help you get found unless you can get out of the smoke to somewhere open and visible.

Answer 2

Option 2 is better, as activating your PLB will divert resources that could be used to fight the forest fire, and put other people in unnecessary danger (PLBs aren't a get out of danger free card).

Fires rarely go above tree line,

Alpine tundra areas in the [Colorado] San Juans rarely burn because, according to Korb, they are typically sparse in fuel, and cool night temperatures bring increasing humidity which makes them wetter in than lower elevations.

Source

and even then would be no where near as intense as below treeline where there are trees to burn.

Do note that fire tends to spread downwind, so hiking upwind is the better option.

Also, people can hike farther on short rations much longer and farther than they might think and even if you all but run out, you can still go quite a long ways.

Answer 3

Your question answers itself - "above timberline" indicates very little, if any, fuels for the fire, so the best option (assuming no life-threatening issues) is to stay put. As others have mentioned, forest fires move rapidly, so you'll be able to descend at some point. Also fires are heavily monitored by a wide variety of wildland firefighters, so you may run into staff or be seen from the air (in a clear area that is typical of being above the timberline) by survey or fire-related aircraft.

Descending into an area freshly burned can be very dangerous, however. A number of experienced wildland firefighters are struck (often fatally) every year due to "snags" - trees that have been weakened by the fires and are prone to falling without any warning or sound. If you must venture into a burned area, keep your head on a swivel and do not linger, for any reason!

Answer 4

If you are not threatened there is no reason to activate your PLB. See How bad do circumstances need to be before activating a PLB?

It is a forest fire, there may be people who are actually at risk for their lives, activating your PLB where there is no real risk to your party, may cause the diversion of resources, that result in loss of life to others.

Presumably you registered at the trailhead, and you have a friend who knows where you are. There should be aircraft in the area soon attempting to identify your location and risk level.

EDIT I am pretty sure the likelihood of the registry burning before the rangers have a chance to retrieve it, is extremely low. Posted this follow up question Will the Trailhead Registry burn in a forest fire?

Answer 5

A forest fire moves fairly rapidly (like 6-10 mph). Once it consumes the vegetation it goes out. If you stack a fire pit at best it will burn for a day. Just wait a day or two and walk out. Yes there will be some smoldering trunks and roots. In a large remote fires hot shot crews will protect home by home and let the fire pass.