george crosland photo blog

Or so it seems in San Diego, holy cow there a fires everywhere. Yesterday stared nice-good wave, good wind for surf. I headed out for a motorcycle ride and hike in the backcountry of San Diego. On the way to my hike there were firetrucks racing around but no smoke in the sky

This point is way out in the middle of no where and required riding miles on dirt roads - The Pacific Crest trails

Here is a view of 10,800 foot tall San Jacinto peak and 11,499 foot tall San Georgonio peak from remote Combs peak

The very remote North Coyote Canyon part of Anza Borrego

Off to the South is the beginning of the Witch Creek fire, which is causing havoc in San Diego today. It pretty much started in front of my eyes

Here is part of a plane wreck, no joke

So, while riding my motorcycle home I see some smoke from a different fire in the distance, by the time I get to where the smoke was it was a raging inferno. Appearantly, the fire was first reported at 3:53 pm and I came across it at about 5 pm - insane

This was like 1/2 mile away

Look at the flames and look at the house, the flames are way taller then the house

Riding through the area, it was still smoking right next to the road

A few hundred yards away was ground zero

Fire burning on both sides of the road. I am shooting photos while riding a motorcycle and dodging fire trucks, tumbleweeds, cars, trucks, smoke and fire

Here is the view just ahead of the fire. People were evacuating their homes, fire trucks were driving around looking were to make their stand and what to protect. For the most part the wind was blowing the fire away from me. At one point the wind changed direction and brought the smoke, ash and embers towards me - I split

Since I am retarded I drove back and snapped a few more photos

look for complete coverage of some of the best ams in the world at Automatics battle of the shops later today

While driving in to Big Bear for the HDDR event you could not help but notice the fire, especially since Hwy 18 was closed

The fire was raging just across the lake from Bear Mountain. The town of Fawnskin was evacuated, so was Green Valley (anybody remember the first all Snowboard Park “Air Green Valley” or something). Around 2000 people were evacuated

This is how close you could to the scene - a few miles. It was crazy, lots of giant heli’s and giant planes dropping fire retardent and water in sketchy to reach places, it was like a movie

It is is still burning. On Sunday the stats were as follows: Staff-1000, 10 airplanes, 12 helicopters, 41 fire trucks and more. Wildfire is a fact of life in the west!