On Saturday I did another Station Fire Hike from the Mt. Wilson turnoff north on the Strawberry Peak trail. The trail has not been maintained since the fire in August/September 2009 but a few ribbons have been tied so it's easy to follow. This area was burned to the ground.
The area I hiked is in the center background of the picture above, taken 3 months after the fire.
Two springs of growth after wetter than normal winters have changed the aesthetics.
Mt. Lawlor, the peak in the background, is the one dead center in the first picture.
View from the same spot south to Mt. Wilson.
Like those flowers? They were all over the place in this section and needed to pushed out of the way while hiking. Back at the Red Box ranger station I was informed that the poodle-dog bush is a native plant which explodes in population in recently burned SoCal mountain areas. This was around 5,000 feet; I don't recall seeing them in the Griffith Park burn area after the 2007 fire there.
But there is a catch. http://www.venturacountytrails.org/News ... wsPage.htm
"Poodle-dog bush is an irritant akin to poison oak," said forester Eric Oldar. "This time of the year, the floral stalk is brilliant and it's very attractive, especially along hiking trails or roads where people make a stop," Oldar said. "They'll go out and actually pick it and take it home as a flower arrangement, not knowing that contact, for the vast majority of the public, will cause a poison oak reaction."
I'm now 72 hours after the hike with no symptoms. But I recall a camp when I was 13 years old where we retrieved tennis balls from a brushy thicket with a lot of poison oak and I was one of the few with no reaction to that either. I did wear long pants as I knew the trail had not been maintained. The Red Box ranger said most people will have a reaction to the poodle-dog bush, but symptoms typically don't appear until 36-48 hours after exposure.
The area I hiked is in the center background of the picture above, taken 3 months after the fire.
Two springs of growth after wetter than normal winters have changed the aesthetics.
Mt. Lawlor, the peak in the background, is the one dead center in the first picture.
View from the same spot south to Mt. Wilson.
Like those flowers? They were all over the place in this section and needed to pushed out of the way while hiking. Back at the Red Box ranger station I was informed that the poodle-dog bush is a native plant which explodes in population in recently burned SoCal mountain areas. This was around 5,000 feet; I don't recall seeing them in the Griffith Park burn area after the 2007 fire there.
But there is a catch. http://www.venturacountytrails.org/News ... wsPage.htm
"Poodle-dog bush is an irritant akin to poison oak," said forester Eric Oldar. "This time of the year, the floral stalk is brilliant and it's very attractive, especially along hiking trails or roads where people make a stop," Oldar said. "They'll go out and actually pick it and take it home as a flower arrangement, not knowing that contact, for the vast majority of the public, will cause a poison oak reaction."
I'm now 72 hours after the hike with no symptoms. But I recall a camp when I was 13 years old where we retrieved tennis balls from a brushy thicket with a lot of poison oak and I was one of the few with no reaction to that either. I did wear long pants as I knew the trail had not been maintained. The Red Box ranger said most people will have a reaction to the poodle-dog bush, but symptoms typically don't appear until 36-48 hours after exposure.
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