Nature, Sonoma County park crews join forces to restore fire-scorched Hood Mountain Regional Park

HOOD MOUNTAIN REGIONAL PARK AND OPEN SPACE PRESERVE — From afar, the sand-colored trail zigzagging to the summit of Hood Mountain is starkly visible against stunted trees and slopes.

This is one of the areas left scorched when the Glass fire came blasting over the ridge from Napa County 20 months ago tearing through the park on its way into Sonoma Valley and burning more than 67,400 acres all together.

The reminders can be seen in the bare outlines of burned and lifeless Douglas firs and the dark, limbless hardwoods that cover the hillsides. Where oak canopies once provided cooling shade, charred, straight trunks and tangled, arching black branches now pierce the air.

But there are wildflowers aplenty and abundant fresh green growth for visitors to enjoy as they return to newly reopened areas of Hood Mountain Regional Park this weekend.

Profusions of bright foliage erupt from the base of charred madrone trees. Clumps of green leaves absent a year ago dot the blackened trunks and branches of live oaks, and new big leaf maple trees sprout from the ground, surrounded by other flora.

Green bay trees spread along hillsides, greedily soaking in sun that would have been blocked had the Douglas firs survived.

Other native plants, reseeded and activated naturally by the flames, are reappearing across the ground, as well.

The 2,000-acre Hood Mountain Regional Park and Open Space Preserve is still recovering from the wildfire, in part through nature’s own rehabilitative powers and partly through the labor of regional park maintenance staff and contract trail crews.

Work began soon after the Glass fire, one of two to cut through its rugged landscape in a 3-year period.

The October 2017 Nuns fire damaged about 66% at the southern end of the park, burning more fiercely in some areas than others. The Glass fire had more of a blowtorch effect, coming over the Mayacamas with speed, intensity and a destructive force that scarred 80% of the park, including areas already burned.

“This was a very severe event,” said Melanie Parker, deputy regional parks director and natural resources manager.

The landscape is adapted to wildfire and is working to come back, though the challenge is greater in areas burned twice or with the greatest intensity.

Park-goers can watch it happen. Beginning Saturday, they’ll have greater opportunity, as regional parks reopens the northwest, Los Alamos entrance to the park for the first time since the Glass fire. In addition, nine more miles of the 19-mile trail system, bringing the total to about 12, including the Lawson Trail and a portion of the Lower Johnson Trail, both opened last June.

But the recovery will take time, especially with drought and climate change, Parker said.

There also is more than a century of fire suppression to overcome, a legacy that contributed to the spread and domination of Douglas firs that now stand as kindling. Given time and adequate stewardship, some areas may still give way to oak trees once again.

The job started with assessment of the damage and determining just how to get access to areas of the park with the hundreds, and probably thousands of trees that were burned and turned into safety risks, many of them leaning, their limbs tangled together or across trails and roads.

Two key access roads were blocked and damaged for a long period, and in some cases, trails on rocky areas that had been largely defined by trees along their edges were “just lost,” county parks Planner Karen Davis-Brown said.

In other cases, you’d look at a trail and there may not be much on the ground, but looking up, and there’s just a snarl of charred wood.

“Hood is super rugged terrain,” Davis-Brown said. “Our guys have been working their tails off. They’ve become loggers, developed skill sets they didn’t have.”

“It’s a momentous effort,” she said.

In addition, there is still a major effort underway to replace wooden infrastructure — signage, steps, retaining structures — using fireproof materials, where possible.

So, while a piece of the Summit Trail is open, for instance, more than a mile of it remains closed because dozens of burned wooden steps need to be replaced, Karen-Davis said.

Same with the Santa Rosa Creek Trail, which is close to the Los Alamos Parking Lot and follows a refreshing stretch of rocky creek. Visitors can still reach the creek on the opening section of Hood Mountain Trail, but the creek trail is closed, because of the steps.

The job now, Parker said, is balancing human management against the landscape’s natural recovery, exercising patience and care as nature recovers and hoping that another fire doesn’t come through any time soon.

“The Glass fire just reset the whole landscape back to Ground Zero,” she said. “If we steward it properly for the next 50 years, we might have a situation where we can nurture the oak canopy. I’m excited about seeing it come back.”

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 707-521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MaryCallahanB.