A massive logjam left blocking Vallecito Creek after the October floods has seemingly disappeared into thin air.
Well not exactly. It was likely burned by an unknown person and carried away in billows of smoke.
“We don’t know who did it; we have no clue,” said Bruce Evans, Upper Pine River Fire Protection District chief. “And frankly, I don’t want to know.”
The jam – a build-up of logs and debris stuck between two boulders in the creek running through the Weminuche Wilderness – was discovered in the weeks after the flooding.
Until recently, it lingered as something of a headache for Upper Pine fire.
In November, Evans said the blockage ‒ roughly 35 feet wide and 35 feet tall ‒ posed an imminent threat to downstream ecology and nearby neighborhoods. Officials worried the pileup could become far more dangerous if loosened during spring run-off, potentially wiping out remediation work completed downstream.
“So was it was the right thing to do? You know, probably,” Evans said.
He had previously applied for permission to burn what was effectively a “log dam,” he said, but was denied by the San Juan National Forest Service. In the past few weeks, Evans had renewed his efforts to get rid of the pileup.
Two weeks ago, Upper Pine firefighters training on rope rescues discovered someone else had already gotten to it.
“It was probably burned two or three months ago, maybe longer, because the burned ends of some of the logs are already embedded in the mud and silt in the channel,” Evans said.
Whoever did it was pretty savvy, he said. They likely did it when the cloud cover was low, so that nobody would report the smoke.
The San Juan National Forest became aware of the logjam’s disappearance through word-of-mouth at the end of April, spokesperson Lorena Williams said.
Because the apparent burning happened months ago and the Forest Service only recently learned about it, no investigation will be conducted, Williams said.
“There is log jam. It’s gone now. End of report,” she said.
jbowman@durangoherald.com
