Patrol Report 3/21/2010

Traffic was heavy at all of our trailheads. Lonnie has fixed the stream crossing near his trailer, and Brown Mt road is passable to Risinghill.

The damage in Millard, El Prieto, and the Arroyo is very impressive. We went up the Arroyo to the forest service houses, and the road disappears at that point. Brown Mt road is washed out at the El Prieto stream crossing. Several old dams that were buried have been uncovered. Kind of neat to see.

Patrol Report 02-07-2010

Almost all of the roads leading into the mountains from Altadena have been impacted by the rains. The stream crossing in Eaton Canyon on the road from the Nature Center is not passable with vehicles however you can drive to the crossing from the bridge. The Toll Road has some slides across it from the old large slide. It is not blocked to hiking but the trucks would have a hard time getting across. The slides that we saw should not take much to clear but there will certainly be more slides there. The Mount Lowe road is blocked by a slide at the Cabin Trailhead. The road to Brown Mountain at the stream crossing next to Lonnie's trailer is washed out and not passable. The fire road to Brown Mountain from the top of Rising Hill is completely washed out about a mile up from the forest gate. The road up the Arroyo from the Ventura gate is washed out about 1/2 mile from the gate.
The area was busy with hikers today. We turned around many of them in the Arroyo and on Chaney Trail.

Patrol Report 01-31-2010

Heavy traffic at the Nature Center and Windsor. There are signs clearly stating that there are to be no hikers up past the first gate on Chaney trail, however, there are still people making their way past the signs. Forestry is doing their part by handing out citations and warnings. A call came in for a 415 on Chaney. Lani encountered an individual and his family who was uncooperative about not being allowed in the area.. We made no contact. Drove up Brown fire road from Millard. The road is passable from the campground up to about a 1/2 mile past the turn for Rising Hill fire road. We should stick to using the Colorado for this trek. The F350 may make it as well, however, it might be too heavy for the road. Definitely not the 450. Here's where the road is too sketchy to pass if anyone is interested in plotting on the map:
0393800
3786977
I suggest going out with a chainsaw while out on and for any ops. There's one in the 450. The other is in my possession. I'll be taking it in to be repaired since it's non op at this time. And get that back ASAP. On another note, there's been more than one occasion of vehicle breakin's at the turnstile. Something to keep in mind. It's been happening in broad daylight. Maybe make a few passes while out as well.

Patrol and Operations Report 11/1/2009

Received a call from 70D re: a concerned citizen reported that a man on the fire break above Cobb Estate was taking off his clothing and continuing up the fire break. Went to investigate. Hiked up the fire break and located a back pack and several articles of clothing. After review, we came to the conclusion that said pack may belong to a transient.

Drove up the Lowe Road to see if we could locate the subject and make sure he was not in need of assistance. On our way back we received another call from 70D re: a dehydrated hiker on Lower Sam who may possibly be 918...it happened to be the owner of the pack. He was assisted down and taken to the hospital.

Patrol and Operations Report 10/18/2009

Drove up the Arroyo and out the Edison Road. Passable (for now) with the Chevy Colorado, wouldn't take the F350 though. The next good rain will probably make it impassable, there were already numerous slides as all the vegetation is burned up. There was foot and bicycle traffic even with the AREA CLOSED signs posted.

They are doing lots of work up on ACH, which is still closed. Replacing guard rails and clearing storm drains and maybe making new ones. They had a large auger truck and lots of galvanized drain tubes.

El Prieto is pretty burnt, although some areas down low more or less survived. Sunset trail is totally burnt up, you can see just about the whole trail from the Lowe Road. There will be numerous slides when the rains come and the trail will most likely be wiped out. Sierra Saddle survived, but the area around it is totally burnt up.

The foot traffic gate at Pinecrest gate is open again.

We heard Fire rolling to Cobb Estate and shortly after got called out for heart attack victim 50 yards ABOVE Echo Mt. Fire was going up the trail from Cobb Estate. Team members took off up the Lowe Road with intent to hike across the Echo Mt trail. We noticed a Fire helo up in the area and by the time we got to the trailhead heard they had the victim and were on the way to Huntington.

We were going to deploy with med pack and AED and have the next crew bring litter/wheel in. We had the collapsable litter and knew they would repackage anyway for an airlift so wasn't going to deploy with it.