Photo by Moondabor

Just last week I discovered Hoegee’s campground in the mountains above Altadena, and now the whole area is being swept by the Sierra Madre wildfire. I know that the Chantry Flats buildings, and the cabins in the canyon must be at serious risk, though from this map the trail to the campground has burnt, but not the area we stayed in.
The area was full of extremely dense brush when we hiked through, I’ve heard this is the first fire in 30 years, and the hillsides are very steep. The hot, dry Santa Ana winds kicked in on Saturday too, giving us temperatures over a hundred while we were working on the trails. That makes this a very tough fire to fight, and my thoughts go out to the wildland firefighters who are in the middle of it. So far they’ve protected the city at the base of the mountains, but the hills themselves are so hard to access I hope they’re being very careful as they go deeper.
If you want more information, Jae, a city employee in the thick of it has been blogging about the situation. Moondabor has put up a chilling series of photos of the approaching fire, and Flickr has better coverage than any newspaper I’ve seen. Altadenablog gave me some links to other sites with information, like the Crime Scene Blog and the USGS online maps at GeoMac.